The Good Man of Nanking

by John Rabe

  Recently we pilfered a few thousand bricks from a half-finished house in the neighborhood and laid narrow footpaths between the tents and huts to keep people from sinking completely into the muck.

  We’ve also built a brick wall around the latrines to make the camp look a bit more respectable. These improvements don’t help much, of course. The whole thing is and will remain an incredible swamp. No wonder everyone is coughing and spitting. My worst fear is that an epidemic will break out.

  Pastor John Magee, the chairman of our International Red Cross Society, has passed on the report of a Chinese nurse from the Red Cross Hospital for wounded soldiers located in the Foreign Ministry, which we foreigners are forbidden to visit, whereas its staff occasionally receives permission to go out shopping. And they use the opportunity to visit us and tell us things:

  One of the wounded Chinese soldiers complained that he was not getting enough to eat. The daily ration, she says, is just three little bowls of rice broth. The patient was beaten, and when he asked, once the beating was over, if they had beaten him because he was hungry, the Japanese took him out into the courtyard and bayoneted him. The nurses watched this execution from the windows.

  None of the refugees want to leave the Zone now, not after a number of people who tried to return to their homes were driven off by Japanese soldiers throwing stones or were mistreated even worse. And yet everywhere in the city you find big Japanese posters that proclaim: “Return to your homes! We will provide food. Trust the Japanese army! It will help you!”

  From a Report by Christian Kröger, Treasurer of the Zone Committee (Excerpt)

  Nanking, 13 January 1938

  On the afternoon of 13 December 1937, I took over the Waichiaopu44to use as a hospital. To the shame of the Chinese troops, it must be said that conditions there were beyond description, with wounded men left lying without care for two to three days. All the doctors and staff had run off, no one cared about these wretches. In a most commendable fashion, the Chinese Red Cross took over these wounded men and provided male and female nurses; there were, however, too few doctors, but I hoped things would improve once the city was finally occupied.

  By the next afternoon the Japanese attitude had changed entirely. I had persuaded four doctors to come to the hospital. But I was forbidden to enter it. By now the city was completely in Japanese hands, all public buildings were occupied, but we were forbidden to enter any of them, even those in which we had set up large refugee camps. I was told that the Japanese military would take care of the living, and we could bury the dead. To this day, we have been able to get rice into the hospital, but no nurses, no medical supplies, no doctors.

  From 14 December on, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Battle-weary Japanese troops, who had been inadequately supplied during their advance, were let loose on the city and behaved in ways no one had thought possible, especially in their treatment of the poorest and most innocent Chinese. They took rice from the refugees, the poorest of the poor, took whatever supplies they could find, warm wool blankets, clothes, watches, bracelets, in short anything that appeared to be of value. Anyone who hesitated to hand something over was immediately slashed with a bayonet, and many people were subjected to such rough treatment for no reason at all. The victims numbered in the thousands, and these brutish soldiers kept coming back to the Zone, its houses packed with refugees, and each time would take what their predecessors had disdained.

  Our only defense for protecting our own property and servants was to strike a vigorous pose and point to the German flag, often while being threatened by Japanese officers and soldiers. Once, while I was negotiating with Japanese officers, my car was stolen from the garage, even though both front tires had been removed. Under the threat of bayonets, servants were forced to open doors and hand over everything.

  Evidently vehicles of any sort were of special interest, because cars and bicycles were in great demand and stolen everywhere. Where there was no vehicle to be had, the servants or the refugees in a house were forced to carry the looted goods, and you often saw a soldier with weapon in hand driving four coolies before him loaded down with his booty. Children’s wagons were used, wheelbarrows, asses, mules, in short, anything that could be found.

  This organized robbery lasted for over two weeks, and even now no house is safe from some group on a “commandeering” expedition. When valuables began to run out, carpets, doors, and window frames were next, if only to be burned as fuel. The army had even brought its own safe-crackers, although many a safe was opened simply with a few shots or a hand grenade.

  When an individual soldier didn’t suffice, units in trucks would appear and under the command of an officer empty a house of anything worth taking and then set it afire. By now, the entire South City has been looted and torched in this fashion.

  The systematic burning began 20 December, and there has not been an evening since when the sky has not turned red. They are meticulously returning to buildings that were somehow forgotten or passed over, so that by now I would guess that roughly 50–60 percent of the city has been burned down.

  On 14 December, with the city under total occupation, an immediate and rigorous search of the city and especially of the refugee camps began. These searches of the camps were totally arbitrary, and over the course of a few days, although not a single shot was fired by the civilian population and no military courts had been set up, approximately 5,000 people were shot, usually on the riverbank, so that there was no need for burial. That number is probably too low an estimate. Even today, when every person has to be registered, this senseless “selection” continues, even if it is still applied only in individual cases.

  On a trip to Hsiakwan on 16 December, I literally drove over bodies in the vicinity of the Navy Office, where rows of executed men lay tied together. It took until 29 December to remove the bodies from the city. Day after day, you had to drive past the dead, who appeared even in my dreams. Three bodies and a dead horse lay outside our house. We were forbidden to clear them away ourselves; I was finally able to arrange only for the horse to be buried, which was still lying there on 9 January. My first trip to Hsi Sha Shan on 28 December came as a shock. We were strictly forbidden to leave the city, but since I needed food, I went in my car anyway. The retreating Chinese army had already burned down villages and farms. The Japanese troops, however, were not to be outdone, and continued to set fire to things on a grand scale, indiscriminately shooting farmers, women, and children out in the fields, all under the motto: “Find the evil Chinese soldiers!” In the fields and beside the highway lay a lot of dead water buffalo, horses, and mules, already badly eaten by dogs, crows, and magpies. By day the farmers flee to the mountains with their few possessions, and only the old women and men remain behind. Even their lives are in danger: For an hour’s drive I did not see a single live human being, not even in the larger villages. Everything has been burned down or is dead or flees the moment a car comes into view. At Thousand Buddha Mountain a large refugee camp had formed with over 10,000 people, all farmers from the vicinity.

  The Japanese soldiery doesn’t let that stop them, either. Even here they randomly select young boys to be shot, rape the girls, and drunken Japanese soldiers make a sport of using bayonets to skewer or slash whomever they take a dislike to, especially where there is no medical help to be had. Temple images are stolen or destroyed, and even monks are in no way safe from such mistreatment.

  Confronted by two Europeans—a German, Dr. Günther, and a Dane—the terror has more or less come to halt outside the cement works. There, too, about 4,000 refuges have settled, bringing what they could carry.

  According to Chinese reports, the entire countryside from Shanghai to Nanking and Wuhu has been ravaged in this same fashion. It is hard to see how without so much as a plow or a water buffalo, farmers are going to tend their fields and plant the rice so sorely needed.

  From a Report from the Nanking Office of the German Embassy (Rosen) to the Foreign Ministry (Excerpt)

/>   20 January 1938

  While we were aboard the British gunboat Bee,anchored outside Nanking from 18 to 20 December, the Japanese rear-admiral Kondo declared to Holt, the British admiral, that on a large island downstream from Nanking there were still 30,000 Chinese soldiers who would have to be removed. This removal or “mopping up,” as it was called in Japanese communiqués, consists of murdering what are now defenseless enemies and is contrary to fundamental principles of humane warfare. Besides mass executions by machine gun fire, other more individual methods of killing were employed as well, such as pouring gasoline over a victim and setting him afire.

  Since a large number of Chinese soldiers—some of them disarmed, but in any case defenseless—had fled into the Safety Zone, something that the few policemen were unable to prevent, the Japanese undertook large-scale raids during which any civilian male might be suspected of being a soldier and be dragged off. Generally they looked for some indication of a man’s having been a soldier—the circular marking of a helmet on the head, indentations on the shoulder from a weapon or on the back from a kit bag, etc. Foreign eyewitnesses have also attested that the Japanese lured a good number of Chinese soldiers out of the Safety Zone by promising they would not be harmed and even given work, only then to execute them. No trials by military tribunal or anything of that sort were to be seen anywhere, and they would have been out of place amidst practices that made a mockery of all the rules of warfare and civilized behavior. The first Japanese patrols were sighted inside the city on 13 December. They had apparently entered the city from the south, through the Kuanghua Gate. Reports have already been filed concerning the reign of terror which then began and has continued for weeks now, but I would like to add one more example of how the Japanese conducted themselves: e.g., of the 54 workers at the municipal electricity plant who reported for work, 43 were slain by the Japanese, under the pretext that that the plant was a state enterprise!

  By some strange arrangement of Nature, wherever the Japanese advance with fire and sword, the popular soul spontaneously erupts in the form of autonomous governments kindly disposed toward the Japanese. And so on New Year’s Day, an autonomous government arose in Nanking under the chairmanship of the president of the Red Swastika Society, Tao Hsi-san. This society is a charitable organization similar to the Red Cross. Little is known about the other members of the “government,” except that a Dr. Hsü of the same charitable society and a certain Wang Changtien are “advisors” to it. This Wang, who is also known in Nanking under the name Jimmy, is at any rate the most active member of the new system, whose five-colored flag, the old flag of the First Chinese Republic, can be seen flying here and there above buildings in Nanking, but is hardly noticeable for all the Japanese flags.

  Among Jimmy’s first official acts was the establishment of bordellos, for which he was able to recruit the necessary workers among those females still residing in the old amusement district around the Confucius Temple. It is said that he provided the requisite furniture free of charge from his own inventories, but is demanding payment for furnishing similar institutions that are to be outfitted with Japanese ladies who have been brought in. At any rate Jimmy has done a great service to his fellow Chinese in providing a less perilous means by which to satisfy the amorous needs of the Japanese soldiery, which up until now has employed the Erl-King’s method of abducting the honest women of Nanking.

  As nearly as I can tell thus far from my conversations with my Japanese colleagues, the new Nanking government is not taken seriously. It is also already having its problems with the Japanese, especially as regards the increasingly grave issue of supplying the population with food.

  It is not only in this matter that the greatest confusion about future political arrangements seems to reign, even among the Japanese themselves. It should indeed be clear to the Japanese that even those Chinese of some repute who are well disposed toward Japan will not volunteer to govern without strong reservations and assurances, particularly in view of what like-minded fellow countrymen have experienced in Manchuria. Or does the Japanese military believe that it can continue to depend on the same makeshift imperial policies with which it has begun to corrupt China so successfully in the north: encouragement of smuggling, establishment of numerous Korean bordellos, and support for the narcotics trade emanating from the Japanese concession in Tientsin—all without even bothering to provide much window-dressing? Because of the difficulties of sending mail by way of Hankow, this report is being presented directly to the Foreign Ministry. The ambassador in Hankow, the German general consul in Shanghai, and the German ambassador in Tokyo will be provided carbon copies of this report by secured post.

  ROSEN

  21 JANUARY

  Krischan Kröger must postpone his departure for a few days yet. He may not leave till Sunday, although he may now go by train; in addition to which he will be guarded by some hulk of a soldier, just to make sure he doesn’t jump off on the way. I intend to make more vigorous attempts to obtain a pass myself now, because I would like to try to get to Mutti in Shanghai, if only for a visit. And for me there is only one way out: to tell the truth and say that the company “has no more money.” They’ll probably give me a funny look—I’m a Siemens manager after all—but that won’t bother me. I’ve already had to hit Krischan Kröger up for 500 dollars just to scrape enough together for January salaries.

  22 JANUARY

  I’ve written several times in this diary about the body of the Chinese soldier who was shot while tied to his bamboo bed and who is still lying unburied near my house. My protests and pleas to the Japanese embassy finally to get this corpse buried, or give me permission to bury it, have thus far been fruitless. The body is still lying in the same spot as before, except that the ropes have been cut and the bamboo bed is now lying about two yards away. I am totally puzzled by the conduct of the Japanese in this matter. On the one hand, they want to be recognized and treated as a great power on a par with European powers, on the other, they are currently displaying a crudity, brutality, and bestiality that bears no comparison except with the hordes of Genghis Khan. I have stopped trying to get the poor devil buried, but I hereby record that he, though very dead, still lies above the earth!

  Pastor John Magee accompanied me this morning, along with Cola, who speaks a little Japanese, to return a call by Dr. Hirai, the chief army surgeon. We used the occasion to ask Dr. Hirai for permission to visit the Red Cross Hospital set up in the Foreign Ministry; we have been delivering rice this whole time, but we have been unable to enter since the fall of Nanking, when the Japanese took over its administration. Dr. Hirai seemed dubious about our request, but he promised to present the matter to the general staff. He appears to be a very kindly, genial old gentleman. When we visited him today, he was sitting in an armchair in full uniform and having his portrait done by a Japanese painter.

  Magee has been gathering more ugly reports again. The Japanese soldiers are grabbing up every slaughterable animal they can get hold of. Of late they have been making Chinese boys chase pigs. A couple of the boys who weren’t quick enough, or had no success, were bayoneted. The bowels of one of these bayoneted victims are hanging out of his body.

  One of the victims referred to by Dr. Rosen in his report of 20 January 1938

  Japanese patrols rounding up Chinese for execution

  It makes you sick just to hear these sorts of stories from eyewitnesses. One might well believe the Japanese army is made up of ex-convicts. Normal people do not behave this way.

  Today we saw a truck full of Chinese soldiers coming from the south and heading toward Hsiakwan. I assume that these were prisoners of war who had been captured between here and Wuhu and were to be executed on the banks of the Yangtze.

  Takadama-san paid me a visit. He is the chief of consular police and as such is attached to the Japanese embassy. I got him a car, in the hope of receiving a receipt of requisition in return. Instead of signing the receipt, he stuck it in his pocket without a word, and I w
as left holding the bag.

  Whereas before he has always shown up in a well-fitting blue uniform, he is wearing civilian clothes today. At the moment he’s looking for photographs taken of the air war and of Japanese planes that crashed here in Nanking. A good number of the photos were taken by a semiofficial Chinese photo agency. Among the pictures that you could buy from them at a dollar apiece was a photograph of 16 Japanese fliers who had crashed and ended up as prisoners of war, but whom the Chinese took special care of and treated quite well.

  Takadama claims he has a friend who was one of these prisoners, none of whose names is known to us. He’s evidently greatly interested in the fate of this captured Japanese pilot and would like to learn more about him from us.

  We cannot give him any information because we in fact know nothing. And even if we did, we would still be very careful about the information we supplied; for I’ve already learned from Fukuda-san, the embassy secretary, that a Japanese officer—and there were several among these pilots—is supposed to commit hara-kiri if he is captured. A Japanese officer dare not be a prisoner of war. So I won’t offer any help or information, although I wouldn’t mind if a goodly number of Japanese who have committed atrocities here were to commit hara-kiri.

  Papa Sperling, or better, Mr. Sperling, inspector general of the Committee Police, has noticed that we’re all writing reports. That has awakened an ambition that until now only slumbered deep in his heart, and he cannot rest until he, too, has managed to write a report. Sperling—honor to whom honor is due—saved many people’s lives and has probably been through more than any of us. But he is a simple soul, and his report reflects as much. None of us is a born author, but there’s really something very funny about what Sperling has managed. He showed me the first draft. I didn’t have the heart to try to persuade him to leave out the wonderful descriptions. So let him go ahead and report about the babe at its mother’s quivering breast and the naked soldier and his girl!