6 In the Chinese document, Timperley's book is referred to as Wairen muduzhong zhi rijun baoxing, which the present translator has translated as A Foreigner's Eyewitness Account of the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese Army. The full title of the original English edition of the book is What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China. A Documentary Record. Full bibliographic citations of both the original English edition and the Chinese translation can be found in the appendix at the end of the present paper.

7 As the original English citations were readily available, in the section which follows and for all other citations from Timperley's book in the present translation, quotations are drawn directly from the original English text. Thus, the following excerpts are direct quotations from Appendix A of Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London 1938). The citations in the following section were written during the Nanjing massacre, often under extremely strained circumstances, which accounts for the often unpolished grammar.

J. H. Timperley was China correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in the 1930s. He was stationed in Nanjing when the Japanese army invaded the city and witnessed and reported on many of the atrocities. He compiled and edited The Japanese Terror in China, a documentary account of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, in 1938, just months after the Japanese initially invaded the city. Many thanks to Yim Tse, Chinese Librarian at the U.B.C. Asian Library, who located this book.

8 During the 1930s, this road was known as Chien Ying Hsiang Road. The name of the road, however, is romanized into pinyin as "Jianyin xiang." The translator found the original name of the road in Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.174.

9 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.174.

10 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.174. The Chinese authors did not translate the remaining lines of this account, perhaps because of the favorable light it sheds upon Americans in Nanjing who were trying to aid the refugees. The rest of the account reads as follows: "This created a panic in the area and hundreds of women moved into the Ginling College campus yesterday. Consequently, three American men spent the night at Ginling College last night to protect the 3,000 women and children in the compound."

11 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.176.

12 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.176. Note that this passage is omitted in the American edition of Timperley's book.

13 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), pp.177-78.

14 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.180.

15 Note that the page numbers listed for each quotation are from the London edition of Timperley's book The Japanese Terror in China. The American edition of the same book is paginated slightly differently.

16 Jinling Daxue is the Chinese name of the school commonly known in English as the University of Nanking. Founded circa 1890, the University of Nanking was an American missionary institution and, during the Nanjing massacre, was located within the Nanjing safety zone frequently referred to within the present document. During the Japanese occupation of the city, 30,000 refugees were housed in the make-shift refugee hostile at the University of Nanking.

17 According to the traditional Chinese view, a person's age is dated from conception rather than from birth.

18 The Chinese document asserts that the preceding words were comments made to refugees who were inquiring into the shooting while speaking with John Rabe, the German chairman of the International Committee, and others. The translator, however, found the original source of these comments in a personal letter written by an unnamed American member of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to friends in Shanghai. Thus, although the citation was translated accurately by the Chinese authors, the comment was not made in a conversation with refugees. Moreover, as the context of the original citation shows, the person who made these comments was not attempting to defend the actions of the Japanese. The original letter from which the excerpt in question is drawn can be found in Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.28.

19 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.32.

20 Contrary to this accusation, the International Committee members actually took painstaking measures to record and submit incidents of murder, rape, and other assorted atrocities directly to the Japanese authorities. For an extensive list of atrocities reported to the Japanese authorities by the International Committee and for other evidence of the wide-ranging efforts of the International Committee to protect the refugees, see the appendices of Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938).

The members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone were in an extremely precarious position. Against the advice of officials from their governments, these foreigners elected to stay in Nanjing while, as the Japanese approached, many Chinese were themselves fleeing the city. The foreigners stayed in Nanjing in direct defiance of the Japanese military. As one American member of the International Committee wrote, "[T]he Japanese Army is anything but pleased at our being here after having advised all foreigners to get out. They wanted no observers." (Timperley, p. 21)

The Japanese were more reluctant to harm the foreigners in Nanjing, so they were able to take actions to protect the Chinese refugees which Chinese themselves would have been unable to do. John Rabe, the Chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, had special credentials which gave him even more bargaining power with the Japanese, as is illustrated by the following comment from one International Committee member. "Rabe did not dare to leave his house as Japanese soldiers come over his wall many times a day. He always makes them leave by the same way they come instead of by the gate, and when any of them object he thrusts his Nazi armband in their face and points to his Nazi decoration, the highest in the country, and asks them if they know what that means. It always works!" (Timperley, p.43.)

Another foreigner involved in relief activities in Nanjing during the massacre made the following observations:

"[We] have gained considerably . . . by the fact that the main figures of the enterprise have been Germans of the Anti-Comintern Pact and Americans to be appeased after the barbarous attacks on American ships. [On 12 December 1937, the American gunboat U.S.S. Panay was bombed and sunk by Japanese airplanes about twenty-five miles from Nanjing up the Yangtze River. When the Japanese entered Nanjing a few days later they wanted to avoid further antagonizing the Americans. Thus, the Japanese treated the Americans in Nanjing better than other foreigners.] The International Committee has been a great help, with a story little short of miraculous. Three Germans have done splendidly, and I'd almost wear a Nazi badge to keep fellowship with them. . . . Naturally there has been considerable Chinese aid and co-operation from the beginning. . . . Yet at some stages nothing could move, not even one truck of rice, without the actual presence of a foreigner willing to stand up to a gun when necessary. We have taken some big risks and some heavy wallops (literally as well as figuratively), but have been allowed to get away with far more than the situation seems to permit. We have blocked many robberies, persuaded or bluffed many contingents of soldiers away from rape and intended rape, besides all the general work of feeding, sheltering, negotiation, protecting and protesting after sticking our eyes and noses into everything that has gone on. It is no wonder that a Japanese embassy officer told us the generals were angry at having to complete their occupation under the eyes of neutral observers. . . . Sometimes we have failed cold, but the percentage of success is still big enough to justify considerable effort." (Timperley, pp.62-63.)

22 The use of the term "American imperialists" may be explained by the fact that the original Chinese document was written in China during the 1960s, an era during which anti-American sentiments prevailed. Furthermore, the Americans referred to were from the University of Nanking, an American-funded missionary institution.

23 The original Chinese authors noted this numerical discrepancy in Mr. Hu's account.

24 The Chinese document does not give a citation for this passage.

25 For a partial list of the Japanese army units involved in the capture of Nanjing (as well as other cities on the Yangtze Delta) see Appendix E of Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London 1938).

26 The translator was unable to locate the passage cited here in either edition of Timperley's book.

27 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), pp.30-31.

28 The Chinese authors use this account of a Christmas dinner (December 25, 1937) to argue that the foreigners in Nanjing were living in luxury and ignoring the massacre of Chinese, an accusation not supported by the facts. The authors culled this information (quoted in its original context below) from a paragraph in Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China. Not only does the original paragraph show that there were also two Chinese women at this so-called foreigners' dinner, but also that the people at this gathering answered four calls for help from refugees during this one meal alone.

"Christmas Day. . . . [C]onditions . . . seem slightly better. There were crowds on the streets with quite a number of stalls selling things. But at tiffin [Brit. lunch] time, while we were sitting at roast goose, with Miss Vautrin, Miss Bauer, Miss Blanche Wu [Chinese instructor of Biology at Ginling College], and Miss Pearl Bromley Wu [adopted Chinese daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Bromley] as our guests, we had to answer three calls for help and then turn soldiers out of Fenn's [an American from the University of Nanking] and the Chinese faculty house and the Sericulture building." (Timperley, p.43.)

30 Actually, Dr. Lewis S.C. Smythe was the Secretary of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Dr. M.S. Bates was an American member of the International Committee, but was not the Secretary.

31 For a list of the Japanese military units that participated in the capture and occupation of Nanjing as well as the capture of other cities on the Yangtze Delta, see Appendix E of Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938).

32 The translator was unable to locate the passage cited here in either edition of this book.

33 The translator was unable to locate the passage cited here in either edition of this book.

34 The following passages, cited from the original English source, were written on the spot in the Nanjing safety zone under extremely adverse conditions, hence the often broken grammar.

35 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.175.

36 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.176.

37 In the Chinese text, this word is mistakenly translated as "women." The original source is clear in stating that this incident solely involved men.

38 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.181.

39 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.188.

40 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.180.

41 Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China (London, 1938), p.182.

42 The translator was unable to locate the passage cited here in either edition of this book.

43 The Chinese characters in the romanization of this name indicate that he or she was undoubtedly a non-Chinese. Looking at the names of all the members of the International Red Cross Committee of Nanking, it is reasonable to conclude that the person referred to here was Dr. M.S. Bates, an American from the University of Nanking who was a member of both the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone and the International Red Cross Committee of Nanking. The doubt arises from the fact that the translator found two different sets of Chinese characters ("Beizi" and "Beizhi") to describe what sounds like Bates' name. (See, Timperley, The Japanese Terror in China, London, 1938, appendix D.)

44 Li Yongzheng is a twenty-year-old college student in Seattle, Washington.

45 Port Arthur, on the Liaodong Peninsula in northwestern China's Liaoning Province, was the site of a major battle in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Port Arthur is now known as Lushun.

46 The 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war in which the Chinese were badly defeated by the Japanese. In Jonathan D. Spence, The Search For Modern China, New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990, p.223, the indemnity imposed on China under the Treaty of Shimonoseki is listed as 200 million taels, 100 million less than Li Yongzheng's figure. According to Spence, the treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to recognize "the full and complete independence of Korea," which allowed Japan to establish a virtual protectorate over the Korean peninsula. Furthermore, the treaty forced China to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaodong region of southern Manchuria to Japan, all "in perpetuity." Pressure from Russia, Germany, and France, however, forced the Japanese to forego any annexation of Liaodong, but in compensation for this concession, 30 million taels were added to the indemnity China was to pay to Japan. Thus, in the end, the total indemnity was 230 million taels.

47 These are the names of three Chinese political parties; the Communist party is from the People's Republic of China, and the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party are from Taiwan.

48 The treaty referred to here is the Treaty of Versailles signed between the Allies and Germany in 1919 to conclude W.W.I.