Born in 1889 in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture, Moritake Tanabe followed his father, a former samurai, into a military career. Rising through the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army, he became a skilled officer and strategist, serving as a military attaché in France and later as Chief of Staff of the 10th Army.
As Japan’s expansion into China intensified, Tanabe played a central role in the campaigns that led from the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the fall of Nanjing in 1937. There, under his command, Japanese forces carried out one of the most infamous atrocities of the modern age — the Nanjing Massacre, a brutal episode of mass murder and violence that left deep scars in history.