by John Rabe
A carriage loaded with rice was taken on December 15th at 4:00 p.m. near the gate of Ginling College by Japanese soldiers.
Several residents in our second sub-division were driven from their homes on the night of December 14th and robbed of everything. The chief of the sub-division was himself robbed twice by Japanese soldiers.
On the night of December 15th, last night, seven Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanking library building and took seven Chinese women refugees, three of whom were raped on the spot. (Full details of this case will be filed by Dr. M. S. Bates, Chairman of the University of Nanking Emergency Committee.)
On the night of December 14th, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers entering Chinese houses and raping women or taking them away. This created a panic in the area and hundreds of women moved into the Ginling College campus yesterday. Consequently, three American men spent the night at Ginling College last night to protect the 3,000 women and children in the compound.
At noon, December 14th, on Chien Ying Hsiang, Japanese soldiers, entered a house and took four girls, raped them, and let them return in two hours.
At 10:00 p.m. on the night of December 14th a Chinese home on Chien Ying Hsiang was entered by 11 Japanese soldiers who raped 4 Chinese women.
Last night, December 15th, Japanese soldiers entered a Chinese house on Hankow Road and raped a young wife and took away three women. When two husbands ran, the soldiers shot both of them.
On December 15th, a man came to the University Hospital with a bayonet wound and reported that six Chinese men were taken from the Safety Zone to carry ammunition to Hsiakwan and when they got there the Japanese soldiers bayoneted them all. He however survived and got back to Kulou. (Wilson)
On the night of December 15th, a number of Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanking buildings at Tao Yuen and raped 30 women on the spot, some by six men. (Sone)
A man came to the University Hospital on Dec. 15th. He had been carrying his 60-year uncle into the Safety Zone and soldiers shot his uncle and wounded himself. (Wilson)
On the night of December 16, 7 Japanese soldiers broke windows; robbed refugees; wounded University staff member with bayonet because he had no watch or girl to give them; and raped women on the premises. (Bates)
December 18, 4 p.m., at No. 18 I Ho Lu Japanese soldiers wanted a man’s cigarette case and when he hesitated the soldier crashed in the side of his head with a bayonet. The man is now at the University Hospital and is not expected to live. (Fitch)
On Dec. 16th, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. Five returned. Each girl was raped six or seven times daily—reported Dec. 18th. Dec. 17th at 11 p.m. the soldiers climbed over the wall and took away two girls but they returned in 30 minutes. (Tsan Yuen-kwan)
There are about 540 refugees crowded in Nos. 83 and 85 on Canton Road. Since 13th inst. up to the 17th those houses have been searched and robbed many many times a day by Japanese soldiers in groups of 3 to 5. Today the soldiers are looting the places mentioned above continually and all the jewelries, money, watches, clothes of any sort are taken away. At present women of younger ages are forced to go with the soldiers every night who send motor trucks to take them and release the next morning. More than 30 women and girls have been raped. The women and children are crying all nights. Conditions inside the compound are worse than we can describe. Please give us help. Yours truly, All the Refugees. (Translation signed by Han Siang-lin.)
A Chinese girl named Loh, who, with her mother and brother, was living in one of the Refugee Centers in the Refugee Zone, was shot through the head and killed by a Japanese soldier. The girl was fourteen years old. The incident occurred in a field near the Kuling Ssu, a noted temple on the border of the Refugee Zone. The girl, accompanied by her brother, was gathering vegetables in the field when a Japanese soldier appeared. He made overtures to seize the girl who took fright and ran away. Thereupon the soldier fired at her and shot her through the head, the bullet entering the back of the skull and leaving through the forehead. (Signed Ernest H. Forster.)
On the afternoon of January 27th, yesterday, just after lunch, Mr. McCallum, business manager of the University Hospital, was called to escort two Japanese soldiers out of a back dormitory. When they got outside on the back road he pointed out the American flag whereupon they became angry and told him to come with them. So he thought he would go along to their headquarters to see. About 100 yards down the road south, one of the soldiers told him to go back. He said, no, he would go with them. Then the soldier drew his bayonet and made a thrust at Mr. McCallum’s stomach, but since he stood his ground, the soldier put the point of the bayonet under his chin and gave a short thrust. Mr. McCallum jerked back his head so only received a slight skin cut on his throat. Then the other soldier took this man away. Some people gathered at the gate called to him and he looked around and saw a Consular Policeman coming in a horse carriage. So he got in the carriage with him and overtook the two soldiers at the corner. The Consular Policeman talked to them and got their names. Dr. Trimmer came along. The Consular Policeman said he would go to the Japanese Embassy to report and Dr. Trimmer went to the American Embassy to report. (A written statement was later made by Mr. McCallum to the American Embassy.) Later in the afternoon the Consular Policeman came to the Hospital to apologize to Mr. McCallum and last evening he and two gendarmes came to 3 P’ing Ta’ang Hsiang to investigate and interview Mr. McCallum. (From a verbal report by Mr. McCallum to L. Smythe.)
Feb. 1st. This morning at 6:30 a group of women gathered a second time to greet Dr. Bates when he left the University. They told him they could not go home. Among other cases one woman who feared that she would lose her bedding when the camp was sealed, took her two daughters home yesterday, to Hsi Hwa Men. Last evening Japanese soldiers came and demanded to have a chance to rape the girls. The two girls objected and the soldiers bayoneted them to death. The woman says there is no use going home. If they are going to be killed at home they might just as well be killed at the camp by soldiers attempting to drive them out February 4th. (Bates)
Jan. 30th, about 5 p.m. Mr. Sone was greeted by several hundred women pleading with him that they would not have to go home on February 4th. They said it was no use going home they might just as well be killed for staying at the camp as to be raped, robbed or killed at home. They said, “You have saved us half way, if you let us go now what use is there unless you save the other half?” One old woman 62 years old went home near Hansimen and soldiers came at night and wanted to rape her. She said she was too old. So the soldiers rammed a stick up her. But she survived to come back. (Sone)
Feb. 1st. This afternoon about 2:30 a child came running to our house to tell Mr. Forster and myself that soldiers were after women in a house near us next to Overseas Building. We ran there and were admitted by a Chinese family. They pointed to a bedroom door which was locked but when no response was made to our knocking we smashed the door and found two Japanese soldiers in the room. One was reclining on the bed and the other sitting by the bed. The girl was on the bed between them and the wall. One soldier immediately jumped for his belt and pistol and went out through a hole in the wall. But the other one had his trousers down and was so drunk he could not get away quickly and moreover left his belt so his pants would not stay up. We had to help him out through the hole in the wall. Out on the road he wanted to shake hands. Mr. Forster ran ahead to find a military police while I walked behind the soldier. We delivered him to the two sentries at the opening of Shanghai Road where it joins Chung Shan Lu. We were told that the girl was raped before we got there. (Magee)
Feb. 1st, 11:00 p.m., three Japanese soldiers came to the Nanking Theological Seminary, climbed over the wall, grabbed a girl in a hut, but she ran away and yelled. This woke the camp and they all turned out and yelled. The soldiers climbed back over the wall and drove away. (Sone)
Jan. 29, evening, Nos. 43, 44, 45, 46 Yin Yang Ying were all visited and searched b
y soldiers for money and raping. In No. 44 four Japanese soldiers raped one woman and beat her husband.
Jan. 30, morning, Tai-ping Hotel, at Sze Hsiang Chiao a woman was dragged by Japanese soldiers to the door and killed at the spot.
Jan. 31, Sze Hsiang Chiao an old woman over 60 was first raped and then was stabbed by a bayonet in her vagina and killed.
Feb. 3rd, a.m. Mrs. Liu returned home and while she was walking in front of the door of Sung Yuan, Er Tien Hong, Hsi Hwa Men, she was pulled by three Japanese soldiers to a foreign style house and was raped there and also her garment was bayoneted. (Chopped by her right hand 2nd finger.)
Note: These are only sample cases we have had time to check up on more carefully. Many more have been reported to our workers.
LEWIS S. C. SMYTHE
Secretary
DOCUMENT 16
Description of Some Shots from a Film by John Magee, a Missionary
See Rosen’s report to the Foreign Ministry of 10February 1938, p. 187
December 16th, 1937. Chinese women on Shanghai Road, Nanking, kneeling and begging Japanese soldiers for the lives of their sons and husbands when these were being collected at random on the suspicion of being ex-soldiers. Thousands of civilians were taken in this way, bound with ropes, carried to the river bank in Hsiakwan, to the edges of ponds, and to vacant spaces where they were done to death by machine-guns, bayonets, rifles, and even hand grenades.
This man, Liu Kwang-wei, an Inquirer in the Chinese Episcopal Church at Ssu Shou Ts’un, the model village at Hsiakwan, came into the Refugee Zone with fellow-Christians before the occupation of the city by the Japanese. On December 16, he was carried off by Japanese soldiers with thirteen others of this Christian group. They were joined to another group of 1000 men (according to his estimate), taken to the river bank at Hsiakwan, arranged in orderly lines near the Japanese wharf and mowed down with machine guns. It was dusk but there was no chance to escape as the river was behind them and they were surrounded on three sides by machine guns. This man was in the back immediately next to the water. When the lines of men began to fall, he fell with them although uninjured. He dropped into shallow water and covered himself with the corpses of those about him. There he stayed for three hours, and was so cold when he came out that he could hardly walk, but he was able to make his way to a deserted hut where he found some bedding. Here he took off his wet clothing and wrapped himself in the bedding, staying there for three days without food. He finally became so hungry that he left the hut to find something to eat, putting on his clothing which was still damp. He went to the China Import and Export Lumber company, a British concern in which he had been employed, but found nobody there. Just then he met three Japanese soldiers who struck him with their fists, led him off to Paohsing Street, Hsiakwan, where them made him cook for them. After several days he was released, being given a note signed with the seal of two of the Japanese soldiers. This enabled him to get through the city gate and back to his family in the Refugee Zone.
Yü Hsi-Tang, an employee of the Telephone Office in Hsiakwan, was among four thousand men refugees living at the University of Nanking. On Dec. 26, Japanese officers came there to effect registration, a requirement for all grown Chinese in the city. The officer told them that if any of them acknowledged that they had been soldiers their lives would be spared but they would be given work; that if they did not acknowledge it and were found out they would be killed. They were given twenty minutes to think it over. About 200 men then stepped forward. They were marched off, and on the street many more men were picked up, whom the Japanese claimed were soldiers. Yü was one of these taken on the street. He said they led him with a few hundred others to the hills near Ginling College and there the Japanese soldiers started bayonet practice on them. After being bayoneted in six places, 2 in the chest, 2 in the abdomen, and 2 in the legs, he fainted. When he came to, the Japanese had left and somebody helped him to get to the Mission Hospital. The picture was taken while Dr. Wilson was operating, at which time there did not seem to be much hope of the man’s recovery; but he did recover.
This woman was taken with five others from a refugee center to wash clothes for Japanese officers. She was taken upstairs in a building apparently used as a military hospital. During the day they washed clothes and at night entertained Japanese soldiers. According to her story, the older and plainer women were raped from 10–20 times per night, while the younger and prettier one was raped forty times per night. The woman in the picture was the one of the plainer ones. On Jan. 2, two soldiers motioned her to come with them. She followed them to an empty house where they tried unsuccessfully to cut off her head. She was found in a pool of blood and taken to the Mission Hospital where she is recovering. She had four deep lacerations along the back of her neck, severing the muscles to the vertebral column. She also has a slash on her wrists and four on her body. The woman has not the slightest idea why they wanted to kill her, nor does she know the fate of the other women.
On December 13th, about thirty soldiers came to a Chinese house at No. 5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was opened by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mr. Hsia, who knelt before them after Ha’s death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they had killed her husband and they shot her dead. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her one-year-old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby being killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where were Mrs. Hsia’s parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 2–3 men, and the younger by 3. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed into her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and her mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7–8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha’s two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword. After being wounded the 8-year-old girl crawled to the next room where lay the body of her mother. Here she stayed for 14 days with her 4-year-old sister who had escaped unharmed. The two children lived on puffed rice and the rice crusts that form in the pan when the rice is cooked. It was from the older of these children that the photographer was able to get part of the story, and verify and correct certain details told him by a neighbor and a relative. The child said the soldiers came every day taking things from the house; but the two children were not discovered as they hid under some old sheets. All the people in the neighborhood fled to the Refugee Zone when such terrible things began to happen. After 14 days the old woman shown in the picture returned to the neighborhood and found the two children. It was she who led the photographer to an open space where the bodies had been taken afterwards. Through questioning her and Mr. Hsia’s brother and the little girl, a clear knowledge of the terrible tragedy was gained. The picture shows the bodies of the 16 and 14 year old girls, each lying with a group of people slain at the same time. Mrs. Hsia and her baby are shown last.
The case of a Buddhist nun and a little apprentice nun (between 8–9 years old). This child was bayoneted in the back, although she ran a fever for weeks after the incident. The adult nun has a compound fracture of the left hip, caused by a bullet wound, from which an extensive infection developed. If she recovers, which is questionable, a very specialized operation will be necessary to enable her to walk. She and some other nuns occupied a building behind a temple in the southern part of the city. When the Japanese entered the city they killed a great many people in this neighborhood.
The tailor who brought her to the hospital estimated that there were about 25 dead there. Among the dead was the “Mother Superior” of this nunnery, 65 years of age, and a little apprentice nun between 6–7. They wounded the nun and the little apprentice shown in this picture. They took refuge in a pit where they stayed for 5–6 days without food or drink. There were many corpses in this pit, and an old nun of about 68 years of age was either crushed or smothered to death by the weight of the bodies. After 5 days the wounded nun heard a soldier say in Chinese, “What a pity.” She thereupon opened her eyes and begged the man to save her life. He dragged her out of the pit and got some Chinese to carry her to an army dressing station, where an army doctor attended to her. Eventually she was brought to the Mission hospital by a neighbor.
On January 11, this boy, between 13–14 years of age, was forced to carry vegetables to the southern part of the city by three Japanese soldiers, who then robbed him of all his money and bayoneted him twice in the back and once in the abdomen. About one foot of the large intestine was protruding when he reached the Mission hospital two days after the assault. He died five days after admission to the hospital. The boy was so ill at the time this picture was taken that the doctor did not dare to remove the dressings to show the wounds.
Having heard that his mother had been killed, this man left the Refugee Zone, established by an International Committee, to investigate. He went to the Second District, an area which had been designated as safe by the Japanese and to which they were urging the people to return. He could not find his mother’s body, but met two Japanese soldiers who stripped him and a friend of all their clothing except their trousers. (It was an icy cold day, about Jan. 12, 1938.) They also tore up their registration cards which they had received from Japanese officers after the general registration. The soldiers bayoneted them both, throwing them into a dug-out. About an hour later, when this man recovered consciousness, he found that his friend had disappeared. He was able to make his way back to the Refugee Zone and eventually to the Mission hospital. He had six bayonet wounds, one of which penetrated his pleura giving rise to a general subcutaneous emphysema. He will recover.12