南京大屠杀发生一周内,国际上出现了首次报道[13],对总死亡人数的第一次估计刊登于1938年1月24日的《新中国日报》[14]。澳大利亚记者哈罗德·田伯烈(英语:Harold John Timperley)在其著作《外人目睹中之日军暴行》中声称有30万平民被杀害[14]。然而,田伯烈这一数字来源于法国人道主义者饶家驹神父,大屠杀发生时他在上海[1],所以这也可能包括淞沪会战的平民伤亡[15]。田伯烈在同年晚些时候出版的《日军在华暴行》(Japanese Terror In China)一书中给出了第二次估计,他援引“一名大学外籍教员”的说法指出“近4万名手无寸铁的人在南京城内或城墙附近死亡”[16]。这一信息的来源为定居南京的美国人迈纳·舍尔·贝德士,贝德士在计算中使用了红卍字会的埋葬记录[17]。
直到20世纪40年代末,这两个估计常常被记者和媒体引用。例如, 埃德加·斯诺在他1941年出版的著作《为亚洲而战》(The Battle for China)中称在南京有4万2千人遭到屠杀,在南京与上海总共有30万人遭到屠杀,这显然是基于这些估计[18][19]。1944年电影《中国战役(英语:The Battle of China)》指出有4万人在南京大屠杀中遇难[20]。
^ 1.001.011.021.031.041.051.061.071.081.091.10Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "Leftover Problems," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 377-384.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 183-192.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 40.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 50.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 66-68.
^F. Tillman Durdin, "Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking," New York Times, January 9, 1938, 38.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 91-93.
^HJ Timperley, Japanese Terror in China (New York: Modern Age Books, 1938), 46, 51.
^David Askew, "Part of the Numbers Issue: Demography and Civilian Victims," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 98.
^Edgar Snow, The Battle for Asia (New York: Random House, 1941), 57.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 177-178.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 110.
^ 22.022.1Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Messiness of Historical Reality," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 3-5.
^Daqing Yang, "A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity As History," Sino-Japanese Studies, November 1990, 16.
^ 25.025.1Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 203, 219-223.
^Minoru Kitamura, The Politics of Nanjing: An Impartial Investigation (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2007), 140-141, 155.
^ 27.027.1Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 60.
^ 28.028.128.228.3Tokushi Kasahara, "数字いじりの不毛な論争は虐殺の実態解明を遠ざける," in 南京大虐殺否定論13のウソ, ed. Research Committee on the Nanking Incident (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobo, 1999), 74-96.
^ 29.029.1Daqing Yang, "A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity As History," Sino-Japanese Studies, November 1990, 18, 22-24.
^Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 182.
^ 31.031.1Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 113.
^Tokushi Kasahara, "Massacres outside Nanking City," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937–38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 66-69.
^Minoru Kitamura, The Politics of Nanjing: An Impartial Investigation (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2007), 6.
^ 35.035.1Kazutoshi Hando et al., 歴代陸軍大将全覧: 昭和篇(1) (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2010), 141-142.
^ 36.036.1Ikuhiko Hata, 南京事件: 「虐殺」の構造 (Tokyo: Chuo Koron, 2007), 208-214.
^David Askew, "Part of the Numbers Issue: Demography and Civilian Victims," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 92.
^David Askew, "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population," Sino-Japanese Studies, March 15, 2001, 2-4.
^Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 98-100.
^ 44.044.144.244.344.4Daqing Yang, "Convergence or Divergence?: Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing," American Historical Review, June 1999, 851-852.
^ 45.045.145.2Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 115, 147-148, 157.
^ 56.056.1"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 197.
^Akira Fujiwara, "The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 34.
^ 58.058.1David Askew, "Defending Nanking: An Examination of the Capital Garrison Forces," Sino-Japanese Studies, April 15, 2003, 153.
^ 59.059.1Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 237, 242.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 183-192.
^Haruo Tohmatsu and HP Willmott, A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific (Lanham, Maryland: SR Books, 2004), p. 72.
^Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Messiness of Historical Reality," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 19.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 193.
^Ono Kenji, "Massacre Near Mufushan," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 85.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 112.
^David Askew, "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: An Examination of the Burial Records," Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, June 2004, 7-10.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 252.
^Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 160-161, 164.
^Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Messiness of Historical Reality," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 25.
^Joshua A. Fogel, "The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory," in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 274.
^Kaz Ross, "Remembering Nanjing: Patriotism and/or peace in architecture," in Asia Reconstructed: Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, eds. Adrian Vickers and Margaret Hanlon (Canberra: Australian National University, 2006), 2-3.
^Long-hsuen Hsu, History of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945) (Taipei, Chung Wu, 1972), 213. 中文版是《抗日戰史》. 國防部史政局編譯. 臺北.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 261.
^Lloyd Eastman, "Nationalist China during the Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945," in The Cambridge History of China: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2, eds. John King Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 552.
^Frank Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-41 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 93.
^David Bruce MacDonald, Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide (New York: Routledge, 2008), 146.
^LM Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 273.
^Masaaki Tanaka, What Really Happened In Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth (Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan, 2000), 64.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 192-193.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 202.
^Katsuichi Honda, The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe, 1999), xiii.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 194.
^Barry Schwartz, "Rethinking Conflict and Collective Memory: The Case of Nanking," in The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, eds. Jeffrey C Alexander et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 546-547.
^Robert Sabella, Feifei Li, David Liu, They Were in Nanjing:The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals(Hong Kong University Press), 307-308.
^Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 239-242.
^"永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート," Shokun!, February 2001, 183-184.
^Kitamura Minoru, The Politics of Nanjing: An Impartial Investigation (Maryland: University Press of America, 2007), 93.
^Takashi Yoshida, "Refighting the Nanking Massacre: The Continuing Struggle over Memory," in Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing, eds. Robert Sabella, et al. (Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe, 2002), 170.
^Daqing Yang, "Convergence or Divergence?: Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing," American Historical Review, June 1999, 853.
^ 98.098.1Masahiro Yamamoto, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000), 271-272.