Immediately after capturing the Chinese capital, Nanjing, on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers committed atrocities such as mass executions, rampant rapes, arson, and looting in and around the city. The carnage went on for weeks. On January 6, 1938, after the worst of the massacre atrocities was over, three American diplomats arrived in Nanjing. Upon their arrival, Third Secretary John Moore Allison, Vice Consul James Espy, and Code Clerk Archibald Alexander McFardyen, Jr. cabled dispatches about the atrocities and other conditions in the city to the Department of State and other U.S. diplomatic posts in China. Often, they dispatched several reports within a day. These atrocity reports, which were largely based on interviews with American missionaries and their own investigations, gave detailed descriptions of Japanese atrocities, property damage, social conditions, relief efforts, diplomatic wrestling, and many other aspects of life in the city during and after the massacre period. The value of these diplomatic dispatches and reports, which were retrieved from the national archives, rests on that they extensively document the American diplomats' role, their observations and attitude toward the situation there, their efforts to help the Chinese and protect the Americans, and their struggles with the Japanese.

At the age of nineteen, Catherine Spalding (1793–1858) ventured into what would become a lifetime of leadership with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (SCN)—one of the most significant American religious communities for women. As a cofounder and first superior of the order, she dedicated her life to developing and improving health care, services for orphans, and education on the early frontier. Her contributions had a lasting impact on Catholicism, the state of Kentucky, and the many people whose lives she touched. Mary Ellen Doyle supplements her definitive biography of the influential educator and humanitarian, Pioneer Spirit, with this meticulously edited and annotated volume. The collected correspondence illustrates Spalding's exemplary character and the scope of her day-to-day life as an administrator. Together, the letters reveal a new picture of Spalding's personality and drive, her insights, her trials, and her world as mother superior. The collection also gives readers a valuable glimpse of antebellum life in Kentucky and the wider south. Doyle presents the correspondence chronologically, following Spalding through key stages in her career from the founding of the SCN to her final years, as she turned to quieter cares. She provides essential historical context and information about Spalding's various correspondents, and she also analyzes the significance of letters missing from the collection. Catherine Spalding, SCN brings the SCN founder's words to a broader audience and offers readers new perspectives on both the world in which she lived and frontier faith.

Recovering lost voices and exploring issues intimate and institutional, this sweeping examination of Spanish California illuminates Indian struggles against a confining colonial order and amidst harrowing depopulation. To capture the enormous challenges Indians confronted, Steven W. Hackel integrates textual and quantitative sources and weaves together analyses of disease and depopulation, marriage and sexuality, crime and punishment, and religious, economic, and political change. As colonization reduced their numbers and remade California, Indians congregated in missions, where they forged communities under Franciscan oversight. Yet missions proved disastrously unhealthful and coercive, as Franciscans sought control over Indians' beliefs and instituted unfamiliar systems of labor and punishment. Even so, remnants of Indian groups still survived when Mexican officials ended Franciscan rule in the 1830s. Many regained land and found strength in ancestral cultures that predated the Spaniards' arrival. At this study's heart are the dynamic interactions in and around Mission San Carlos Borromeo between Monterey region Indians (the Children of Coyote) and Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and settlers. Hackel places these local developments in the context of the California mission system and draws comparisons between California and other areas of the Spanish Borderlands and colonial America. Concentrating on the experiences of the Costanoan and Esselen peoples during the colonial period, Children of Coyote concludes with an epilogue that carries the story of their survival to the present day.

This book examines the redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. comprehensively. The Japanese military forcefully mobilized about 80,000-200,000 Asian women to Japanese military brothels and forced them into sexual slavery during the Asian-Pacific War (1932-1945). Korean "comfort women" are believed to have been the largest group because of Korea’s colonial status. The redress movement for the victims started in South Korea in the late 1980s. The emergence of Korean "comfort women" to society to tell the truth beginning in 1991 and the discovery of Japanese historical documents, proving the responsibility of the Japanese military for establishing and operating military brothels by a Japanese historian in 1992 accelerated the redress movement for the victims. The movement has received strong support from UN human rights bodies, the U.S. and other Western countries. It has also greatly contributed to raising people’s consciousness of sexual violence against women at war. However, the Japanese government has not made a sincere apology and compensation to the victims to bring justice to the victims.

About three weeks after Japanese troops captured Nanjing when the worst of the atrocities was over, American diplomats were allowed to return to the city to re-open their embassy on January 6, 1938. Three days later, British and German diplomats arrived by HMS Cricket on January 9. Since their arrival, the diplomats continuously dispatched cables, reports, and documents reporting conditions in the city, including Japanese atrocities, reign of terror, economic situation, living conditions, and other aspects of social life. These diplomatic records prove to be a treasure trove of invaluable primary source material for research and study on the Nanjing Massacre from unique perspectives. A Dark Page in History is a collection of British diplomatic documents, Royal Navy reports of proceedings, and US naval intelligence weekly reports. The collection is invaluable as these newly unearthed primary source materials undoubtedly enhance our knowledge and understanding of the scope and depth of the Nanjing Massacre. In addition to updated and newly added annotations, included in this new edition are six maps, along with appendices consisting of USS Oahu December 1937 log book and a report by Frank Pruit Lockhart, US Consul-General at Shanghai, transmitting 13 photos of Japanese atrocities on September 16, 1938.