- The Nanjing Massacre -
Ginling College29 was the largest refugee hostel and it only housed women and children. At first, it housed only 3,000 people. The International Committee declared that they were doing their level best to protect refugee women and children. Since the hostel at Ginling College was the largest one, they housed as many women and children there as they could manage. Inside the hostel complex they set up all sorts of make-shift shops and stores which stocked all the daily necessities of life. To find refuge in this hostel meant not only complete security, but also a standard of living in which all of one's needs were met. After the above declarations from the International Committee were made known, the number of refugees [who fled to this hostel] immediately soared to 9,000. The night before Nanjing fell to the Japanese, its population had further increased to more than 20,000. But even such a large hostel was unable to fulfill its mandate to protect the refugees.
One night, with the help of some Chinese traitors, the Japanese soldiers quietly took down the bamboo fence on the south side of the Ginling College hostel allowing several hundred monstrous Japanese officers and soldiers to storm in and kidnap over 100 young women. This immediately aroused the rage of all the other refugees. They appointed a representative to appeal to Dr. Lewis S.C. Smythe, an American member of the International Committee, Dr. M.S. Bates, the Secretary of the International Committee30, and Fei Wusheng, to go and inquire into the whereabouts of the women and negotiate on their behalf. In the end, they asked the Japanese member of the Committee, Yasumura Saburo, to carry out an investigation into the matter. According to Yasumura's report, the soldiers who tied up and kidnapped the women were from the Kuroda Detachment.31 The lives of the women, he said, were not in danger. Several days later, these kidnapped women were subjected to gang rapes committed by Japanese soldiers and officers which went on for several days and nights. After the Japanese were done with the women they trucked them back to the hostel. Some of the young girls who had undergone particularly severe rapings survived for only a few days after being returned. Some women contracted venereal diseases from which they suffered unbearable pain. Others suffered from extreme embarrassment and shame and allowed themselves to wither away to nothingness. Many women were driven to suicide. The women of the refugee hostel again elected a representative to lodge a protest against the Japanese and to secure a promise that this sort of activity would not happen again. They also wanted the International Committee to live up to its promise to protect the refugee women. But the International Committee ignored their pleas and neither protested nor attempted to negotiate with the Japanese.
From this time forward, the Japanese became more daring even to the point of considering the refugee hostels to be their own personal "pleasure palaces." They brazenly drove their trucks straight into the University of Nanking and Ginling College and carried out rapes and looting on the spot. In one incident, Japanese soldiers barged into the International Committee's offices and forced an office worker out of the way so they could commit a rape right there in broad daylight. ("A Foreigner's Eyewitness Account of the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese Army," p.204.32) Frequently, the Japanese would come in groups during the evening, charge into several refugee hostels, and commit gang rapes. While the victims moaned, cursed, and vented their fury, those fortunate ones who were spared were also becoming filled with anger and their bitterness simply could not be contained. The whole campus sank into a state of seething rage. Some of the women were killed as a result of their attempted resistance, but the International Committee was helpless to do anything.
Later on, as long as there were women inside, the Japanese soldiers would enter the refugee hostels at will. Offices, dormitories, and even hallways became venues for the Japanese to carry out their brutal rapes. Only in a few special cases did the International Committee negotiate with the Japanese. For instance, one day the Japanese charged into a refugee hostel and raped the wives of a Chinese minister, a professor, and an office worker from the Y.M.C.A. The International Committee immediately lodged an official letter of protest with the Japanese command. The letter pointed out that the women who were raped included the spouses of a high-level Chinese official and that of a minister. These victims were, as a rule, women of impeccable character who would guard their chastity with their lives and would never submit even when threatened with brutal rape. They wanted to secure a promise from the Japanese command that, in the future, no similar incidents would be permitted. (See, "A Foreigner's Eyewitness Account of the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese Army," appendix.33) Having obtained an apology and a promise that it would never happen again, the International Committee ceased its protests. From this time forward, the Japanese dared not rape Chinese women from the Y.M.C.A. or foreign women in the safety zone.
The International Committee left behind more than 100 official documents, letters, and other papers, the vast majority of which record in detail the raping and pillaging carried out by the Japanese in the safety zone. For example34: "On the night of December 15th, seven Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanking Library building and took seven Chinese women refugees, three of whom were raped on the spot."35 On that same evening, "a number of Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanking buildings at Tao Yuan and raped thirty women on the spot, some by six men."36 "On December 18, refugee Home at Military College reports: On the 16th two hundred men37 were taken away and only five returned; on the 17th twenty-six men were taken away; on the 18th, thirty men were taken away."38 "December 21st. [sic] This afternoon Headquarters has about one hundred more women living in this immediate neighborhood who have been raped since last night and have come to the place for protection."39 "On December 18 about 5 p.m. some ten soldiers entered and took all the bedding and other belongings of 100 refugees and sanitary staff . . ."40 "Reported on December 18 -- there are about 540 refugees crowded in Nos. 83 and 85 on Canton Road. Since the 13th instant [sic] up to the 17th those houses have been searched and robbed many times a day by Japanese soldiers in groups of three to five. Today the soldiers are looting the places mentioned above continuously."41 (See, "A Foreigner's Eyewitness Account of the Atrocities Committed by the Japanese Army," appendix.) Incidents such as these are too numerous to be comprehensively listed here.
According to the testimony of a former refugee, Huang Wenkui, offered during an investigative interview on February 17th, 1960, about fifty percent of the women in his neighborhood were raped by the Japanese at one time or another. And according to a February 20th, 1938 report in the Dagong Daily (Wuhan edition), at Ginling College, which was located in the safety zone, "about half of the female population suffered through rapes." The situation outside of the safety zone was even more frightful. On January 28th, Japanese soldiers forced some refugees out of the safety zone. "But in the middle of the night a large group of the women came back to the safety zone crying," proving that there was an even more serious problem with rape in the areas outside of the safety zone.
