The Good Man of Nanking

by John Rabe

  Eduard Sperling’s Report

  To the German Embassy

  Attn.: Dr. Rosen

  The undersigned, along with other gentlemen, remained in Nanking at his own peril during this time of war and at the founding of the International Committee was named inspector general for the Nanking Safety Zone. As such and in the course of my tours of inspection, I observed many things with my own eyes, the good as well as the bad, but more of the latter. My field work was not easy, but 650 well-drilled native policemen, plus a well-organized private corps of police stood at my side. We maintained public order, and I must once again state herewith that I have great regard and respect for the Chinese race, who, as I have often witnessed, are willing to bear their pain and sorrow without complaint or murmur.

  Two hundred thousand refugees, among them many, many women with small babes at their quivering, nursing breasts, driven from house and home, saving no more than their bare lives, sought safety and protection there.

  Within the Nanking Safety Zone we had two well organized fire stations. Unfortunately our fire engines and fire trucks were commandeered by the Japanese army on its march into the city, and we were therefore absolutely powerless against the many fires that broke out day and night and could offer no help, indeed perhaps our help was not wanted—sad but true.

  With the arrival of Japanese troops, our real troubles began within the Safety Zone, something it in fact was not, for it offered no absolute safety. Despite swastika flags and notices posted by the German embassy in German, English, and Chinese, no regard whatever was paid by the Japanese soldiers to all our arrangements, which had been so calmly and peacefully organized. Houseboys from vacated German residences, which enjoyed the special protection of the German embassy, came to me daily to report that Japanese soldiers had stolen bedding, money, etc., opening locked doors with rifle butts and bayonets or simply battering them down and thus gaining entry, often to no purpose whatever.

  On 17 December, Herr Hürter’s automobile was stolen. By chance Herr Hatz and I happened to be nearby, along with an official of the Japanese consulate, so that we were able to halt the thief at the next street corner, and with great difficulty and long speeches to regain possession of the vehicle. —During this incident I noticed how little power Japanese civil servants have. With many bows and scrapes, the consular official bade his farewell to these military brigands.

  On 21 December, at the behest of Mr. Kikuchi at Japanese headquarters, I arranged for and transported 60 electrical workers in order to put the electricity works in Hsiakwan back in operation; the workers were loathe to work for the Japanese, because 50 of their comrades, who had sought refuge in the International Export Co. in Hsiakwan, had been shot in cold blood by the Japanese.

  In well over 80 cases, I was called by Chinese civilians to drive off Japanese soldiers who had forced their way into houses inside the Safety Zone and were violating women and young girls in the most dreadful manner. I did so without any serious difficulties.

  On New Year’s Day, several Japanese soldiers were making themselves especially comfortable. The mother of a pretty young girl called upon me and pleaded on her knees amid tears that I help her. I drove with her to a house in the vicinity of Hankow Road. Upon entering the house, I saw the following: A Japanese soldier lay fully unclothed atop a pretty young girl who was weeping terribly. I yelled at the fellow in dreadful tones and in every conceivable language, wishing him “Happy New Year,” and in no time he hastened on his way, trousers in hand.

  Reports have been made of all such cases, as well as cases of looting, and are kept among the records of the International Committee and may be reviewed at any time.

  With German greetings and Heil Hitler!

  EDUARD SPERLING

  23 JANUARY

  Krischan Kröger did indeed leave for Shanghai at 6 o’clock this morning.

  Sindberg is back in town again and has brought me six eggs and twenty live ducks, three of which breathed their last inside the sack where they were forced to stay during my office hours. Cook says: “Not matter—ke shefan—can eat!”

  Takadama visits me in my office, along with eight policemen who are all very upset. The American embassy has telegraphed Washington that a piano was stolen from the American School eight days ago, and now the police have been ordered by Tokyo to see to it that the piano is put back at once; but nobody knows where the instrument is hiding. Presumably it was turned into firewood a long time ago. I shove the whole bunch out the door. I don’t want to be bothered with this!

  4:30 P.M.

  Church service at the Ping Tsang Hsian. Mr. Mills preaches a very fine sermon in which he makes frequent mention of Germany and the Führer, including his efforts to achieve peace.

  6:00 P.M.

  Pay a call on Dr. Rosen, who went on a longer excursion outside the gates today and returns with the news that the Golf Club has been burned to the ground.

  7:00 P.M.

  We celebrate the birthday of our director, Mr. Fitch, with a banquet. My present to Fitch is two live, though very skinny ducks. The poor creatures have not been fed a thing for a long time now.

  24 JANUARY

  General Gao’s houseboy shows up at my door and I give him five dollars, because he claims he has nothing to eat. His master, he says, left for Hankow.

  The Zone Committee wants to send a telegram via the Christian Council to Siemens China Co., Shanghai, asking them to allow me to stay here until 1 March. So for now I’m postponing my request to the Japanese embassy for a travel pass to Shanghai.

  LATER

  We’re all degenerating around here. We’re becoming spineless, losing our respectability. In Indiscreet Letters from Peking,a book about the siege of Peking in 1900, Putnam Wheale reports how he and many other Europeans simply joined in the looting. I don’t think we’re all that far from it ourselves. My houseboy Chang bought an electric table fan worth 38 dollars for $1.20 today, and expects me to be pleased. A couple of genuine Ming vases, costing one dollar each, gaze at me with reproach from my fireplace mantel.

  If I felt like it, I could fill the entire house with cheap curios—meaning stolen and then sold for a song on the black market. Only food is expensive these days: A chicken now costs two dollars, the exact same price as those two Ming vases.

  Takadama was back at our headquarters today and brought along some high-ranking police officer who can make himself understood in Chinese. Takadama got caught, by Dr. Bates no less, asking for girls at one of the University refugee camps. He claims now that he was looking for “washer-women and cooks,” which of course no one believes, since it’s general knowledge in the Far East that in China you hire men to do the washing and cooking. And so Takadama is demanding that his reputation be restored.

  Dr. Smythe, who took down the minutes of the entire discussion, promises him that the various embassies will be notified. That, of course, really rubs Takadama the wrong way, and he departs in great disgruntlement, after first expressly asking that the embassies not be bothered. The entire Safety Zone headquarters is pleased as Punch by his comedown.

  John Magee lays a report and a Japanese sidearm on my desk. The report describes how a Japanese soldier threatened a Chinese woman with this same weapon but dropped it and ran when he was surprised by three members of our committee. Smythe beams at the news, which he immediately passes on to the American embassy, since all the eyewitnesses were Americans. Mr. Allison from the American embassy has taken over the task of writing protests for us, which pleases us no end. Allison simply can’t get over the way the Japanese are behaving. “Allison in Wonderland” is Dr. Rosen’s name for him.

  25 JANUARY

  John Magee brings two Chinese nurses, a man and a woman, from Waichiaopu Hospital to headquarters, who tell us that a hospital coolie has been stabbed by a Japanese soldier. We listen to our two visitors and record their statements in a confidential file. At the same time we have them tell us all about the hospital at the War Ministry, where cond
itions are evidently very bad.

  There is one case that we don’t record: A Chinese worker, who has worked all day for the Japanese, is paid in rice instead of money. He sits down in exhaustion with his family at the table, on which his wife has just placed a bowl of watery rice soup: the humble meal for a family of six. A Japanese soldier passing by plays a little joke and urinates in the half-full rice bowl and laughs as he goes his merry way.

  The incident made me think of the poem “Lewwer duad üs Slaav”;45but one simply can’t expect a poor Chinese worker to behave like a free Frisian. The Chinese are far too downtrodden, and they patiently submitted to their fate long ago. It is, as I said, an incident that is given the scantest notice. If every case of rape were revenged with murder, a good portion of the occupying troops would have been wiped out by now.

  I’ve just received some mail by way of the German embassy: Mutti writes that I can leave at once on a furlough to Germany. If I don’t leave now, I’ll have to wait another five years. Well, it won’t be as bad as all that.

  I’m still waiting for an answer to the Shanghai Christian Council’s request that the company let me stay here until 1 March, although I’m afraid we won’t be finished with our work here even then. Personally I’d be very happy to take a vacation now. I am in fact a little weary of China at the moment; but I can’t desert the colors now!

  10:10 P.M.

  Radio Shanghai reports that after a twelve-hour ride in an open railway car, Kröger arrived in Shanghai in good shape on Saturday evening, 23 January.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE JAPANESE WANT TO CLEAR THE SAFETY ZONE

  26 JANUARY

  I AM FORCED TO record once again that the dead Chinese soldier just beyond my house has still not been buried. How long will such incredible conditions go on here? It’s said that a very high-ranking Japanese is on his way, someone not attached to the local military, but answerable directly to Tokyo. He’s supposed to restore order. It’s high time.

  Today a young American arrived by car, accompanied by a Japanese guard. He wants to sell some large timber holdings of an Anglo-American lumber company to the Japanese. This man, who is attached to the British embassy, reports that on his trip from Shanghai they encountered a total of perhaps 60 people in the first 50 miles, and that Nanking is the only city with any number of inhabitants worth mentioning. All the other cities between here and Shanghai are as good as dead.

  It’s a shock to drive through the deserted streets outside our Zone and be able to simply walk into any house, since all the doors have been ripped off or just stand wide open, and to witness destruction barbaric beyond all comprehension.

  Shanghai Road, the main street of the Safety Zone

  You shake your head and ask yourself why this pointless devastation, particularly since it’s been clear for some time from the actions of the Japanese embassy that they’re very ashamed of the Japanese military’s conduct. They try to cover things up wherever it’s even vaguely feasible. And the ban on anyone entering or leaving is one of their ways of keeping the world ignorant of Nanking’s present state. Even though that can last only for a short time, because ever since the Germans, Americans, and British restaffed their embassies here, hundreds of letters have been sent to Shanghai describing local conditions in precise detail, not to mention all the embassies’ telegraphed reports.

  The Safety Zone is the only place in Nanking showing any sign of life. New peddler’s booths keep springing up along the streets in its center. Early each morning, usually still in the twilight, the Chinese drag into the Zone anything that they still own amid these ruins and that’s still worth trading—or presumed worth trading—and try to find a willing buyer who has a few dollars for something other than food. The crowd presses shoulder to shoulder through this city of booths, this permanent Poverty Fair of indescribable want, where there is a revaluation of every value according to the current price of life’s necessities like rice, flour, meat, salt, vegetables— and of its delights, like tobacco!

  We are trying to get the German, American, and British embassies to help us in regard to supplies of rice that we still have stored in warehouses that are now the property of the Japanese. But there is little prospect of success.

  All three gentlemen shake doubtful heads. We can hardly expect the Japanese to hand over these remaining supplies at some point. On the contrary, they will make every effort to prevent us from bringing in any more food. We are in their way, and the Japanese authorities want to be rid of us. With each new day, we make ourselves more unpopular, and are afraid that one fine day they’ll simply pack us all off to Shanghai.

  Letter from Siemens China Co., Shanghai, to John Rabe

  Shanghai, 14 January 1938

  Dear Herr Rabe,

  From various reports in the newspapers and above all from your messages that have found their way through to your wife we are very happy to learn that you are all right. We hope that communications will be restored soon, so that we can receive your messages about company concerns, the state of the Capital Electricity Works and other important matters.

  Enclosed, a list of the residential and office buildings of Hapro in Nanking, which we have received from Herr Eckert, along with the request that, if possible, you determine the condition of these buildings and pass that information along to him.

  We have no clear notion here of what sort of freedom of movement you enjoy there, but, like Herr Eckert, we would be grateful for whatever determinations you can make and inform us about.

  As before, our thoughts and best wishes are with you.

  With German greetings,

  Siemens China Co.

  DR. PROBST MAIER

  27 JANUARY

  Today is the Kaiser’s birthday. And a little commemoration is probably harmless, even for a Nazi. Anyone born under the Kaiser’s government has never entirely forgotten him. I long for the return of those days, but not of the Kaiser, because I prefer Hitler; but as I said: you can’t shake off the memory, for on this day the ghosts of so many dead rise up, ghosts of those who happily and proudly marched in parade in their colorful uniforms. Dust and ashes now, all of them, or almost all. May they rest easy in their graves!

  According to radio reports from Shanghai, the French government has named Pater Jacquinot a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Given all that we have been through here, and the difficulties that our committee here, all 15 men, have overcome only with the greatest of effort, the man (who had only himself) must have accomplished some incredible things and rightly deserves his knighthood.

  I drove this morning through the East City with Dr. Rosen. All the buildings have been looted of everything and about a third of them have been burned down.

  We’ve just hear the terrible news that McCallum, who is in charge of Kulou Hospital, has been attacked with a bayonet by two Japanese soldiers who forced their way into the hospital without permission, and has been wounded in the neck. Fortunately, the wound appears not to be life-threatening, but this is a very serious incident and the American and Japanese governments will be informed at once by telegram.

  FROM THE FAMILY DIARY

  N.N. is a cause of great sorrow and worry again! He bought a wonderful automobile from the servant of Pan-chen Lama for 200 dollars. The new Autonomous Government now wants to buy the car from him, and because they know that N.N. paid only 200 dollars for it, they’re offering 600 dollars, instead of the 1,900 dollars N.N. is demanding. Moreover, the Autonomous Government Committee has informed us that the servant of Pan-chen Lama had no right to sell the car, since it was the property of the Chinese government. If N.N. continues his profiteering like this, one of these days the Japanese authorities will expel him from Nanking, heaping curses and shame on his head.

  Letter from John Rabe to His Wife in Shanghai

  Nanking, 27 January 1938

  My Dear Dora,

  The English consul, Mr. Prideaux-Brune, will be coming to Shanghai shortly aboard an English gunboat. He will be bri
nging a lot of mail with him, among which are three thick envelopes for you, containing:

  My Diary in Nanking:

  Vol. II, part 2

  Vol. III, parts 1 and 2

  Vol. IV, parts 1 and 2

  Vol. V, part 1

  Vol. I as well as the first part of Vol. II are either on board the

  Kutwoor in storage in Hankow.

  What I am sending you today includes the period from the day the Kutwoleft Nanking until yesterday—the heart of the matter. These pages were written for you. I’ll have them bound later. The first volume is already bound. If you decide to give all or part of these books to anyone to read—that’s up to you. But nothing can be published without the permission of the Party. And so Herr Lahrmann46in Shanghai will have to be asked first. But I think it’s better if you don’t have any of it published until I’m there, because I very much doubt that the Reich will give its permission. Besides which, like all my books, it’s not really written for the general public, but for you and the rest of the family. I don’t know when I can get away from here. I can move about freely inside the city; but I may not leave the city, at least not for now.