Camp Gagnon - The UNSPEAKABLE Things That Happened At Nanjing

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Today, we examine the Nanjing Massacre. We trace the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War from the Fall of Shanghai to the eventual Takeover of Nanjing. We’ll explore the efforts to protect civilians within the Neutral Zone, the city’s destruction, and the long road to justice during the Nanjing Trials. Welcome to Camp 🏕️.Shoutout to our sponsors: Mars Men and Bubs NaturalsGet 20% Off Your Entire Order With Code 'CAMP" at https://bubsnatural.comVisit https://mengotomars.com and get 50% Off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, and 3 Free Gifts With Code 'CAMP' at Checkout. 👕🧢 SHOP THE UFO COLLECTION HERE: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Christos Yappin2:30 Fall of Shanghai6:11 Takeover of Nanjing9:00 Neutral Zone11:05 Destruction of Nanjing21:49 Aftermath of Massacre23:45 Nanjing Trials29:36 The Scholarly Thoughts#podcast #foryou #history #mystery #film #knowledge #crime #education #educational #information #informative

In December of 1937, Nanjing was a city waiting for something it couldn't yet name. Shops were closing, refugees were flooding in, and everyone could feel that whatever was coming wasn't survival. And today we'll be telling the entire story of what happened when the Japanese army entered China's capital. And discipline, restraint, and humanity collapsed all at once. We'll walk through the road to Nanjing, the chaos of the city's fall, and the six weeks of mass killings and terror that followed. We'll talk about the civilians who were trapped, the women who were targeted, and the small group of foreigners who stayed behind and tried, often unsuccessfully, to stop the violence. This isn't just a story about war. It's about what

happens when fear becomes policy, when cruelty is tolerated and when ordinary people are forced to survive the unthinkable. This is the Nanjing massacre, and why remembering it still matters. History and war are often brutal and this story is no exception. So sit back, relax if you can, and welcome to camp. What's up people and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all over the world from all time forever. Yes, this is the show where I deep dive on a random piece of history or information that I'm fascinated by and I try to understand fully.

Now, this show is not possible. Without you tuning in, I want to say thank you so much for every single person that leaves a comment that clicks on this video that supports us and keeps the fire burning. Furthermore, I need to give a big shout out and a thank you to a dear friend, just a really sweet guy

and just one of the greatest men I've ever met. My good palisos, Papadopados. How are you? That's so sweet. All right, Chrisos, look, I gave you a chance. I don't need you going on and on, all right, especially on a day like today when we're talking about something so brutal

and so horrific. Now, let me just say up top, this is not going to be our typical chipper program, all right? Oftentimes, I come into this tent. I just goof around with my buddies, okay? We just go through history and different crazy wormholes and, you know, explore different information I find on the internet. And today's topic is a little bit more morbid than that. So in the interest of reverence and just trying to be a good human being, I'm going to keep the jokes as limited as possible, and I promise I'm not going to laugh, not even once. Right? David? Exactly. Exactly. Thank you very much. We're all on board. No laughing at all. I mean, unless something funny happens in which case, we will laugh a little bit, but I'm going to try to keep irreverent, and I'm going to try to be a good guy, all right? Now, let me just say up top, I'm not a historian, okay? I'm not a scholar of World War II history. I'm just an aficionado that really loves to learn about specifically World War II history, but really all history, okay? So I'm going to do my best. I just want to throw that out there. If there's anything I miss,

please don't hesitate to drop a comment, correct me. I'm not immune to being corrected. I'd love to know the truth and the actual information. Furthermore, I also don't speak Mandarin. So if there's any words that I happen to mispronounce, I apologize. We'll start off first with the city of Nanjing. Many people call it Nan King. That's the pronunciation that Americans in like the English language speaking world used

around 1937, 38, when this atrocity happened. And this was before they had like a full transliteration of, Mandarin into the English language. So they called it Nan King, and that's kind of how it was cemented in history. We know it now by the, you know, the correct Mandarin name of Nanjing. So that's the one that I will use. So where does it all begin? There's going to be a lot of context here, but we'll start in 1937. All right? There is a war between China and Japan that had already torn through huge parts of the country. And Nanjing, then the capital, was just next in the warpath. And for people living there, it didn't feel like the start of a historic atrocity.

It felt like just daily life slowly becoming unfamiliar. So by the winter of that year, everything was worse. Shops were closing early. Parents were keeping their kids inside at the sound of distant explosions and nearby villages. And refugees came from all over the city into this city of Nanjing with stories that made people very uncomfortable, even if they tried not to talk about it. The streets were emptying a little bit more and more every single day. And some families tried to leave with whatever they could carry, just preparing for this imminent threat that they couldn't exactly put their finger on how it would look. Others just stayed because they had nowhere else to go. Even longtime residents, people who lived

through the hard years of different wars and different conflicts that had happened in the region, started to sense that something far worse was on its way. Nanjing, the capital at the the time known as the southern capital. You can imagine Beijing, that same suffix, you know, Jing being, you know, the city, the capital. This was a peaceful place full of schools and markets and regular people live in regular lives by the mid-20th century. But as December moved on, the city was just on pause and everyone was just waiting for this imminent threat. No one in the city could see the full shape of what was coming, but the signs were there. So Japan's invasion of China kicked off by July

1937 and it was fast and it was ruthless. The Japanese army believed that they could take over China before the rest of the world even had time to respond. The Japanese command followed a simple but brutal idea. Hit hard, break any resistance and push China towards surrender through fear. Terror itself was one of their main weapons. Meanwhile, China was fighting from the edge of collapse, basically.

The country was split between the nationalists known as the KMT, the KMT, the Kion, and Tang, China's ruling government, and the communists, their long-time rivals. And his armies were undertrained and really just outmatched by Japan's modern war machine. Chang Kai Shek, the leader of the Chinese nationalist forces, knew that he couldn't win head on. So he chose to trade land for time, basically, and just pull back inland and try to stretch Japan as thin as possible and just drag the war on as long as he could, basically grinding to, you know, just of high. halt that Japan couldn't sustain. But that choice came with a brutal cost. Entire cities and millions of civilians were just left behind. So Shanghai fell in November after three brutal months of fighting,

and the battle had turned the city into a graveyard. I mean, Chinese troops held out for a lot longer than anyone expected, but this courage and this bravery wasn't enough to stand up to Japan's artillery and specifically their air power. When the lines finally collapsed and survived, survivors went west towards Nanjing, just exhausted and carrying nothing but their weapons and basically just the memories of what they had been through. Refugees followed behind them in waves. Some walked, others would try to get on to trains. Others clung to trucks and families were completely split apart, holding whatever they could manage to grab before fleeing. They brought stories of these burning cities and just bodies in the streets and places just completely

wiped off the map. And some made it to Nanjing, but most never even got. that far. The Chinese government knew what was coming. Chang ordered Nanjing to be defended, but he had already begun moving the capital west to Chongqing, taking key officials and basically all the government that he could take with him. What he left behind was just confusion. Generals with no clear direction and soldiers without any clear coordination and civilians with basically no protection. Then General Tang, Shang-Zi was put in charge with around 100,000 troops. Most of them were exhausted and hungry and just poorly armed after this slaughter in Shanghai. Meanwhile, the Japanese army advanced with speed and fury and just closed in on the city as fast as they could.

And by early December, everyone inside Nanjing basically understood the same thing, that the end was basically here. The walls of the city built by the Hongwu emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty that had protected Nanjing for centuries had now become a prison, basically. And by December, Japanese forces surrounded the entire city on three sides, leaving just the Yangtze River, China's longest river, basically forming the city's northern edge as the last possible escape route. So Chinese general, Tang, Shangzi had promised to fight to the end. But inside the city, the army was already falling apart. Communication was broken down, supply lines were gone, and entire units were just cut off, basically fighting alone with no orders.

no food and no hope. And by December 12th, panic took over. Tang finally ordered an official retreat, but the command came way too late and it just spread too slowly. Some troops never even heard it or got mixed messages and confusion quickly turned into chaos. Soldiers just abandoned their positions and rushed toward the river, desperate to escape before the Japanese forces closed in. And at the city gates, the retreat turned into a massacre. Thousands of soldiers and civilians jammed into the narrow exits while artillery just pounded from behind. People pushed and they screamed and men were trampled as they were trying to get out. Families were crushed. It was just absolute chaos. And those who made it through reached the riverbank, only to find that it was

already overflowing with tens of thousands of people waiting for boats that were never going to come. So some soldiers tore off their uniforms and just tried to blend in. Others jumped into the freezing river and drowned. And a few managed to force their way onto boats. Basically, leaving everyone else behind. What should have been some organized withdrawal or some type of diplomatic surrender just collapsed into a night of confusion and panic. And when the sun rose on December 13th, 1937, the Japanese army just walked into Nanjing. The city had no defenders left, really. All their forces were either confused or deserted. No leadership, just walls and civilians trapped inside. So while the Chinese command escaped the city, a small group of

foreigners chose to stay. They knew exactly what was coming, but they stayed anyway. At the center of that group was a man named John Rob, a German businessman who lived in Nanjing for years. He was part of Siemens and was basically controlling the entire operations for the company while in Nanjing had lived there for decades, and he was also a member of the Nazi party. What's interesting about him is people call him one of the greatest humanitarian of the 20th century, and they call him the good Nazi of Nanjing. And according to him and his sources, he joined the Nazi party for practical reasons like getting the funds for this Sino-German school and partially because he believed that Germany in Japan's alliance could actually protect civilians. Alongside him were American missionaries and doctors

and professors. Minnie Votrin who ran the Gingling College for Women and basically refused to abandon her students. Dr. Robert Wilson, a surgeon born in Nanjing, two missionary parents who returned after medical training at Harvard and spoke fluent Mandarin. Together, they carved out the international safety zone. This was a designated area meant to shelter civilians from violence, about one and a half square miles on the west side of the city. It included Gindling College, the University Hospital, and the American Embassy compound.

They marked the borders with flags and banners that anyone could see from the air, and they sent letters to Japanese commanders just begging them to treat the zone as neutral ground. They opened the doors to anyone who showed up, families, wounded soldiers, kids wandering the streets alone, and they knew the crowds would be endless and that their protection was fragile, but they did it anyway. They had already heard warnings and stories from Shanghai, from earlier bombings, from the people pouring into the city, and they knew exactly what kind of army was on the way. And still, they stayed, not soldiers or politicians, just ordinary people that refused to abandon their students, their employees, or just the citizens that they lived with in their town, just basically trying to hold on to one small patch of humanity in the middle of what was about to become hell on. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you something. The holidays wrecked me.

Yeah, travel. I mean, it was eating whatever I wanted. I wasn't working out. And I just hit January and I felt like I was 100. years old. What I didn't realize that I now know is that your body, my body, starts losing collagen way earlier than you think, like mid-20s. And that's why recovery sucks. I mean, your joints will feel stiff and your hair will get thin and your skin will look tired, all that. And that's why I started taking Bubbs natural collagen peptides. Yes, everyone's tossed around that P-word and I'm telling

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that'll make the world better. They also do electrolytes, MCT, oil, creamer, all the clean stuff. So great news for you is that right now, you're going to get 20% off your entire order. Yes, that's what you get for being a camp listener. 20% off the entire order when you go to Bubbs, naturals, that's B-U-B-S, Naturals, N-A-L-L-S dot com, and use the code camp at checkout.

And after you buy, they're going to ask you how you heard about them. Tell them that Camp Gagnon sent you. Yeah, the diesel peptided up bro over at Camp Gagnon. on. Let him know and it actually helps the show grow and it helps keep the fire burning here at the campsite. All right. Now let's get back to it. So December 13th, 1937. At dawn, Japanese troops pushed through the city gates and stepped into positions from retreating Chinese soldiers that they had left behind. Their uniforms were dirty. Their faces were worn from months of just nonstop fighting and their commanders didn't bother to hold them back at all. When entered Nanjing that morning wasn't a disciplined

army doing some type of technical operation. It was anger, just let loose with full permission. And the violence started immediately. Small groups of soldiers moved house to house, doors were kicked in, people were dragged outside, gunfire and screams just filled the alleyways that had been quiet for generations. Fires were breaking out everywhere. Shops were looted homes were just set ablaze with families still inside. And by nightfall, the sky was continuing to glow orange and a thick smoke hung over the city, basically just being destroyed in real time. And families were just running towards the safety zone, clutching their children, carrying their elderly parents or grandparents on their back, just leaving everything behind.

And some made it through the gates. Others were caught on the roads and shot or beaten to death wherever they fell. And the Japanese army didn't enter Nanjing as conquerors. They entered as men who no longer saw the people in front of them as human beings. The discipline was gone. The mercy was no longer. The same day, John Robb drove through the city trying to make sense of this devastation. In his diary, he wrote, every 100 or 200 meters, we came across corpses.

The Japanese marched through the city in groups of 10 to 20 men looting shops. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have not believed it. Rob had lived in China for 30 years. He'd seen famine and riots and wars. I mean, he was a member of the Nazi Party, but he had never seen anything like this. Nanjing wasn't being conquered. it was just being erased. And this was only the beginning.

The killings didn't stop for weeks. Japanese troops rounded up Chinese men by the thousands. It didn't matter who they were, soldiers who had surrendered, civilians who had never touched a weapon, teenage boys who barely even understood what was happening, old men who could barely even stand. If you look like you might have been a soldier, you were taken. They were marched to open fields, riverbanks, empty lots along the Yangtze River, any space big enough to hold hundreds at a time. and then the executions began. Sometimes machine guns tore through entire lines of prisoners at once, just bodies dropping into mass graves

or tumbling into the river to just drift downstream. Sometimes men were tied to posts and used for bayonet practice, stabbing again and again to teach these new recruits how to kill. Others were doused in gasoline and just burned alive. The killing was so relentless. The bodies were so many that no one could even agree on the true number of casualties. Most modern historians estimate the death toll to be over 100,000, though China officially commemorates the number as 300,000.

At the riverbank near the straw string gorge, men stood with their hands tied, watching the ones ahead of them collapse under gunfire just knowing that they were next. And they begged, they cried out for their families, they prayed. And behind their voices just came the crack of rifles and the thuds of bayonets and the splash of bodies falling into the river. The Japanese officers stood nearby just smoking cigarettes as they watched. There was no mercy. Wounded soldiers were dragged from hospital beds and killed on the floor. Others who surrendered under white flags doing everything the laws of war demanded were marched to open ground and shot anyway. All the rules meant to protect these prisoners and these surrendered soldiers and civilians just didn't exist.

Even General Matsui Iwani, the Japanese commander, admitted days later. my men have done something very wrong and extremely regrettable. But by then, the violence had taken on a life of its own. No apology, whispered, or shouted or officially decreed, was enough to stop what had already begun. And no part of the massacre was more brutal or targeted than the violence against the women. Japanese soldiers hunted them through homes and streets, just dragging them out regardless of their age. Begging didn't matter. Resisting made it worse. Many were assaulted or killed on the spot, while others were taken into barracks or these comfort stations where the abuse just continued.

Women were attacked everywhere, sometimes by dozens of soldiers, and many more were murdered or mutilated in ways that are honestly just too horrific to describe. This is often why it is called the Rup of Nanjing. I mean, for the sake of YouTube and not just getting completely blasted off the platform, we will continue to call it the Nanjing massacre, but that's why that term exists. A woman by the name of Li Zhiyoying, who was seven months pregnant at the time, tried to fight off the soldiers who stormed her home, and they stabbed her 37 times and left her to die. Miraculously, she lived, but lost her child in the process and carried the scars, both physical and emotional for the rest of her life. And she actually became one of the few women willing to speak publicly about what had happened. Jia Shukin was only eight when soldiers entered her home. They murdered her parents, her four siblings in front of her.

They stabbed her and her younger sister and just left them in a pile of bodies. Jia survived, but her one-year-old sister was less fortunate. She crawled out from under her family's corpses and continued to carry that memory for the next 80 years. Inside the safety zone, many Votran fought desperately to hold back this nightmare. Gindling College was built for a few hundred people at most, and it ended up sheltering 10,000 women and children. Votron stood at the gates day after day blocking soldiers who came looking for women to take. She knew exactly what would happen if they forced their way inside. She was threatening and she would slap and shove doing everything she could and ended up saving thousands. And the ones

she couldn't save haunted her for the rest of her life. One entry from her diary captured a moment that never left her. She writes, I'll never forget the scene of people kneeling by the roadside, the whining wind and the miserable cries of women who were being taken away. For the women who survived, the suffering didn't end when the soldiers left. They carried that trauma. they couldn't speak about in a society where shame fell on the victim and on the family, not on the attackers. Some took their own lives. Others buried the memories so deeply that even their children never really heard the full story. For decades, silence became its own kind of wound that was just fully hidden but never healed. Now, inside the safety zones, it also was never truly safe.

At best, it was a fragile, foreign, guarded island of relative refuge. I mean, it covered about four square kilometers and offered a better chance of survival than the streets beyond its boundaries. But protection there was always precarious. At the height of the massacre, more than 200,000 people were crammed into a zone that was like about the size of Central Park, maybe a little bit bigger. And families just slept like shoulder to shoulder in classrooms, on balconies, stairwells, anywhere that a body could fit. Hallways were bedrooms, courtyards were just public shelters. and people just laid on the sidewalks just wrapped in blankets trying to make it through each freezing cold night.

Food was running low, water barely held out, and disease was spreading quickly through these packed crowds. Children were constantly crying from hunger or nightmares, and the elderly were just collapsing from exhaustion. And just outside the flimsy borders of the zone, gunfire and screams reminded everyone exactly of what was just waiting for them beyond the flags. The Japanese army was supposed to respect the safety zone, but of course they didn't.

Soldiers slipped in at night to seize women. They barged in during the day looking for Chinese soldiers, hiding among civilians. They entered whenever they wanted, really, and the foreigners could only stand in their way, holding up documents and just pleading with them diplomatically saying it's illegal for you to do this. Sometimes they managed to turn a few soldiers back. Other times they just watched helplessly as victims were dragged out of the neutral zone screaming. Rob wrote letter after letter to Japanese officers just listing attacks in painstaking detail, pleading for protection. And he received polite replies and empty promises, and that was basically it.

Dr. Robert Wilson worked almost nonstop in makeshift operating rooms, improvised with, you know, what little supplies they had and staff, and at times operating without even adequate anesthetics. And he recorded in detail the deaths that followed when basic tools or the drugs were lacking. The missionaries handed out food and they made bathrooms and tried to keep the zone from collapsing basically under the weight of how many people were there. They did everything that they could, but it was never enough. The prayers weren't answered. The suffering didn't stop. And day after day, week after week, even the foreigners, the strongest, most determined, began to break under the weight of what they saw. By early January, Nanjing barely looked like a city anymore.

It looked like something pulled out of a nightmare. bodies just laid there where people had fallen weeks earlier, just frozen in the winter cold, untouched because there was no one even left to bury them. And no place to put them even if there had been. Stray dogs were moving in packs, literally feeding on the dead. Buildings were just empty shells blackened by fire. The inside is completely looted and stripped bare. The people who survived walk through this landscape like shadows. Some search to reconnect with their families who would never be found. Others went back to what used to be their homes and stood in front of the ruins trying to understand how everything could just vanish so quickly. They scavenged for food in burned out shops. They curled up in corners of destroyed buildings just to try to stay out of the wind. They weren't really living. They were just almost zombies pushing through each day because there was nothing left to do. The Yangtze River carried bodies for miles, just drifting, washing onto riverbanks far beyond the city and the smell of decay just hung in the air mixed with smoke and fires that seemed like they

never fully died out. And inside this nightmare, a few foreigners still in Nanjing kept documenting everything. Photographs, diary entries, shaky early film footage, trying to record what was happening even when it felt hopeless. Their notes would later become evidence. At the time, it just felt like they were shouting into the void. In the safety zone, life was barely hanging on. The children stopped playing. The adults spoke only when they had to, and people were just so drained that even basic emotions were too heavy. Everyone was just numb and disassociated, emotionally shut down after weeks of violence and grief without break. The massacre didn't end because anyone showed mercy. It ended because the violence finally just burned itself out. By late January and into February,

Japanese commanders began pulling their troops back under control. The executions slowed down, but the violence still continued. The killings persisted into early February, and the atrocities didn't fully cease until late March when a government was finally established. Luding faded only because there was basically nothing left to take, and the assaults didn't stop, but they became less constant than before. Pressure from outside China actually started to matter at this point. Reporters from foreigners inside Nanjing would send letters and telegrams and diary entries just describing everything that they had witnessed. And finally, Western newspapers started printing the story, shocking readers around the world. Governments were taking

notice. Japan at the time denied everything, but the evidence continued to pile up. And even some Japanese officers realized the massacre was turning into a global scandal. Orders were finally issued to rein in the troops. For the survivors, the end of the killing didn't mean the end of the suffering. I mean, the city's entire economy had collapsed. Food was scarce, if available at all. Disease was spreading quickly in the cold and in the rubble and in the shelters. Families searched lists of the dead hoping for a miracle and often finding none. They try to rebuild their lives from almost nothing while carrying this trauma that they didn't even have words for. Inside the safety zone, the foreigners shifted from emergency survival to long-term relief.

They helped refugees return to whatever remained of their homes, and they set up kitchens and clinics and makeshift schools, and they continue to document everything, eyewitness accounts, diaries, photos, because they knew that the world needed to see the evidence. They understood one thing very clearly. What happened in Nanjing couldn't be allowed to disappear into the silence. The reckoning didn't come until after Japan's eventual defeat. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East finally laid out the full scope

of what had happened at Nanjing. The evidence was overwhelming, the photographs and the survivor testimony, and even confessions from Japanese soldiers who could no longer live with the guilt of what they had done. Some veterans, once allowed to speak honestly, just admitted everything. One former Japanese military organization, after trying to disprove the accusations, ended up facing so much evidence from its own members that had issued this statement. Whatever the severity of war or special circumstances of war psychology, we just lose words faced with this mass illegal killing.

We simply apologize deeply to the people of China. Well, it came decades too late, and it didn't speak for everyone. Many soldiers stayed silent and some denied the massacre even until their final days. But enough told the truth to build an accurate record that couldn't be erased. Chinese survivors took the stand and shared what they had lived through. They described family members killed in front of them, terror inside the safety zones and crimes that they witnessed in the streets. Their voices were calm, but the grief was palpable. Western witnesses supported their accounts.

Their diaries once again were evidence the photographs showed what the Japanese army assumed would never be seen. Their testimonies made denial completely impossible. The same foreigners who tried to save lives in 1937 now helped the world understand the full truth. And in the end, seven Japanese leaders were executed for their role in these war crimes. General Matsui Iwani and Foreign Minister Koki Hirota were specifically persecuted for their Nanjing massacre. Many believed responsibilities should have gone higher, but there's. The tribunal could only do so much. And it was technically justice, but it was never going to mend the damage that was left behind.

And today in Nanjing, there's a memorial hall built for the victims of this massacre, a huge, quiet complex visited by millions every year. Chinese students come to learn, tourists walk through in silence, families of survivors stand before the exhibits and remember. Inside are photographs that are honestly hard to look at. testimonies that are really difficult to hear and artifacts pulled from these mass graves from bones to clothing to personal items researchers have spent decades trying to identify the victims carving their names into stone so that they would never be forgotten it's part museum part cemetery and really it's just a place to make sure that the world can't forget this atrocity the survivors who lived into modern times became witnesses they spoke in schools and gave interviews and recorded their

stories on camera. Their children and grandchildren continued that work fighting to keep Nanjing, 1937, in the world's memory. They know how easily denial creeps in and how quickly people forget what they didn't see. The foreigners who stayed, specifically Rob, Votrin, and Wilson, and many others are honored in China as heroes. Their names are engraved on monuments. Their diaries are taught in classrooms. And they're remembered for one simple reason. They didn't walk away. They stayed when staying meant everything and easily could have cost them their lives. But for many, their lives were not easy after Nanjing. Mini Votrin returned to the U.S. in May of 1940 just emotionally shattered.

And exactly one year later, on May 14, 1941, she took her own life. John Robb went back to Germany and tried to tell the world, but his Nazi party membership made him suspect to the allies and his testimony about Japanese war crimes made him very suspect at home. He died in poverty in 1950, almost forgotten until his granddaughter released his diaries decades later. Dr. Robert Wilson carried the weight of what he witnessed. He testified at the Tokyo Tribunal, and his diary entries offered the world this grim record of the atrocities. He eventually died in 1967.

What's up, people? We're going to take a break really quick because I've got to tell you a little story. This is a story about a man who turned 29 years old and slowly everything started to fall apart. Not in like a dramatic way. Life just got more difficult, all right? You know, the same workouts, all of a sudden, not getting the same gains, you know, in the musculature area. Same diet, all of a sudden just, you know, still being a little bit soft around the middle.

And around 2 p.m. every day just feeling terrible, brain fog, you know, and not to mention, you know, hair falling out, thinning. And that man is my friend David Sanchez. And so, naturally, what did he do? He started to panic Google, okay? He was like, low testosterone. What do I do? What do I do?

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send it back. If you feel no difference, which odds are you won't because 91% of men say that they feel more energetic when they're taking it, but maybe you're than the 9% you send it back, money back. I'm telling you there's no reason not to try it. And after you purchase, they will ask you how you heard about them. Please say you heard about it from the good old folks here at camp. It really helps the show and it keeps the fire burning. Let's get back to it. The massacre stands as proof of what happens when discipline collapses, when racism becomes policy, when individuals surrender. their conscience to the crowd and to the mob. And it shows just really how thin the line is between ordinary life and massacre and how quickly everyday people can commit these unimaginable acts of violence. But it also shows another side of human nature, even in that darkness, some refused to look away. Some refused to join in. Some risk their own lives to protect strangers. Their courage doesn't erase the horror, but in a way it matters, right? A lot. especially to the thousands who survived because of them. And I think the lesson of Nanjing isn't about Japan or about China.

It's about what humans do when the restraints fall away and what some choose to do even then. The cruelty and the compassion happens side by side in the same city during the same winter. And both of these stories are real and should be remembered. The dead of Nanjing can't speak anymore. The survivors are almost gone, but the memory remains in museums and fans. films and books and ultimately in the minds of people who refuse to forget this atrocity. Remembering is obviously painful and it's difficult to research and talk about, but I think it's important not to assign guilt about how these people are evil and these people are victims,

but to understand the stakes of forgetting. Winter came to Nanjing in December 1937 and it brought six weeks of maybe the worst atrocity experienced, one of the worst atrocities certainly experienced in the century. That winter ended and the city rebuilt and life returned, but the shadow never fully goes away and it sits in our history as a warning and a reminder. The city survives, the memory endures, and in that memory is hope, not that it will never happen again, but when history begins to rhyme, people will remember Nanjing and hopefully choose differently. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the Nanjing massacre. I mean, it's a heavy one, right?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I do think about the Mr. Rogers quote. Where he's like, like, isn't Mr. Rogers? I think it is. Could you Google this? But like in the face of any atrocity, any terrible thing that happens, it's like you can be consumed by how evil it is

and you can just let like the grief and the horror consume you. Or you can look for the people that are doing good and try to contribute. And in any type of atrocity, any type of evil that has befallen humanity, there's always the good people. There's always the people fighting to protect the weak

and, you know, look out for this and franchise. And I think that's... Mr. Rogers said this? I think so, yeah. It was a... Such a long quote. Who was? The quote is,

in the face of atrocity, you can be consumed by horror and grief, yada, yada, yada. It's attributed to Gabor Matae, a Hungarian-Canadian physician. No, dude. I'm telling you. I think someone said it.

Look for the people helping. Look for the helpers. Let me find it. When I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news. And my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. And that was said by Gabon. No, that was said by Fred Rogers.

That's not the first quote you said. Look, I was kind of combining some quotes. You can get the vibe that I'm trying to say. Are we really going to let this great somber moment of reflection get ruined by your guy's desire to be right? You're right. I'm being selfish. We're talking about the Dan Jing piece. Yes. Thank you. See, Christos, this is why the comments are ripping you every other week. I apologize. Well, I'm not.

Decades too late, Christos. I would find it so hard to forgive a country after this. Like, how do you not just want to blow them to smithereens after that? Well, they did. Get blown to smithereens. And I just imagine this. No, but they didn't do it. But I bet you if someone were standing there, like, oops. Yeah. Which, again, don't get me wrong.

One atrocity doesn't fix another atrocity. One atrocities. Fixed. Fix one atrocity. I don't, wait, hold on. I don't think that's true. Hang on a second. But also, it's not like we did it because we're like, yo, we got to stand up for Nanjing. No, but there's probably like one guy that was over in, you know, the Manhattan Project being like, oh, you heard about this?

He probably told Oppenheimer afterwards, and Oppenheimer felt so guilty. He was like, oh, I can't believe I did this. And he was like, no, but look what they did. Do you know what they did? Yeah. But, no. I mean, obviously, that's not it. I don't know.

That is the worst thing I've ever listened to in my life. Yeah, it's not great. It's horrible. And like, I don't know. Again, this is, I think people are going to be like, oh, man, Japan, da-da-da-da. It's not Japan.

I mean, it was Japan, of course. It was Japan. It's humans. We have this terrible propensity to dehumanize people in the face of war and conquest and say these are not human beings. And I just think we have to fight that tooth and nail.

I mean, we did a good job of not saying any inappropriate jokes. No one did anything offensive? It's kind of hard to fit it in. Like, I couldn't really... Good, okay? That's a good sign. I mean, sure, we can have a couple ha-haz now

just at the end for the people that are still tuned in. Yeah, levity. Levity, right? I think that's the moral. Okay, that's how I choose to interpret this story. Despite it being so vicious and brutal and evil, there are good people.

And if you have an option and you're faced with an impossible circumstance, try to be like... Old Rob. try to be like old Dr. Wilson I wonder what the Germans think about Rob Well that's crazy right Turned yeah

I mean for because apparently he stayed Because he was like oh I'm German We're allied with the Japanese I can help facilitate some diplomatic kind of vibes here But I mean obviously it worked in some capacity So I mean he's admirable I mean again these people could have been killed just outright But I don't know dude

I can't I wonder what happens with these soldiers that deal with this grief. You know what I mean? Like the casualties of these types of genocides, if you can call it that. I mean, this is probably technically a genocide, right? Like, yeah. I feel like I haven't heard people

described as a genocide. Can you look up if you're telling me is? I don't know if it would fit under the description of genocide. But all that to say, like these types of massacres, it affects obviously the people that are killed, but it deeply affects the psyche of the people that do it. Like, these are normal people that carry this out. Sure, there are sadistic psychopaths that are carrying out these operations.

but they're just also regular everyday Japanese dudes that join the army and then get brainwashed and they get broken down in their psyche to commit these atrocities and they still have to live with that. Yeah, the Nazis had the excuse that they were all on meth and they were part of it. Not all of them.

I mean, sure, some. But then even with that, like, you do stuff on meth and then you get out of it and you're like, I can't believe if I did that. Your memory still stays with it. Even if it's not conscious, like subconsciously, these things are still in your psyche. And it affects your own country.

Like carrying out these immense acts of violence, It affects the people that have done it not as much, but in a way, certainly. Yeah, I mean, I guess this hecosis of, like, Japanese soldiers is that they're getting pushed like, hey, Japanese imperialism. These people are subhuman. We're taking back. We're, like, conquering Asia because it belongs to us. And, like, that rallying cry can really, like, amp people up for months. Yeah.

And really years, like, straight up. Like, so I guess that's, maybe that's the lesson. Yeah. We're taught all the time, like, you know, these types of atrocities never again. So wait, but it's going to happen again. When did this end? This ended in 1938? Technically, yeah.

So the war still went on for seven years after this. And there was no retribution, no tribunal, no justice until Imperial Japan actually fell in 46. How can the country that practiced Shintoism also do this? Bro. Well, it's not like a very, like, rigid religious structure. They don't have, like, rules. Like, it's just kind of like a spiritual embrace of nature. How much of Japanese culture today shifted by,

but they're imperialists. I don't know. I mean, my presumption would be that the wake of this absolutely affected them and that like the warrior mentality just kind of shifted

and that like you have American reconstruction in Japan that like massively takes hold and so like being imported with American values I think does change like the cultural psyche. But furthermore like a lot of the salary men that like sort of uphold Japanese culture and like the economic viability of the country it seems like based off of stuff I've read

like specifically with the surrender of the Japanese in 46 45 Yeah Oh brother Now I sound like a dumbass No you're good bro The surrender of the Japanese at some point 45-36 The emperor comes out and he gives a speech in

45 Oh yes Dang sorry The eventual surrender of the Japanese of 45 It was what I said according to the edit that the emperor came out and basically gave this speech basically like, hey, the war's not over. We're just shifting our fight to an economic fight. Yeah.

And so like these salary men like kind of take on the honor of these soldiers to be like, yeah, we're going to continue to fight through economic means. Yeah. So as a result, they become like an economic powerhouse or like what, the fifth largest economy in the world despite being a tiny island? Them and Germany and West Germany had like a very similar character arc post-war of becoming like very, very, shameful but also like atoned for their sins and then became like this beautifully well-run society yeah of like very good people yeah and a lot i mean yeah it's probably the guilt also you did a video on um that japanese scientists during war war two what was it called camp one like some bit uh yeah unit 731 yeah so i'm just trying to think that the massacre the nanjing massacre and then

pearl harbor japanese were motherfuckers there were war two dude these were uh Yeah, these were, these were bad hombrace, dude. They were, they were, they were buck wild. And I don't, I don't know why or how. I think there is like more of, I actually heard an interesting theory, anthropologically speaking, that like societies that subsist by rice are more embedded culturally, whereas like wheat societies are much more like, hey, we're going to focus on like our internal thing. We're going to build up like our wheat fields and like we can control it internally.

And like what you do on yours doesn't affect mine. Whereas the way that the rice patties actually develop, it's like if you mess up your thing, you mess up my thing. So it creates more of a collectivist society. Yeah. So I could see, like, again, this is one anthropological theory. But I could see societies that are more collectivist could be maybe easier to turn into machines. But like you could literally like mechanize a military effort potentially through like, you know, an Asian country or an Asian army. easier maybe because there's more of a collectivist ideal that you could easily like I think it's harder to get Americans to be like hey you're fighting for your countrymen because we have less of a connection to what it actually means to be nationally American versus someone that's like a million generations Japanese weren't the Japanese historically before war to the country that was conquered or is that I make that up I don't know I don't think so I think technically the like the island of Japan are historically

ethnic Chinese. Yeah. I think they're Han. I think. Could you actually Google that? I think they're Han Chinese that came from mainland China to this island, like, I don't even know, 1,500 years ago. And there was like an indigenous population that still is in the north in Hokkaido.

But I wonder how, what the difference is like of, like ethnically? Ethnically, yeah. I mean, you should look. If you look at the people in Hokkaida, like the, I forget what the indigenous population's called, but they look sort of like traditional indigenous. You know what I mean? Like they're like darker skin. Darker skin.

kind of are almost like Mongolian looking, if you will, versus like the quintessential Japanese person that looks more like... Sick. Oh, wow. The Ainu? Yeah, the Ainu in Hokkaido. Center in Hokkaido. Yeah.

They kind of look Muslim. Yeah, they're almost like Kazakh or something. They have darker skin, long brown beards and... Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So, yeah, those are the indigenous Japanese folks. So I thought that if they had been historically oppressed and taken over by other countries, and this is kind of just like a retribution.

A retribution. Yeah. I mean, every place has been conquered, you know? Like, we talk about, like, Native American tribes, and it's like the Ojibwe conquered some other tribe. And they look so different from the Japanese people. Ethnically, I mean, not ethnically, but they are Japanese. They're the original, the OGs.

Yeah, and, like, not obviously, like, the eyes aren't as slanted. They look Native American. Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. Also, like, Indian a little bit. Yeah. It's an interesting ripple.

But anyway, that is, uh, the story and the analysis of Nanjing. Don't lose hope. Be on the side of the good guys. You know what it is in your heart. To treat humanity and all humanity as sacred. That is, I think, the lesson of... That's how I interpret Christianity.

All humanity is sacred, and I'm deeply passionate about humanity. Don't lose that, all right, in the face of Atroccian genocide. Look for the helpers, join them. Anyway, this has been a morbid and, you know, somewhat important episode of Camp. I appreciate you guys tuning in.

If you're a fan of this episode, I got great news. We've got a bunch of other episodes on World War II on this channel, Camp Gagdon, make sure you subscribe. We also have History Camp. If you specifically like History Deep Dives, you can check that out. We also have Religion Camp. My pal David brought up Shintoism.

You can check out the whole episode we did on that. It's a great episode. You can also check it out on Spotify. We've got all the episodes there on the Camp Gagdon on Spotify. Thank you guys so much for tuning in, and I will see you all next time. Peace. This episode is sponsored by me. Yes, Camp R&D.

That is the merch. That is the threads that we be watching. wearing around here at the campsite. And we got all sorts of cool stuff. My buddy Zach just cooked up a sick UFO collection. You can go check it out there at Camp R&D. I really appreciate you guys. We had so many people that came through for the holidays and picked up their threads. It's awesome. We got hats, hoodies, t-shirts, all that. And if you're still listening to this and you didn't skip through, congrats. You got a promo code, all right? What do we do, Chris? This 5%. More? How much? Five more? 10%. 10%. 10%? Final offer? You won't go higher.

You tell me, what do we give them? 12%. All right, we're doing 12% off. Should we go more? Hey, it's your world. I'm just living in it. Let's round up. 10%.

No, 15%. If you use the promo code, Camp 15, you're going to be getting 15% off. Yes. I think we should also do Camp 10. Just if someone doesn't want to take too much. Camp 10 or Camp 15. Those are the only two that are available. And then maybe we send a little something extra to the one

I do 10. If you do Camp 10, maybe there's something extra, no promises, but it's an interesting experiment. I just am curious to see what you guys do. Camp 10 or Camp 15 at Camp R&D when you check out, you're going to be getting those discounts. Thank you so much for rocking with us and wearing the threads. It keeps the lights on. It keeps the fire burning.