Editing Battle of Nanking (section)

=== Evacuation of Nanjing ===
In the face of Japanese terror bombing and the ongoing advance of the Imperial Japanese Army, the large majority of Nanjing's citizens fled the city, which by early December Nanjing's population had dropped from its former total of more than one million to less than 500,000, a figure which included Chinese refugees from rural villages burned down by their own government's scorched earth policies.<ref name="evacuation22">{{Cite book |last=Tokushi Kasahara |publisher=Iwanami Shoten |year=1997 |location=Tokyo |pages=31–32, 41 |language=ja |script-title=ja:南京事件}}</ref><ref>Masahiro Yamamoto, ''Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity'' (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 61–62.</ref> Most of those still in the city were very poor and had nowhere else to go.<ref name="evacuation22" /> Foreign residents of Nanjing were also repeatedly asked to leave the city which was becoming more and more chaotic under the strain of bombings, fires, looting by criminals, and electrical outages,<ref name="integer22" /><ref>[[Lily Abegg]], "Wie wir aus Nanking flüchteten: Die letzten Tage in der Haupstadt Chinas," ''Frankfurter Zeitung'', December 19, 1937, 9.</ref> but those few foreigners brave enough to stay behind strived to find a way to help the Chinese civilians who had been unable to leave.<ref name="askew22">David Askew, "Westerners in Occupied Nanking," in ''The Nanking Atrocity, 1937–38: Complicating the Picture'', ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 227–229.</ref> In late-November [[International Committee|a group]] of them led by German citizen [[John Rabe]] established the [[Nanking Safety Zone]] in the center of the city, a self-proclaimed demilitarized zone where civilian refugees could congregate in order to hopefully escape the fighting.<ref name="askew22" /> The safety zone was recognized by the Chinese government,<ref>Rana Mitter, ''Forgotten Ally: China's World War II'' (Boston: Hughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 127–128. Mitter cites the diary of German civilian John Rabe.</ref> and on December 8 Tang Shengzhi demanded that all civilians evacuate there.<ref name="laststand22" />

Among those Chinese who did manage to escape Nanjing were Chiang Kai-shek and his wife [[Soong Mei-ling]], who had flown out of Nanjing on a private plane just before the crack of dawn on December 7.<ref name="TK22">{{Cite book |last=Tokushi Kasahara |publisher=Iwanami Shoten |year=1997 |location=Tokyo |pages=115–116 |language=ja |script-title=ja:南京事件}}</ref> The mayor of Nanjing and most of the municipal government left the same day, entrusting management of the city to the Nanjing Garrison Force.<ref name="TK22" />