by John Rabe
ROSEN50
11 FEBRUARY
Our coolie Tsian-la set out on a pilgrimage to his home village today. Three hours outside the city. I am very worried whether his family is still alive and what shape he will find them in. Reports say it’s been murder and mayhem out there.
We’ve just got news that a soldier of the Japanese army, famous—as General Amaya put it—for its good discipline, forced his way into a house where a woman and her two daughters were living, intending to rape the daughters. When they resisted, he locked the three women inside the house and set it on fire. One of the daughters burned to death and the mother’s face was badly burned. The case is being investigated.
Sindberg arrives bearing an even worse story. This time, however, we’re dealing with Chinese bandits, four of them, who suspected one of their countrymen of having hidden some money, so they slowly swung him by his arms and legs back and forth over a fire, roasting him, trying to get him to reveal the hiding-place.
We are indeed in Asia! But homesickness wells up when you hear of too many such atrocities.
Good news from Shanghai. They’ve shipped us 100 sacks of the green beans we begged for to fight beriberi.
Chang is out looking for wood. I would like to have some crates made that I can pack full with all sorts of odds and ends. Who knows if we’ll ever see Nanking again! Carlowitz is said to have an empty crate, which Sperling is going to pilfer for me.
About 1 o’clock: tiffinwith Dr. Rosen and the officers of the English gunboat Cricket.Nice people. What a shame that I’ve not finished my packing yet. Otherwise I could have boarded the Cricketfor Shanghai tomorrow.
Reverend John Magee has taken motion pictures of the atrocities. Dr. Rosen is having a copy of the film made in Shanghai, which he then wants to forward to Berlin. I’m supposed to get another copy later, too. I saw some of the casualties (shown in the film) and was able to speak with a few before they died. I was shown the bodies of some of them in the morgue at Kulou Hospital.
Memorandum of Chancellor Schar fenberg for the Embassy in Hankow
10 February 1938
The Japanese have kept us very busy socially of late. On 3 February all the foreign officials were once again invited to dinner by Embassy Councilor Shinrokuro Hidaka, with no military present, only General Consul Fukui and an attaché. The English came very late.
Since the gendarmes had already knocked off for the evening, the two English officials had to negotiate for a half hour until they were permitted to drive to the Japanese embassy. These officials are calm and cool by temperament, and they saw the incident more from its comic side.
The evening was spent over good food and good wine—the burgundy too chilled, however—a very calm, restrained atmosphere. Councilor Hidaka worked the same phrase into his conversation with the three legation heads—each individually: “Let’s not talk about official matters today!”
On 5 February, all officials were again invited to a tea, as guests of garrison commander Major General Amaya. Councilor Hidaka, all the Japanese officials, including Major Hungo, and a few other officers were on hand. We conversed very amiably for a good while, when suddenly it got very quiet and formal, everyone took a seat, put away cigarettes, and Amaya put on his glasses, plucked a paper from his pocket, and gave a speech, which the young, pleasant, and always helpful attaché Fukuda translated sentence by sentence. Unfortunately he was not very well prepared, and so the translation was a bit halting. The upshot was that the general, otherwise a very genial, pudgy gentleman, really pitched into us Westerners. His thesis was: Everything would have gone far better in Nanking without any Westerners. The Chinese had crept in under the Westerners’ coattails and by trusting in our intervention, had dared to defy the Japanese. In Yangchow, where he had been the local commander until now, everything had fallen into place wonderfully after a few days, and commercial life had scarcely been interrupted. The high point of his speech was: “Please don’t interfere in my dealings with the Chinese!” I think he’s right in a certain sense, but he wouldn’t hand over a copy of the speech.
The Safety Committee has long been a thorn in the side of the Japanese, but since 4 February a large number of Chinese have in fact left the camps and found shelter somewhere in the city. In my view, Herr Rabe as its chairman has indeed achieved extraordinary things, but he has let himself be lulled far too much by the Americans and is helping promote American interests and missionaries who are out to catch souls en gros. He could have resigned his office on 4 February, the date set for clearing the Safety Zone, and having arrived at the zenith of his excellent work and retiring in a blaze of glory, could have vanished from Nanking. Rabe, here endeth the tale of thy glory!
Rabe realizes as much himself, and is trying to get Japanese permission to go to Shanghai, but he is still actively trying to counter the bloody excesses of Japanese looters, which have unfortunately increased of late. To my mind, this should not concern us Germans, particularly since one can clearly see that the Chinese, once left to depend solely on the Japanese, immediately fraternize. And as for all these excesses, one hears only one side of it, after all.
All the local Germans—with the exception of Rabe—have grasped the fact that Asiatic warfare is simply very different from warfare among us! Since there is no taking of prisoners, savageries necessarily ensue. Much as in the Thirty Years War, looting, etc. is simply a matter of course, and that things are especially bad for women probably has its roots in the massacre at Tungchou: The gruesome murder of Japanese women and children there has to be revenged a thousandfold.
And as sad as things may still be here, one can assume they will improve as soon as the refugees have cleared out of the Safety Zone. General Matsui was here recently to establish order.
But one also observes Amaya’s hand in things, particularly since he has had all the wrecks removed from the streets—overturned trucks, buses, and countless vehicles of all sorts, most of them junks, are doused with gasoline and burned, and what’s left is hauled away. A good many troops are working in the city, clearing away dangling electrical, telephone, and telegraph wires and stringing new ones.
And so to that extent things have begun to improve. And the Red Swastika Society has received permission to bury the countless corpses still lying about. From one single pond near Dr. Schröder’s house, for example, they fished out over 120 bodies, their hands tied behind them with wire. Herr Rabe was there and saw it all. I myself have frequently seen Japanese soldiers fetch water in their cooking pots from these pools. Bon appétit! —One must fear the worst once warmer weather arrives.
At 4:00 p.m. on 8 February, all Westerners were assembled in the now familiar rooms of the Japanese embassy to hear a military concert. The band was seated in the large dining room, all 42 of them, brought here from Tokyo for the occasion; they played well, indeed much better than the grumblers among us had predicted. The conductor, Captain S. Ohonuma, who studied music in Paris, did a very nice job and gratified us with a few encores, some of them compositions of his own.
The foreigners sat in rows in the salon; after we had taken our seats we were first served tea by some of the geishas from the “embassy staff.” It was a feast for sore eyes, since the four loveliest had been put into service; and then the concert began. Program enclosed.
After No. 4 there was an intermission, the time filled with a sumptuous buffet set up out on the verandah. The long table sagged under all the cakes, candies, pastries, fruits, etc., like some imperial Russian zakuska. Everything for show. The geishas served tea again and as they offered us cigarettes, especially as they lit them, assumed the most charming poses, which were then captured by countless press photographers, so that an astonished world might later behold with its own eyes the cordial relations between the Japanese and Westerners in Nanking. That was the reverse side of the coin. The cloven foot!
Among the many missionaries, etc. I also saw Mr. McCallum, who is Embassy Councilor Fischer’s51landlord.
P. SC
HARFFENBERG
12 FEBRUARY
It really is high time for me to get out of here. At 7 o’clock this morning, Chang brought in Fung, a friend from Tientsin, who is watching the house of an American here and whose wife is expecting a baby, which for three days now has been struggling to see the light of this mournful world, and you really can’t blame him. The mother’s life is apparently in danger. Birth definitely needs to be induced. And they come to me of all people!
“I’m not a doctor, Chang. And I’m not a kuei ma,52either. I’m the ‘mayor,’ and I don’t bring other people’s children into the world. Get the woman to Kulou Hospital at once!”
“Yes,” Chang says, “that all true; but you must come, otherwise won’t work, otherwise woman not get into hospital, she die and baby, too. You must come, then everything good. Mother lives and baby, too!”
And that puts an end to that—“Idiots, the whole lot of you!”
And so I had to go along, and who would believe it: As I enter the house, a baby boy is born, and the mother laughs, and the baby cries, and everyone is happy; and Chang, the monkey, has been proved right yet again. And the whole lark cost me ten dollars besides, because I had to bring the poor lad something. If this story gets around, I’m ruined. Just think, there are 250,000 refugees in this city!
5 P.M.
A visit by Chinese pilots. The entire sky is full of airplanes, and the Japanese antiaircraft battalion fires away with everything it’s got. But nobody hits a thing! And just as well, since no one bothers to take shelter. The Chinese believe that air raids by their fellow countrymen can’t touch them.
Mr. Fitch returns from Shanghai today at noon with “our navy friends,” bringing sausage, cheese, insulin, and a lot of letters, among them a picture that Mutti cut out along with an article from a Berlin newspaper, celebrating “Rabe, Mayor of Nanking.” Ah, if only I could retire on a mayor’s pension!
Shortly before the city was taken by the Japanese, two functionaries of the Chinese government sought and were given refuge in my house. They came equipped with bags full of money and on various occasions gave my servants tips that were far beyond reason.
Since Chiang Kai-shek had promised our committee a donation of 100,000 dollars in toto, of which we were able, with much difficulty, to collect 80,000, I demanded a written statement from these two gentlemen that they were in possession of no other moneys for the International Committee of the Nanking Safety Zone.
Members of the Red Swastika Society (the local branch of the Red Cross) formed details to help with the collection and burial of bodies.
John Rabe’s diary includes the requested statement, in which the two Chinese claim that the government had given them $50,000, which they had then passed on, dividing it between the Safety Zone Committee and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Nanking. They declared that they were in possession of no other moneys for these organizations.
The immediate cause for my making these inquiries is that a bundle of bank notes in the amount of 5,000 dollars suddenly appeared on the desk in my office one day, and with it the following note: “For you honourable deed of saving poor souls.”
I immediately put the money into the committee’s treasury and gave the two somewhat astounded Chinese an official receipt in that amount.
13 FEBRUARY
In addition, I received the following telegram confirmation, likewise by way of the American embassy.
Siemens China Co. Hong Kong Branch Hong Kong, 1.12.37
We received the following telegram from Shanghai with the request to forward it to you: “Not in agreement with measures request immediate departure Hankow to attend to interests of Siemens China Co.” Hong Kong Branch
This afternoon a service at the Ping Tsang Hsian, Dr. Bates preached a wonderful sermon about Abraham Lincoln, and much of what Lincoln had to say bears directly on our present time. Lincoln’s Proclamation for a Day of Fasting from 1863 was read.
It should be noted in regard to the confirmation of the company’s telegram, which is dated 1 December 1937, that I never received it. They did telegraph me to advise me not to put my life at any greater risk and to join the staff of the German embassy if they left Nanking. Ultimately they requested I telegraph them my plans. My answer read:
“Am remaining here as chairman of the International Committee for establishing a refugee zone for over 200,000 noncombatants.” And as I now learn from this telegram confirmation, they didn’t agree with that. But, as I said, this telegram never reached me.
What a mess! I truly am a “Lame Jack.” 53 I went and did the right thing, and now the company doesn’t like it!
It can be assumed, however, that the firm probably telegraphed that particular message to me in order to prevent me from putting my life in any danger. On the other hand, it’s a good thing I never received it. As a well-disciplined company man, I might very well have changed my decision at the last moment and boarded the Jardines Hulk.Moreover, I tend to doubt whether the rest of the employees of Siemens China Co. in Nanking and a few other poor devils would still be alive had I cut and run.
Contrary to expectation, I’ve managed to come up with some crates. There’s a carpenter among my lao bai xings,54that is, among the refugees in my garden, and through his connections I’ve been able to round up 20 crates, and not just crates, but straw as well. For the grand sum of two dollars and by pouring rain, several of the refugees carried three cartloads of straw from well beyond the Han Hsi Men city gate, and the carpenter is helping me pack free of charge. You see: The friendship of these poor people is worth something after all, sometimes, as in this case, worth a great deal, for wood has all but vanished from the marketplace.
North China Daily News Shanghai from 30Jan. 1938(Excerpted by John Rabe) Japanese Envoy Is Skeptical
London, January 29. The Japanese ambassador in London, Mr. Shigeru Yoshida, today said in an interview with the “Daily Sketch” that he “deeply deplored” reports reaching Europe accusing Japanese soldiers of “unspeakable atrocities” and added that it was “unthinkable that our troops would forget their traditions.” . . .
“Such conduct is utterly foreign to our noble traditions, and there is nothing in the whole history of Japan which shows any precedent for such conduct. . . . Our army is well disciplined.”
14 FEBRUARY
Since we’ve had a few cases of beriberi here, we had asked Shanghai to ship us 100 tons of green beans, which were expected to arrive today aboard the steamer Wantung.The Japanese navy in Shanghai had given permission to ship the beans and likewise to have them unloaded in Hsiakwan. All that was needed was the consent of the Japanese army in Nanking, which then promptly refused it.
At noon today the radio reported the incident from Shanghai and presented the matter as if our International Committee’s “lack of cooperation” with the Autonomous Government Committee had caused problems with the shipment, for which only the Autonomous Government Committee can be given authorization.
The Japanese claim that they know of no cases of beriberi in Nanking, which is not at all surprising, since they’ve showed no concern whatever about public health here.
The telegram from Siemens instructing John Rabe to leave Nanking
15 FEBRUARY
Lung and Chow55 left my house yesterday evening; they intend to leave the city today. I don’t know how. They haven’t volunteered their plans to me, and I haven’t asked. Our friendship has in fact been ruptured. All the same, I wish them a good journey home to Hong Kong. But I have no wish ever to see these people again.
I am now busy packing. It’s not an easy task: My health is not up to par, I’m sleeping only about two hours a night. Maybe it has something to do with my diabetes, but so what! You simply do what must be done. Things will turn out all right.
The “green bean problem” is not yet solved. The Japanese demand that we hand the beans over to the Autonomous Committee, no questions asked, otherwise they will not be allowed in. The beans are con
signed to Kulou Hospital, which means that the Japanese are trying to prevent the delivery of foodstuffs to a private institution. Mr. Allison is spending all his time trying to bring the Japanese around.
The mass burial mounds dominated the landscape in all directions around Nanking.
A column of women being brought to shelter at the university
I’ve just heard that the camp managers have all decided to send a telegram to Siemens in Shanghai, asking the company to allow me to remain on here. I don’t like that at all.
My nerves are pretty well shot, and I long for my vacation trip. I’m also afraid that the firm could get the idea that I was behind the telegram (from the camp managers), which, of course, is not the case.
Except for my furniture, I’ve packed up all the odds and ends and am now sitting in a half-empty house devoid of every comfort. I’ll have to leave the large pieces of furniture here under Han’s care for now, likewise the crates I’ve packed.
LATER
What shocks me most about a report by our committee that cannot be made public is the observation that although the Red Swastika Society has thus far been burying about 200 bodies a day, there are still 30,000 to be dealt with, most of them in Hsiakwan. Those numbers tell the story of the last Chinese troops that crowded into Hsiakwan and were unable to escape across the Yangtze.
I’m touched by the way all my American friends, one after the other, have been inviting me to a farewell dinner, when they themselves are short on rations. And now here comes Miss Minnie Vautrin, who wants me to come to a farewell tea. Miss Vautrin won my highest and very special respect in those worst December days when I saw her marching through the city at the head of 400 fleeing women and girls, bringing them to safety at the Ginling University camp.