by Iris Chang
The AP’s McDaniel stayed in Nanking a day longer before boarding a destroyer for Shanghai. On December 16, his last day in the ruined Chinese capital, he saw more corpses and passed a long line of Chinese men with their hands tied. One of them broke away from the group, dropped on his knees, and begged McDaniel to save him from death. “I could do nothing,” McDaniel wrote. “My last remembrance of Nanking—dead Chinese, dead Chinese, dead Chinese.”
THE NEWSREEL MEN
There were also two American newsreel men near Nanking who risked their lives to film the bombing of the Panay. During the bombing Norman Alley of Universal and Eric Mayell of Fox Movietone happened to be on board and obtained superb footage of the action. Though they survived the attack unscathed (Alley emerged from the bombs and machine-gun fire with only a nicked finger and a bullet-perforated hat), another journalist was not so lucky. A splinter hit the Italian correspondent Sandro Sandri in the back of his eye when he followed Alley up a stairway on the Panay, and he died only hours later.
While hiding with the surviving Panay passengers under the riverbank reeds, Alley wrapped his film and Mayell’s with canvas and buried it under the mud when he thought the Japanese were coming ashore to kill them. Later the film was safely unearthed and shipped to the United States, where parts of the newsreel footage of the event ran in movie houses across the country.
The sinking of the Panay caused more of an uproar in the United States than all the wholesale rape and slaughter in Nanking combined. On December 13, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that he was “shocked” at the bombing and demanded immediate compensation from Emperor Hirohito. A few days later, when the exhausted survivors finally reached civilization, the public response only grew worse. Filthy, cold, and wearing only blankets, Chinese quilts, and tatters of clothing, some of the survivors were still in shock or near death. Their stories, along with their photographs, soon appeared in every major newspaper in the country under headlines like “Panay Victims Under Japanese Fire for Full Hour,” and “Butchery and Looting Reign in Nanking.” When Alley’s and Mayell’s footage hit the theaters, it only aroused more outrage and anti-Japanese sentiment among American audiences.
Nanking fell to the Japanese on December 13, 1937. Here the ecstatic Japanese celebrate by cheering on the walls of the city (Photo courtesy of Pictorial History of Sino-Japanese War).
Japanese tanks rumbled through Nanking on the morning of December 13, 1937 (New China News Agency).
On December 12, the Japanese navy bombed and sank the USS Panay, an American gunboat, on the Yangtze River near the city of Nanking, even though it was packed with diplomats, journalists, businessmen, and refugees from Western countries (National Archives).
General Matsui Iwane salutes his victorious troops as he enters the walled city of Nanking (UPI/Bettmann).
An example of Japanese propaganda. The Japanese pasted this image all over Nanking—a poster displaying a kindly Japanese solder holding a Chinesebaby while giving food to his grateful parents. The posters urged the citizens, “Return to your homes! We will give you rice to eat! Trust and rely on the Japanese army, you can get help!” Many of these posters were found near homes in which atrocities had occurred. Japanese army planes also dropped leaflets promising, “All good Chinese who return to their homes will be fed and clothed. Japan wants to be a good neighbor to those Chinese not fooled by monsters who are Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers.” After such drops, thousands of Nanking citizens left the Safety Zone to return to their homes (John Rabe Collection, Yale Divinity School Library).
The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most of them were gang raped or forced into military prostitution (Politburo of Military Committee, Taipei).
The Japanese bound the wrists of young men in the city and loaded many of them onto trucks, where they were transported to the outskirts of Nanking for mass execution (Mainchi Shimbun).
December 16, 1937. Seventeen Japanese military police officers inspecting a large crowd of Chinese civilians so terrorized by the mass murder in the city that none dare raise any objection to the search (Central News Agency, Taipei).
The original caption reads: “This picture shows Japanese recruits at bayonet drill in Nanking after the capture of the Chinese capital. They are using Chineseprisoners for their targets. In the center an unfortunate prisoner (or should we say fortunate) has just received the death thrust. In foreground, a bound Chinese is being ‘lightly’ pricked with the bayonet in order to get him into position for the coup de grace. As to the authenticity of the photo—it was sent to Look by W. A. Farmer of Hankow, who says the photograph was made by a Japanese soldier. The film was sent to Shanghai to be developed. Chinese employees in the Japanese-owned shop made extra prints and smuggled them out” (UPI/Bettmann).
Blindfolded and propped on two sticks, this poor man served as the living target for a Japanese officer’s sword practice. Here an infantry-manfinishes the job with bayonet thrusts that continue even after the victim’s death (Politburo of Military Committee, Taipei).
Five Chinese prisoners being buried alive by their Japanese captors outside Nanking after the fall of the Chinese capital. This is anotherpicture that was sent to Look magazine by W. A. Farmer after it was taken by a Japanese soldier and smuggled out by Chinese film shop employees who “did the natural thing in exceeding the printing order” (UPI/Bettmann).
Beheadings by sword were popular in Nanking. Here the camera captures the moment of a victim’s decapitation (New China News Agency).
The severed heads of Nanking victims (New China News Agency).
The head of a Chinese soldier placed on a barbed-wire barricade outside Nanking, with a cigarette butt inserted between his lips as a joke (Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War).
In Nanking the Japanese turned murder into sport. Note the smiles on the Japanese in the background (Revolutionary Documents, Taipei).
The Japanese media avidly covered the army’s killing contests near Nanking. In one of the most notorious, two Japanese sublieutenants, Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Takeshi, went on separate beheading sprees near Nanking to see who could kill one hundred men first. The Japan Advertiser ran their picture under the bold headline, “Contest to Kill First 100 Chinese with Sword ExtendedWhen Both Fighters Exceed Mark—Mukai Scores 106 and Noda 105” (Japan Advertiser).
Corpses of Nanking citizens were dragged to the banks of the Yangtze and thrown into the river (Moriyasa Murase).
Heaps of dead bodies wait for disposal on the wharves of Hsiakwan, the port suburb north of Nanking (Moriyasa Murase).
Japanese soldiers sometimes forced their victims to pose in pornographic pictures, which were kept as souvenirs of rape (courtesy of the Fitch family).
The Japanese bound this young woman to a chair for repeated attack (New China News Agency).
Nanking women were not only raped but tortured and mutilated (Modern China Publishing).
Arson destroyed one-third of Nanking during the massacre. Here Japanese troops set fire to a house in the suburbs (New China News Agency).
Japanese soldiers ride through a devastated neighborhood of Nanking (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking).
During the massacre thousands of Chinese refugees fled into the Nanking Safety Zone—war-free territory guarded by a handful of Westerners. The zone meant the difference between life and death for the remaining Chinese in the city and eventually housed more than three hundred thousand people(Nanking Municipal Archives).
The foreigners also established a rural safety zone outside Nanking (Ernest H. Forster, Yale Divinity School Library).
John Rabe, the Nazi hero of
Nanking (Ursula
Reinhardt).
John Rabe, chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, standing with colleagues before zone headquarters at 5 Ninghai Road (Yale Divinity School Library).
A page from John Rabe’s diaries of the Nanking massacre (John Rabe Collection, Yale Divinity School L
ibrary).
John Rabe’s letter to Hitler, which he submitted along with a report and film of the atrocities. A few days later Rabe was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo in Berlin (John Rabe Collection, Yale Divinity School Library).
Dr. Robert Wilson, the only surgeon in Nanking during the massacre (Yale Divinity School Library).
Dr. Wilson examines a gang-rape victim whose head was almost severed by the Japanese. In a deserted schoolhouse two soldiers struck this woman ten times with a bayonet—once on the wrist, once on the face, four times on the back, and four times on her neck, which slashed the muscles down to the vertebral column(John Magee).
Scenes from Nanking University Hospital,where Wilson worked. This teenage boy’s head was charred black after the Japanese doused it with gasoline and set it on fire (John Magee).
This fourteen-year-old boy was imprisoned by the Japanese, starved, and then severely beaten with an iron bar when he begged to go home (John Magee).
Li Xouyin, who barely eluded rape after fighting three Japanese soldiers and enduringthirty-seven bayonet wounds. Seven months pregnant during the fight, she suffered a miscarriage in the hospital. She did not recover from her wounds for another seven months (John Magee).
Minnie Vautrin, “The Living Goddess of Nanking” (Courtesy of Emma Lyon).
Miner Searle Bates, history professor at Nanking University and chairman of the International Committee after May 1939 (Yale Divinity School Library).
Christian Kröger (top left), German engineer and Nazi member of the International Committee.He served as treasurer between December 1937 and February 1938 (Peter Kröger). John Gillespie Magee (top right), Episcopalian minister who served as chairman of the InternationalRed Cross Committee of Nanking during the massacre. An amateur filmmaker, Magee recorded many important images from Nanking University Hospital (Yale Divinity School Library). Lewis Strong Casey Smythe (opposite, top left), a secretary of the InternationalCommittee and author of the study “War Damage in the Nanking Area, December 1937 to March 1938” (Yale Divinity School Library). Ernest Forster (opposite, top right), Episcopalianmissionary and one of the secretaries of the International Committee (Yale DivinitySchool Library). James Henry McCallum (opposite, center), member of the United Christian Missionary Society and one of the treasurers of the Safety Zone. During the massacreMcCallum drove an ambulance through the city to chauffeur patients home from the hospital (Disciples of Christ Historical Society). Wilson Plumer Mills (opposite, bottom left), the Presbyterian missionary who first suggested that the Nanking Safety Zone be created (Angie Mills). George Ashmore Fitch (opposite, bottom right), head of the YMCA in Nanking and an administrative director of the International Committee. He smuggled his and John Magee’s films of Nanking atrocities out of the city (Edith Fitch Swapp).
During the war crimes trials in 1946, some of the dried bones from mass graves were unearthed for inspection by Chinese officials (Alliance for Preservingthe Truth of the Sino-Japanese War).
JAPANESE DAMAGE CONTROL
The moment the foreign correspondents left Nanking, the Japanese sealed off the city to prevent other reporters from coming in. George Fitch witnessed the beginning of this on December 15, the day he drove some of the foreign correspondents out of the city to the riverfront so that they could board a gunboat for Shanghai. When Fitch tried to drive back into Nanking from Hsiakwan, a Japanese sentry stopped him at the gate and absolutely refused to let him reenter. Even Mr. Okamura, a member of the Japanese embassy from Shanghai who accompanied Fitch, was unable to persuade the man to let them through: “The embassy cuts no ice with the army in Japan.” In the end Okamura had to take one of the cars to military headquarters to get a special pass for Fitch.
When the Japanese finally permitted a few foreigners to enter the city, they carefully controlled their movements. In February they allowed a few American naval officers to go ashore in Nanking, but only when accompanied by Japanese embassy representatives in a Japanese embassy car. As late as April the Japanese high command prevented most foreigners from freely leaving or entering the city.
To cover up the nauseating details of their military outrages, the Japanese even impeded the return of foreign diplomats to Nanking. But in the end they proved unsuccessful in hiding the truth—especially from the Germans and the Americans.
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ON THE RAPE OF NANKING
Hitler’s government soon learned the Japanese motives for the delay. “The assumption I made in my previous report that the Japanese delayed our return in order to have no official witnesses of the atrocities has been confirmed,” a German diplomat reported to Berlin in January. “Once the intention of the foreign representatives to return to Nanking had been made known, according to Germans and Americans who were there, there were feverish cleanup efforts undertaken to remove the evidence of the senseless mass murders of civilians, women and children.”
The American government also knew what the Japanese were trying to hide. A machine cipher had protected the Japanese Foreign Office’s high-level diplomatic messages, but by 1936 cryptanalysts from the U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service had cracked the Japanese code, which the Americans dubbed “RED.” American intelligence was thus able to intercept and read secret messages between the Japanese leadership in Tokyo and their representatives in Washington, D.C., during the Rape of Nanking. On December 26, 1937, Foreign Minister Hirota Koki sent one such message to Japanese Ambassador Saito Hirosi in Washington; it emphasized the need to stonewall the American embassy staff to prevent their immediate return to Nanking. “If they do return and receive unfavorable reports on the military’s activities from their own nationals and if the diplomats, on receipt of such complaints, forward the reports to their home countries, we shall find ourselves in an exceedingly disadvantageous position,” the message read. “We believe, therefore, that the best policy is to do our utmost to hold them here as long as possible. Even if this should cause some hard feeling, we believe that it would be better than running the risk of a clash on the scene.”
But the U.S. government did not disclose to the public what it knew at the time and even contributed to Japanese censorship of the truth. For example, Norman Alley, the Universal newsreel man, had shot fifty-three hundred-foot rolls of movie film of the Japanese attack on the Panay, but before the film was released to the theaters, President Roosevelt asked him to excise some thirty feet of film that revealed several Japanese bombers shooting at the gunboat at nearly deck level. Alley agreed, even though those thirty feet were probably the best images in the entire film and certainly the most damning to the Japanese government. Hamilton Darby Perry, author of The Panay Incident, believes that Roosevelt wanted to give credence to the Japanese excuse that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, not deliberate design. No doubt the U.S. government was anxious to reach a financial and diplomatic settlement with the Japanese over the bombing and knew that those thirty feet of film would have made such a settlement impossible.
JAPANESE PROPAGANDA
Japanese attempts to influence public opinion were nothing new. Even before the Rape of Nanking, the American intelligence community had seen the Japanese plans, marked “utmost secrecy,” to spread favorable propaganda of themselves in the United States. The Japanese government also had a large budget for wooing influential newspaper men, advertising in major newspapers and radio stations, and printing pamphlets and leaflets.
But during the Rape of Nanking the Japanese faced a public relations disaster so titanic it seems almost ridiculous today that they even tried to cover it up. Instead of bringing a measure of discipline to their forces in Nanking, the Japanese marshaled together their resources to launch a blitz of propaganda, which they hoped would somehow obscure the details of one of the greatest bloodbaths of world history.
The Japanese media first proclaimed that all was well and good in the city of Nanking. On December 20, Robert Wilson heard that Domei, the Japanese news agency, had reported that the Nanking pop
ulation was returning home and everything was normal. “If that is all the news coming out of Nanking, it is due for a big shake up when the real news breaks,” Wilson wrote.
Then the Japanese government authorized carefully prepared tours of the city for Japanese visitors. A week after the Domei report, a Japanese merchant ship arrived in Nanking from Shanghai, crowded with Japanese sightseers. “Carefully they were herded through the few streets now cleared of corpses,” George Fitch wrote of the visit. “Graciously they passed sweets to Chinese children and patted their frightened heads.” A number of ladies accompanied Japanese business representatives on a tour of the city, and Fitch observed that they seemed “tremendously pleased with themselves, also with Japan’s wonderful victory, but of course they hear nothing of the real truth—nor does the rest of the world, I suppose.”
