- The Nanjing Massacre -

As mentioned previously, when the Japanese were closing in on Nanjing, a group of Europeans and Americans who keenly supported charitable causes followed in the footsteps of Father Jacquinot de Besange, who had set up refugee camps in Shanghai, and on December 1st established the "International Committee [for the Nanking Safety Zone]" to raise the standard of neutrality and humanity. Using locations in all of the international embassies as well as the campus of the University of Nanking, they planned the safety zone. In total, twenty-five refugee hostels were established to house large groups of people in need.

Among the more than 200,000 refugees housed in the hostels, inevitably some unarmed stragglers from the army scattered in amongst them. Of the refugees who came a short while later, a large number were packed into other residences within the safety zone. Thus, when the Japanese began their advance towards Nanjing, the population of this 3.86 square kilometer safety zone rapidly shot up to about 290,000. All of the houses were packed to the brim, and in the end many refugees were not able to gain entrance into the safety zone. But when the Japanese finally broke into Nanjing, not even the safety zone escaped the disaster. [To view the location of the Nanjing safety zone, see the map of Nanjing in Chapter I.]

The day the Japanese occupation began, American and European members of the International Committee, led by the German Mr. John H.D. Rabe [Chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone], gathered together along Hanzhong Road, their national flags held high, to welcome [the Japanese]. At that time, they briefed the responsible Japanese military officials on the situation within the safety zone. They even led a group of Japanese military officers into the safety zone to take a rest and to view the area. When the reception was over, John Rabe and others escorted them outside. A group of twenty or so refugees were walking towards them, but as soon as they saw the Japanese officers, the refugees appeared very unsettled and immediately began looking for an escape route. The Japanese officers pulled out their revolvers and shot every last one of them. Later on, when some other refugees asked John Rabe and other [members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone] about the shooting, they defended the Japanese "guests" saying: "[At first, the Japanese] showed no hostility, though a few moments later they killed twenty refugees who were frightened by their presence and ran from them. For it seems to be the rule here, as it was in Shanghai in 1932, that anyone who runs must be shot or bayoneted."18

One member of the International Committee wrote the following passage in a personal letter:

At our staff conference that evening word came that soldiers were taking all 1,300 men in one of our camps near headquarters to shoot them. We knew there were a number of ex-soldiers among them, but Rabe had been promised by an officer that very afternoon that their lives would be spared. It was now all too obvious what they were going to do. The men were lined up and roped together in groups of about a hundred by soldiers with bayonets fixed; those who had hats [on] had them roughly torn off and thrown on the ground -- and then by the light of our headlights we watched them marched away to their doom. Not a whimper came from that entire throng.19

The Japanese then stated their demands to the International Committee saying, "There are more than 20,000 Chinese soldiers hidden within the safety zone, and they must all be handed over." One afternoon, at about five o'clock, the Japanese surrounded the Association for Natives of Wuxi Prefecture, located on Ninghai Road. More than 2,000 refugees were rounded up. The next morning, at about three or four o'clock, they were bound and led to a pond in the neighborhood of Jiangsu Road. The entire group, men and women, young and old, fell dead in a great spray of machine gunfire.

One afternoon, most of the twenty-five refugee hostels were surrounded by the Japanese who wanted to ferret out the Chinese soldiers hiding within. It was an extremely serious situation. The International Committee asked the Japanese committee member Yasumura Saburo to go out and negotiate [with the Japanese], but it was no use. A large number of people from each of the refugee areas were rounded up, bound, and taken away. Dozens of people were taken from the smaller hostels, while hundreds and even thousands of people were taken from the larger ones. In total, several thousand people were carted off to Wutai Mountain and massacred. Their dead bodies were doused with gasoline and set ablaze so no evidence of the crime would remain. But still the International Committee was unwilling to put pen to paper and issue a formal declaration of protest against such cruel mass murders.20

Hu Dequan, a worker at the University of Nanking, recalled the following incident: "One afternoon, several hundred Japanese suddenly showed up on the University of Nanking campus alleging that there were soldiers hidden in among the refugees. They wanted to search the place. The American imperialists22 who were there suggested that those who were in fact soldiers should surrender themselves and said that they would guarantee the safety of those soldiers who turned themselves in. Finally, some of the people were forced to admit that they had served as soldiers, but requested to be spared punishment by the Japanese. The American imperialists took down their names and handed over more than 700 people to the Japanese. The next day at about four o'clock, these more than four (seven?)23 hundred people were divided into two groups. The first group was escorted outside of Hanxi Gate where they were murdered en masse. The second group was taken to a pond near the Department of Sericulture at the University of Nanking where they met their deaths in a hail of machine gun fire."24

In addition, there were two workers, Du Renchang and Dai Damao, along with thirty or forty survivors of the massacre, who testified to the fact that the Americans handed these stragglers from the army over to the Japanese from the refugee camp at the University of Nanking. Moreover, Tao Xiufu, who lived in Nanjing at the time, also recalled the massacres which occurred within the safety zone:

After several days, the rapes continued and the flames of the massacre burned even more fiercely. Each day, gun-toting soldiers carried out inspections of the residences in the safety zone. When one group left, another would take its place. In total, no less than several dozen inspections were carried out under the pretext of searching for missing soldiers. In fact, the Japanese only wanted to eliminate young men. At that time, twenty-eight men had already been taken from the room in which the author [Tao Xiufu] was staying. Suddenly, some other Japanese showed up. They saw that there were only three or four old men in their sixties and seventies in my room. But then one of them noticed that my beard was still dark, so he suspected that I was still only middle-aged. I was going to be forced to join the other troops. I got up, walked out of the room, and a soldier wearing a sword on his waist waved his hand in my direction. Fortunately, I was to be spared. He realized that I was already almost sixty years old. The following day, someone who had also escaped reported that the troops were divided into three groups. Each troop had about 300 men. They marched to a vacated area near Coal Harbor in Xiaguan [a neighborhood in Nanjing adjacent to the Yangtze River]. The Japanese fired their machine guns on the entire group of refugees, from the back to the front. But he was alert. Hearing the approaching gunfire, he threw himself under the corpses of the other men, and in so doing, managed to avoid death. After the massacre was completed and the Japanese soldiers had vacated the scene, he tore off his bloodied clothing and fled. He managed to spirit himself back into the safety zone where he recounted the whole incident, describing the scene in vivid detail and causing everyone to tremble with fear.

Even after the Japanese had exterminated all the young men, the appetite of the Nakajima Detachment25 was not yet satisfied. So a scheme for applying for a [Nanjing] settler's identification pass was devised. There was an accomplice of the Japanese, a [Chinese] traitor with the surname Zhan, who had the intention of exterminating his fellow countrymen and who secretly considered the Japanese to be his godfather. The day before issuing the passes, he borrowed a vast square on Shanghai Road. The refugees who were summoned there gathered around like an encircling wall. Zhan, accompanied by a Japanese, drove into the square in a vehicle on the back of which stood a table as tall as a lectern. He claimed that what he was to do next would make him a savior of the refugees. From this day forward, those who applied for settler's identification passes were required to provide guarantors. Those without guarantors, people living on their own, or people forced to move to Nanjing to do forced labor, would immediately be separated from the crowd to form another group. The Japanese would send them back to their hometowns. This proclamation was hailed as a life-saving act. The refugees in the crowd heard his words and rushed over to the area which he had designated. After repeated urgings, about 2,000 people gathered in the designated area. When his speech was concluded, the Japanese carted away all of these 2,000 people. Later on it was learned that the Japanese had killed this entire group of refugees.

Prior to the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, the foreigners in charge of the affairs of the safety zone worried that Chinese soldiers who did not have time to retreat would lay their lives on the line to stand up to the Japanese, endangering the lives of the non-Chinese. Thus, in order to guarantee their safety, [the foreigners] persuaded the soldiers to hand over their weapons and hide in the safety zone. As it turned out, the Japanese entered the safety zone and wantonly seized and murdered even those people who were unarmed. As a result, the foreigners in charge of the safety zone felt extremely embarrassed and addressed the refugees saying: "It wasn't we who betrayed the refugees. It's the Japanese who are untrustworthy. What could we possibly have done about it?" Other times, they would express their deep regret saying: "We should not say that the Japanese will guarantee their (the Chinese soldiers who had surrendered their weapons) lives! Originally we believed the Japanese authorities would keep their word and truly restore order. We never imagined they would display such uncivilized behavior which surpasses anything imaginable by any modern, civilized human being." ("A Foreigner's Eyewitness Account of the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese Army," pp.19-21.26)

No matter how many refugee lives were sacrificed, the foreigners within the safety zone were all safe. A telegram from the time serves as proof of this point:

Wilbur, National Committee YMCA, Shanghai: All foreigners [in] Nanking safe and well. Please inform interested parties.

Not only were the foreigners unharmed, but amidst the echoing sounds of gunfire as the Japanese carried out their massacre, the foreigners entertained themselves with wine, song, and dance, celebrated Christmas, and ate their fill of roast beef, roast duck, sweet potatoes, and various other fresh food. When they had exhausted their appetites for pleasure they went home.28 (Ibid, p.35.)

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