Based on: Suping Lu, A Dark Page in History. The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports. Lanham 2018

Last updated: 26/07/2019

Tanaka Masakazu was born in 1888 in Tokyo. He graduated from the military academy in 1911. Two years later, he was chosen by the Foreign Ministry to study in Beijing and began his diplomatic career in 1916. Between 1916 and 1936, he was first posted to San Francisco and Portland, and then served in several cities in China such as Hankou, Shanghai and Yichang. In 1937, he came to Nanjing, together with the Japanese troops, and took the position of vice consul in the Japanese Embassy. During his time in Nanjing, he was one of the recipients of the letters of complaint about the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. He left Nanjing for Hankou in October 1938, after which he became Consul-General at Taiyuan in 1941. He died in 1957.