Mark Gagnon

It ended because the violence finally just burned itself out.

By late January and into February, Japanese commanders began pulling their troops back under control.

The executions slowed down, but the violence still continued.

The killings persisted into early February, and the atrocities didn't fully cease until late March when a government was finally established.

Looting faded only because there was basically nothing left to take.

And the assaults didn't stop, but they became less constant than before.

Pressure from outside China actually started to matter at this point.

Reporters from foreigners inside Nanjing would send letters and telegrams and diary entries just describing everything that they had witnessed.

And finally, Western newspapers started printing the story, shocking readers around the world.

Governments were taking notice.

Japan at the time denied everything, but the evidence continued to pile up.

And even some Japanese officers realized the massacre was turning into a global scandal.

Orders were finally issued to rein in the troops.

For the survivors, the end of the killing...

didn't mean the end of the suffering.

I mean, the city's entire economy had collapsed.

Food was scarce, if available at all.

Disease was spreading quickly in the cold and in the rubble and in the shelters.

Families searched lists of the dead, hoping for a miracle and often finding none.

They tried to rebuild their lives from almost nothing while carrying this trauma that they didn't even have words for.