Editing Battle of Nanking (section)

==Casualties==
The capture of Nanjing had been quicker and easier than the Japanese had foreseen.<ref name="battle22" /><ref>David Askew, "Defending Nanking: An Examination of the Capital Garrison Forces," ''Sino-Japanese Studies'', April 15, 2003, 162.</ref> Excluding the Yamada Detachment, they lost only 1,558 soldiers in battle, plus 4,619 wounded.<ref name="Masahiro Yamamoto 20002"/><ref name="Askew"/> Recent research however, suggests higher Japanese losses in the five week-long campaign to take Nanjing.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City |date=2015 |publisher=Casemate |pages=13–14}}</ref> According to Benjamin Lai, casualties for the IJA over the entire month-long campaign are estimated at 26,000 killed and wounded, with 18,000 casualties for the X Corps alone between 6 November and 17 December. An additional 624 killed and 876 wounded for the [[Imperial Japanese Navy|Japanese Navy]] makes a total of 27,500 Japanese casualties for the month long campaign.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lai |first=Benjamin |title=Shanghai and Nanjing 1937: Massacre on the Yangtze |date=2017 |publisher=Osprey Publishing |pages=89}}</ref>
[[File:Memorial_Ceremony_Hasegawa_Matsui_Asaka_Yanagawa_Nanking_18-Dec-1937.png|thumb|Japanese military leaders [[Kiyoshi Hasegawa (admiral)]], [[Iwane Matsui]], [[Prince Yasuhiko Asaka]], and [[Heisuke Yanagawa]] at the Memorial Ceremony for War Dead at Nanking Airfield on December 13, 1937]]
Chinese casualties were undoubtedly significantly higher, though no precise figures exist on how many Chinese were killed in action. The Japanese claimed to have killed up to 84,000 Chinese soldiers during the Nanjing campaign, whereas a contemporary Chinese source claimed that their army suffered 20,000 casualties in the fighting. Masahiro Yamamoto noted that the Japanese usually inflated their opponent's body counts by a factor of three while the Chinese had reason to downplay the scale of their loss.<ref name="casualties22">Masahiro Yamamoto, ''Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity'' (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 87–88.</ref> Ikuhiko Hata estimates that 50,000 Chinese soldiers were killed in combat during the entire battle<ref name="echo22" /> whereas Jay Taylor puts the number at 70,000, and states that proportionate to the size of the force committed, such losses were greater than those suffered in the [[Battle of Shanghai]].<ref name="Michael Richard Gibson 198522">Michael Richard Gibson, ''Chiang Kai-shek’s Central Army, 1924–1938'' (Washington DC: George Washington University, 1985), 388.</ref> On the other hand, Chinese scholar Sun Zhaiwei estimates Chinese combat losses at 6,000 to 10,000 men.<ref name=":62" /> New York Times correspondent Tillman Durdin estimated some 33,000 Chinese soldiers had died in the city of Nanjing, including 20,000 who had been executed unlawfully as prisoners of war.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Durdin |first=Tillman |date=January 9, 1938 |title=The New York Times}}</ref>

The number of Chinese soldiers wounded in action also lacks precise figures, but was undoubtedly also very high. Towards the end of November, wounded soldiers were arriving in Nanjing from the front line at a rate of 2,000 to 3,000 men per day, double the rate of the attrition in Shanghai.<ref>{{Cite news |date=November 27, 1937 |title=The New York Times}}</ref> Many of these wounded soldiers would not receive adequate treatment due to the poor state of China's medical services, and also because Nanjing's hospitals were unable to treat so many patients at once. As a result, many injured soldiers were neglected and often succumbed to their wounds, a number estimated by Masahiro Yamamoto to be 9,000 total.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City |date=2015 |publisher=Casemate |pages=115–117}}</ref><ref name=":13" /> Despite the efforts of hospital staff to evacuate as many wounded soldiers as possible during the last days of the battle, many, perhaps the majority of wounded Chinese soldiers were left behind in Nanjing at the mercy of the Japanese. Most, if not all of them, would be executed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City |date=2015 |publisher=Casemate |pages=218}}</ref>