In 1995, Chinese-American writer Iris Chang began her research into the Nanjing Massacre at the Yale Divinity School Library. There, diaries, letters, photographs and films left by American missionaries exposed the extreme violence inflicted on Nanjing in 1937. The archive included the diary of a teacher, Minnie Vautrin, which offered a first-hand account of the atrocities. Confronted with the raw brutality preserved in its pages, Iris Chang resolved to bring the truth of 1937 before the world.