Minnie Vautrin: American Goddess of Nanking

On the 13th December every year at 10am, air raid sirens sound across the city of Nanjing, a Chinese provincial capital on the Yangtze River. Offices and classrooms fall silent. All traffic in the city centre halts. This is the anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937, an occupation which lasted just six weeks but which resulted in the deaths of up to 300,000 Chinese. The mass rape and murder of…