Considering that Japan owes much of its culture to China, it is hard to understand how it came to consider the Chinese an inferior race, suited only to slavery and exploitation. Yet when Japan invaded China in 1937, the systematic military massacres carried out in the key city of Nanking accounted for over 300,000 people. Some were soldiers, but many more were civilians - women and children, old people - many of whom were tortured, beaten and raped. Resident Americans saved thousands more - though the memory of what they had seen drove some of them to breakdown - and, incongruously, a German Nazi named Rabe saved numbers too. The story was first forgotten, then hushed up, but in recent years it has returned inexorably to haunt Japan's national conscience. Iris Chang's account utilises numerous sources, including recently discovered diaries.