Mark Gagnon

Gunfire and screams just filled the alleyways that had been quiet for generations.

Fires were breaking out everywhere.

Shops were looted.

Homes were just set ablaze with families still inside.

And by nightfall, the sky was continuing to glow orange and a thick smoke hung over the city, basically just being destroyed in real time.

And families were just running towards the safety zone, clutching their children, carrying their elderly parents or grandparents on their back, just leaving everything behind.

And some made it through the gates.

Others were caught on the roads and shot or beaten to death wherever they fell.

And the Japanese army didn't enter Nanjing as conquerors.

They entered as men who no longer saw the people in front of them as human beings.

The discipline was gone.

The mercy was no longer.

The same day, John Robb drove through the city trying to make sense of this devastation.

In his diary, he wrote, Every 100 or 200 meters, we came across corpses.

The Japanese marched through the city in groups of 10 to 20 men, looting shops.

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have not believed it.

Rob had lived in China for 30 years.

He'd seen famine and riots and wars.

I mean, he was a member of the Nazi Party, but he had never seen anything like this.

Nanjing wasn't being conquered.