sentences:  Hata argued that the Japanese Army's lack of military police and facilities to detain POWs, its ignorance of international laws, and the Chinese General Tang Shengzhi's decision to flee the city without formally surrendering, which left large number of plain-clothes soldiers within the civilian population which was followed by excessive mopping-up operations by the Japanese, among the factors which led to the slaughter.Some contemporary researchers including the historian Tomio Hora and the journalist Katsuichi Honda expressed strong disagreement with Hata's death toll estimate, though both expressed admiration for Hata's scholarship and sincerity.Hata is today recognized as the major scholar of the so-called "centrist" school of thought on the Nanking Massacre, which in terms of the death toll believes that tens of thousands were killed and thus stands between the "great massacre" school which believes that hundreds of thousands were killed, and the "illusion" school of Nanking Massacre deniers.