During the "July 7 Incident" in 1937, Japanese troops attacked the Lugou Bridge, a critical access point to Beijing, marking Imperial Japan's full-scale invasion and the beginning of the full-scale war of resistance of the Chinese people against the Japanese aggression (1937-45).

However, history is written by the victors. And until recently, conventional wisdom about WWII was based on a Western narrative dictated by the geopolitical exigencies of the Cold War rather than wartime realities. Essentially, that narrative sprang from Washington's question: "Who lost China (to Communism)?"

However, the real question should be: Why did the West look the other way when Japan invaded China and thus undermined its own peace and future?

It is a sad fact that, in the major advanced nations, the massive Chinese sacrifice is barely known, often ignored and generally downplayed.

In one history of China's role in the World War II, 1937-1945, Oxford historian Rana Mitter argues that even "those who are aware of China's involvement often dismiss it as a secondary theater." Perhaps that's why he entitled his work Forgotten Ally.

Instead of a decisive response against Japanese aggression, international community opted for the policy of appeasement.

Unresolved legacies and historical revisionism

It was silence that paved the way for many Nazi and Japanese crimes against humanity.

This included biological and chemical warfare Japan undertook through the notorious Unit 731 that experimented with germ warfare attacks, frostbite testing, rape, syphilis and forced pregnancies, weapons testing (flame throwers on humans) and biological warfare. Like their Nazi counterparts, the Japanese "doctors" effectively de-humanized their victims who were subjected to vivisection - removal of organs, including parts of the brain, lungs, and liver - without anesthesia.

Some of the butchers of the Unit 731 and other units were prosecuted by the Soviets, but many were granted immunity by the U.S. They were not the only war criminals to be whitewashed, as documented by Eric Lichtbau's The Nazis Next Door. In the decades following the end of World War II, the U.S. became safe haven for over 1,000 Nazis who were regarded as "assets."

It all was only part of the far broader policy reversal in which WWII memories were suspended in the name of the Cold War; China became America's "forgotten ally" and Japan provided an American foothold in Asia.