7 jul 1937 ano - Marco Polo Bridge Incident

Descrição:

Began the Japanese invasion of China

- Began on a bridge just outside Beijing in July
- Japanese said that one of their soldiers were missing and used this as a pretext to invade Beijing
- Beijing was not heavily defended because it was no longer the capital (more of a cultural capital)
- After Beijing, they went for the financial and economic center of China (Shanghai
- Led to the Bombing of Shanghai which saw indiscriminate bombing of citizens
- Then they used the Yangtze river to sail up to Nanjing
- The Nanjing government had already fled up the Yangtze to Sichuan basin by the time the Japanese arrived (December 13 1937)
- All the important people were gone but all the residents were still there
- One month of killing followed that saw 300,000 lives lost