Population of Nanjing in December of 1937
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Estimates of the population of Nanjing in December 1937 vary widely from source to source. Scholars have been heavily engaged in attempting to calculate Nanjing (then romanized as Nanking)'s population at this time because of its relevance to estimating the death toll of the Nanjing Massacre.
In December 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War between Japan and China, Japanese soldiers marched on the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. Most Chinese residents fled Nanjing, though the number of people within the city was bolstered by the presence of a large garrison of Chinese soldiers defending it. After the fall of the city on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers massacred Chinese prisoners of war and civilians in and around the city.
Contemporary data on how many soldiers and civilians inhabited Nanjing at the time of the massacre is contradictory and often unreliable. However, modern scholars have an interest in accurately estimating the number in order to aid them in calculating the number of people who might have been massacred by the Japanese Army. Various recent estimates put the population of the city in December at as many as 500,000 civilians and 150,000 soldiers or as few as 200,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers.