In July 1937 the Japanese Imperial Army, which already controlled a large section of northeastern China, launched an undeclared war against the Republic of China. Five months later its troops entered the capital city of Nanking and began raping and murdering its citizens in an orgy of violence that has few parallels in modern history. The Rape of Nanking was front page news when it happened but it was soon forgotten in the west until 1994 when a young Chinese-American writer named Iris Chang saw photographs of the atrocities at a conference in California. Chang, whose own grandparents had barely escaped the massacre, decided it was her responsibility to rescue this event from oblivion.