Editing Nanjing Massacre (section)

=== Prince Asaka appointment as commander and the "Kill All Captives" order ===
[[File:Prince Asaka Yasuhiko 01.jpg|upright|thumb|[[Prince Yasuhiko Asaka]] in 1935, who would issue orders to "kill all captives" in the Nanjing area. ]]
In a memorandum for the palace rolls, Hirohito singled [[Prince Yasuhiko Asaka]] out for [[censure]] as the one imperial kinsman whose attitude was "not good". He assigned Asaka to Nanjing as an opportunity to make amends.{{sfn|Bergamini|1971|p=23}}

On December 5, Asaka left Tokyo by plane and arrived at the front three days later. He met with division commanders, lieutenant-generals [[Kesago Nakajima]] and [[Heisuke Yanagawa]], who informed him that the Japanese troops had almost completely surrounded 300,000 Chinese troops in the vicinity of Nanjing and that preliminary negotiations suggested that the Chinese were ready to surrender.{{sfn|Bergamini|1971|p=24}}

Prince Asaka issued an order to "kill all captives", thus providing official sanction for the crimes which took place during and after the battle.<ref name="Chen, World War II Database">Chen, World War II Database</ref> Some authors record that Prince Asaka signed the order for Japanese soldiers in Nanjing to "kill all captives".{{sfn|Bergamini|1971|p=24}} Others assert that lieutenant colonel [[Isamu Chō]], Asaka's [[aide-de-camp]], sent this order under the Prince's [[sign-manual]] without the Prince's knowledge or assent.<ref>Iris Chang, ''The Rape of Nanking'', 1997, p. 40</ref> Nevertheless, even if Chō took the initiative, Asaka was nominally the officer in charge and gave no orders to stop the carnage. While the extent of Prince Asaka's responsibility for the massacre remains a matter of debate, the ultimate sanction for the massacre and the crimes committed during the invasion of China were issued in Emperor [[Hirohito]]'s ratification of the Japanese army's proposition to remove the constraints of [[international law]] on the treatment of Chinese prisoners on August 5, 1937.<ref>Akira Fujiwara, "Nitchū Sensō ni Okeru Horyo Gyakusatsu2, ''Kikan Sensō Sekinin Kenkyū'' 9, 1995, p. 22</ref>

A detailed analysis of wartime materials and documents by Japanese researcher Ono Kenji has directly implicated Prince Asaka in issuing the order to illegally execute Chinese captives in the Nanjing Area.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Wakabayashi |first=Bob |title=The Nanking Atrocity, 1937–1938: Complicating the Picture |date=2000b |publisher=Berghan |pages=84–85}}</ref>