15 MILLION Chinese died during WWII? That's really interesting. I never knew that.
The Sino-Japanese War of 1933?-1945 (aka WWII in the Pacific) was probably one of the most savage wars in the 20th century, if not the most savage. I've actually heard the death toll for the Chinese to be a little higher.(Around 20 million)
Re: Sino-Japanese War
From the Democide statistics summary page, here:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM it appears that R.J. Rummel estimate the Chinese deaths at around 6 million caused by the Japanese, around 10 million caused by the KMT keeping power, around 3.5 million caused by the ChiComs, and another 900,000 by various warlords.
However, if you look at his details page, here:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB16A.1.GIF there are low, middle, and high range estimates for deaths. From a quick look, it appears that the sum of the high-range estimates for China in this period (roughly 1928-1949) would yield around 40 million. Then pile on another 100 million for the communists 1949-1987.
This is a very useful page to have handy when debating Leftists as to the evil of Communists.