Who is Victims of the Rape of Nanking from The Rape of Nanking and what is their importance?

The focus of the novel is on the Chinese refugees who suffered immensely at the hands of the Japanese military in the city of Nanking. Over three hundred thousand men, women, and children were systematically slaughtered within a six week period in the city and the outskirts. The Japanese military not only killed all suspected Chinese soldiers, but also most of the men in town, and many of the women. Women were raped brutally, sometimes for days at a time, regardless of age or stature. Chinese men were used for bayonet practice, castrated, roasted alive, forced to rape their wives and children, beheaded, hung by their tongues, and buried to the waist to be eaten by dogs.