ndeclared war with China. They set about creating incidents that would make their conquests in China seem all the more reasonable. On September 18, 1931, they had their army blow up the tracks of a Japanese owned railway in southern Manchuria hoping to incite an incident. When the blast failed to derail an express train, the Japanese killed the Chinese guards and fabricated a story for the world press about Chinese saboteurs. Because of this incident, Japan seized Manchuria. By the summer of 1937, Japan finally succeeded in provoking a full-scale war with China. By the time July ended the Japanese had control of the entire Peking region. By August, they had invaded Shanghai. Flush with victory Japanese military leaders boasted that they could conquer all of China in three months. The battles for these Chinese cities were, however, taking much longer than they had boasted. When a battle for one Chinese city dragged from summer to fall, and then from fall to winter, all hopes of an easy victory were shattered and with them all Chinese hopes of a merciful conquest.By the time Japanese troops entered Nanking there was a standing order that no prisoners were to be taken alive.8 The logic to this order was not directed because of the fierce defenses by the Chinese, but, because there would be no way to feed these prisoners. Not only would this order help eliminate the food problem but would diminish the possibility of guerrilla actions by the Chinese. Because they lacked the manpower, the Japanese relied heavily upon deception. Their strategy for mass butchery involved two steps: Promising the Chinese fair treatment in turn for an end to resistance and then dividing the captives into groups of one to two hundred men, and then luring them to different areas of Nanking for killing.9Because at this point the Chinese were suffering from disease and starvation and inept leadership, taking them captive turned out to be easier than the Japane...
