Mark Gagnon

And he recorded in detail the deaths that followed when basic tools or the drugs were lacking.

The missionaries handed out food, and they made bathrooms and tried to keep the zone from collapsing, basically under the weight of how many people were there.

They did everything they could, but it was never enough.

The prayers...

weren't answered the suffering didn't stop and day after day week after week even the foreigners the strongest most determined began to break under the weight of what they saw by early january nanjing barely looked like a city anymore it looked like something pulled out of a nightmare bodies just laid there where people had fallen weeks earlier just frozen in the winter cold untouched because there was no one even left to bury them

and no place to put them even if there had been stray dogs were moving in packs literally feeding on the dead buildings were just empty shells blackened by fire the insides completely looted and stripped bare the people who survived walked through this landscape like shadows some searched to reconnect with their families who would never be found others went back to what used to be their homes and stood in front of the ruins trying to understand how everything could just vanish so quickly

They scavenged for food in burned-out shops.

They curled up in corners of destroyed buildings just to try to stay out of the wind.

They weren't really living.

They were just almost zombies pushing through each day because there was nothing left to do.

The Yangtze River carried bodies for miles, just drifting, washing onto riverbanks far beyond the city and

The smell of decay just hung in the air, mixed with smoke and fires that seemed like they never fully died out.

And inside this nightmare, a few foreigners still in Nanjing kept documenting everything.

Photographs, diary entries, shaky early film footage, trying to record what was happening, even when it felt hopeless.

Their notes would later become evidence.

At the time, it just felt like they were shouting into the void.

In the safety zone, life was barely hanging on.

The children stopped playing, the adults spoke only when they had to, and people were just so drained that even basic emotions were too heavy.

Everyone was just numb and disassociated, emotionally shut down after weeks of violence and grief without break.

The massacre didn't end because anyone showed mercy.