John G. Magee

CHAPTER II

ROBBERY, MURDER AND RAPE

Continuing his narrative in diary form the writer says:

Friday, Dec. 17. Robbery, murder, rape continue unabated. A rough estimate would be at least a thousand women raped last night and during the day. One poor woman was raped thirty-seven times. Another had her five months infant deliberately smothered by the brute to stop its crying while he raped her. Resistance means the bayonet. The hospital is rapidly filling up with the victims of Japanese cruelty and barbarity. Bob Wilson, our only surgeon, has his hands more than full and has to work into the night. Rickshas, cattle, pigs, donkeys, often the sole means of livelihood of the people, are taken from them. Our rice kitchens and rice shop are interfered with. We have had to close the latter.

After dinner I took Bates to the University and McCallum to the hospital where they will spend the night, then Mills and Smythe to Ginling, for one of our group has been sleeping there each night. At the gate of the latter place we were stopped by what seemed to be a searching party. We were roughly pulled from the car at the point of the bayonet, my car keys taken from me, lined up and frisked for arms, our hats jerked off, electric torches held to our faces, our passports and purpose in coming demanded. Opposite us were Miss Vautrin, Mrs. Twinem and Mrs. Chen, with a score of refugee women kneeling on the ground. The sergeant, who spoke a little French (about as much as I do), insisted there were soldiers concealed there. I maintained that aside from about fifty domestics and other members of their staff there were no men on the place. This he said he did not believe and said he would shoot all he found beyond that number. He then demanded that we all leave, including the ladies, and when Miss Vautrin refused she was roughly hustled to the car. Then he changed his mind: the ladies were told to stay and we to go. We tried to insist that one of us should stay too, but this he would not permit. Altogether we were kept standing there for over an hour before we were released. The next day we learned that this gang had abducted twelve girls from the school.

Saturday, Dec. 18. At breakfast Riggs, who lives in the Zone a block away but has his meals with us, reported that two women, one a cousin of a Y.M.C.A. Secretary, were raped in his house while he was1 having dinner with us. Wilson reported a boy of five years of age brought to the hospital after having been stabbed with a bayonet five times, once through his abdomen; a man with eighteen bayonet wounds, a woman with seventeen cuts on her face and several on her legs. Between four and five hundred terrorized women poured into our headquarters compound in the afternoon and spent the night in the open.

Sunday, Dec. 19. A day of complete anarchy. Several big fires raging today, started by the soldiers, and more are promised. The American flag was torn down in a number of places. At the American School it was trampled on and the caretaker told he would be killed if he put it up again. The proclamations placed on all American and other foreign properties by the Japanese Embassy are flouted by their soldiers, sometimes deliberately torn off. Some houses are entered from five to ten times in one day and the poor people looted and robbed and the women raped. Several were killed in cold blood, for no apparent reason whatever. Six out of seven of our sanitation squad in one district were slaughtered; the seventh escaped, wounded, to tell the tale. Toward evening today two of us rushed to Dr. Brady's house (he is away) and chased four would-be rapers out and took all the women there to the University. Sperling is busy at this game all day. I also went to the house of Douglas Jenkins of our Embassy. The flag was still there; but in the garage his house boy lay dead, another servant, dead, was under a bed, both brutally killed. The house was in utter confusion. There are still many corpses on the streets. All of them civilians as far as we can see. The Red Swastika Society would bury them, but their truck has been stolen, their coffins used for bonfires, and several of their workers bearing their insignia have been marched away.

Smythe and I called again at the Japanese Embassy with a list of fifty-five additional cases of violence, all authenticated, and told Messers. Tanaka1 and Fukui2 that today was the worst so far. We were assured that they would 'do their best' and hoped that things would be better 'soon,' but it is quite obvious that they have little or no influence with the military whatever, and the military have no control over the soldiers. We were also told that seventeen military police had recently arrived who would help in restoring order. Seventeen for an army of perhaps fifty thousand! Yet we rather like the three men of the Embassy. They are probably doing their best. But I had to smile when they asked my help in getting cars and a mechanic for them after so many of ours had been stolen. I felt like referring them to their own military-but instead I took them around to the American Embassy and borrowed our Ambassador's and two others for them and later sent them our Russian repair man.

Monday, Dec. 20. Vandalism and violence continue absolutely unchecked. Whole sections of the city are being systematically burned. At 5 p.m. Smythe and I went for a drive. All Taiping Road, the most important shopping street in the city, was in flames. We drove through showers of sparks1 and over burning embers. Further south we could see the soldiers inside the shops setting fire to them and still further they were loading the loot into army trucks. Next, to the Y.M.C.A.--and it was in flames, evidently fired only a hour or so ago. The surrounding buildings were as yet untouched. I hadn't the heart to watch it, so we hurried on. That night I counted fourteen fires from my window, some of them covering considerable areas.

Our group here at the house drafted a message to the American Consulate-General in Shanghai asking that diplomatic representatives be sent here immediately as the situation was urgent, then asked the Japanese Embassy to send it via navy radio. Needless to say it was never sent.

Tuesday, Dec. 21. Fourteen of us called on Tanaka at 2.30 and presented a letter signed by all twenty-two foreigners protesting the burning of the city and continued disorders. More promises! Rabe fears for his house, for buildings are burning across the street from him. He has over four hundred refugees living in matsheds in his garden. The problem of feeding is becoming serious--some refugees, hungry, started rioting in the University. Our coal' will soon be finished, but Riggs is scouting for more. The Japanese have sealed all supplies of coal and rice. Soldiers came into our place today, over the wall, and tried to take our cars while we were all out, and at another time they nearly got Sone's truck from him. Rabe had a letter today from Dr. Rosen of the German Embassy, through Mr. Tanaka, saying he was on the H.M.S. "Bee" at Hsiakwan but not allowed to land and asking about German properties. Rabe replied that he was glad to be able to inform him that two houses were not looted, the Ambassador's and his own, and that two cars were still left! (There are over fifty German residences in Nanking.)

Wednesday, Dec. 22. Firing squad at work very near us at 5 a.m. today. Counted over a hundred shots. The University was entered twice during the night, the policeman at the gate held up at the point of a bayonet, and a door broken down. The Japanese military police recently appointed to duty there were asleep. Representatives of the new Japanese police called and promised order by January 1. They also asked for the loan of motorcars and trucks. Went with Sperling to see fifty corpses in some ponds a quarter of a mile east of headquarters. All obviously civilians, hands bound behind backs, one with the top half of his head cut completely off. Were they used for sabre practice? On the way home for tiffin stopped to help the father of a Y.M.C.A. writer who was being threatened by a drunken soldier with the bayonet, the poor mother frantic with fear, and before sitting down had to run over with two of our fellows to chase soldiers out of Gee's and Daniel's houses, where they were just about to rape the women. We had to laugh to see those brave soldiers trying to get over a barbed wire fence as we chased them!

Bates and Riggs had to leave before they were through tiffin to chase soldiers out of the Sericulture building--several drunk. And on my arrival at office there was an S.O.S. call, which Rabe and I answered, from Sperling and Kroeger who were seriously threatened by a drunk with a bayonet. By fortunate chance Tanaka of the Embassy together with some general arrived at the same moment. The soldier had his face soundly slapped a couple of times by the general but I don't suppose he got any more than that. We have heard of no cases of discipline so far. If a soldier is caught by an officer or M.P. he is very politely told that he shouldn't do that again. In the evening I walked home with Riggs after dinner--a woman of fifty-four had been raped in his house just before our arrival. It's cruel to leave the women to their fate, but of course　it is impossible for us to spend all car time protecting them. Mr. Wu, engineer in the power plant which is located in Hsiakwan, brought us the amusing news that forty-three of the fifty-four employees who had so heroically kept the plant going to the very last day and had finally been obliged to seek refuge in the International Export Company, a British factory on the river front, had been taken out and shot on the ground that the power plant was a government concern--which it is not. Japanese officials have been at my office daily trying to get hold of these very men so they could start the turbines and have electricity. It was small comfort to be able to tell them that their own military had murdered most of them.

Thursday, Dec. 23. Sone was the one to get mishandled today. At Stanley Smith's house he found an officer and soldier who had just removed the American flag, also the Japanese proclamation, forced the refugee living there out, and said they must use the place as a registration centre. He must have had a pretty uncomfortable time of it, for he was finally forced to sign a paper giving them the right to use the place for two weeks. And Sone is not a man to take things lying down! A protest to the Embassy finally got the soldiers out of the place. Seventy were taken from our camp at the Rural Leaders' Training School and shot. No system--soldiers seize anyone they suspect. Calluses on hands are proof that the man was a soldier, a sure death warrant. Ricksha coolies, carpenters and other laborers are frequently taken. At noon a man was led to headquarters with head burned cinder black--eyes and ears gone, nose partly, a ghastly sight. I took him to the hospital in my car where he died a few hours later. His story was that he was one of a gang of some hundred who had been tied together, then gasoline thrown over them and set afire. He happened to be on the outer edge so got the gas only over his head. Later another similar case was brought to the hospital with more extensive burns. He also died. It seems probable that they were first machine-gunned but not all killed. The first man had no wounds but the second did. Still later I saw a third with similar head and arm burns lying at the corner of the road to my house, opposite the Drum Tower. Evidently he had managed to struggle that far before dying. Incredible brutality !

Friday, Dec. 24. A Chinese at the U.S. Embassy reports that the Chinese staff and their relatives, living in the Embassy, were all robbed last night by an officer and his men; Paston's office door was bayoneted, three cars stolen from the compound and two more this morning. Later I had the pleasure of telling Tanaka that Mencken's car, which I had promised him the use of yesterday, was among those stolen. Registration of Chinese started today. The military say there are still twenty thousand soldiers in the Zone and that they must get rid of these 'monsters.' I question if there are a hundred left. Anyway, many more innocent must suffer and all are fearful and nervous. The Chinese Self-Government Committee, formed day before yesterday at the invitation of Tanaka, may be helpful in this; but there are spies already at work. We caught one here. I just saved him from a bad beating, so locked him up in our basement and later turned him over to the Chinese police. What will they do to him? Strangle him I suppose--but I have told them to be careful! Constant interference from the Japanese today: more of our sanitary squad taken, also the policeman at the University gate, and they are constantly trying to get our trucks. They also sealed up one of our coal depots but Riggs finally managed to talk them out of that.

Christmas Eve. Kroeger, Sperling and Dr. Trimmer in for dinner with us--a good dinner, too, with roast beef and sweet potatoes'. Rabe did not dare to leave his house as Japanese soldiers come over his wall many times a day. He always makes them leave by the same way they come instead of by the gate, and when any of them objects he thrusts his Nazi armband in their face and points to his Nazi decoration, the highest in the country, and asks them if they know what that means. It always works! He joined us later in the evening and gave each of us a beautiful leather-bound Siemens diary. We sang Christmas songs with Wilson at the piano.

Christmas Day. A perfect day too, as far as weather is concerned. And conditions also seem slightly better. There were crowds on the streets with quite a number of stalls selling things. But at tiffin time, while we were sitting at roast goose, with Miss Vautrin, Miss Bauer, Miss Blanche Wu, and Miss Pearl Bromley Wu as our guests, we had to answer three calls for help and then turn soldiers out of Fenn's and the Chinese faculty house and the Seri-culture building. That day the American flag was taken from the Rural Leaders' Training School; seven soldiers spent that night and the night before in the Bible Teachers' Training School andraped the women, a girl of twelve was raped by three soldiers almost next door to us and another of thirteen, before we could send relief. There were also more bayonet cases; Wilson reports that of the 240 cases in the hospital three-quarters are due to Japanese violence since the occupation. At the University, registration commenced. The people were told that if any ex-soldiers were there and would step out, they would be used in the labor corps and their lives would be saved. About 240 stepped out. They were herded together and taken away. Two or three lived to tell the tale and, by feigning death after they were wounded, escaped and came to the hospital. One group was machine-gunned, another was surrounded by soldiers and used for bayonet practice. We have had quite a number of cases where men have faced the execution squad, escaped with only a wound or two, perhaps lying all day and into the night covered by the corpses of their comrades to escape detection, and then getting to the hospital or to friends. A rash bit of carelessness on the part of the Japanese!

Monday, Dec. 27. The third week of Japanese occupation begins and is celebrated with the arrival of a Nisshin Kisen Kaisha ship from Shanghai. Four representatives of the company called at my office and promised that a regular service will soon be established on the river. A number of ladies are in the party and are taken on a sight-seeing trip of the city. They distribute a few sweets to some children and seem 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. The soldiers are still completely out of control, there is no co-operation between the Army and the Embassy. The Army even refuse to recognize the new Self-Government Committee which was called into being by the Embassy, and its members are deliberately slighted. They are told that they are a conquered people and should expect no favors. Our list of instances of disorders and cruelty keeps mounting and those we never hear of must be many, many times what are reported or observed. A few of today's: A boy of thirteen, taken by the Japanese nearly two weeks ago, beaten with an iron rod and then bayoneted because he didn't do his work satisfactorily. A car with an officer and two soldiers came to the University last night, raped three women on the premises and took away one with them. The Bible Teachers' Training School was entered many times; people were robbed and twenty women raped. The hospital night superintendent was taken by soldiers in spite of Miss Bauer's protests:. The burning of the city continues, and today two of the Christian Mission School buildings in the south part of the city were fired, also Kiessling & Bader’s (German). But Takatama, Chief of the Embassy police, calls and now promises protection for all foreign buildings and starts out with Sperling to inspect German properties. Personally I think he is promising far more than he can deliver. What a list of claims Japan will have presented to her-- and it all seems so utterly needless--for there are hundreds of foreign properties in Nanking almost all of which have been looted by her soldiers. And the cars that they have stolen. I think I forgot to mention that yesterday Smythe and I called at the British Embassy which is in the far-north-western part of the city, out of the Zone. All the cars, eleven of them, had been taken away by soldiers, also a couple of trucks, but fortunately the servants had fared fairly well. Every block or so one now sees abandoned cars--and batteries and anything else useful--left where they are, usually overturned.

There was one bright spot today, though, and that was the arrival by the N.K.K. boat, through the Japanese Embassy, of a letter to me from Dr. Fong See--the first and only letter to come to any of us in all these past three or four weeks. He wanted to know if we might not be in need of funds for our relief work and offered to hold some of the money that was coming in in response to our appeal through Rotary International. That's Fong all over! And we'll need additional funds all right--many many thousands. I have a nightmare every time I think of what we'll soon be needing; for where are we going to get it?

Tuesday, Dec. 28. What we had feared--bad weather: A steady drizzle and then snow. The poor refugees living in huts, many no longer than a pup tent, will have a miserable time of it, for most of these huts are not rainproof. And then there is the sticky mud. But we have certainly been fortunate in having had ideal weather up to this. I inspected some of our camps today. The crowding in most of them is terrible and of course it is impossible to keep them clean. Our camp managers and their assistants, all volunteer workers, are doing a splendid job on the whole in maintaining discipline, feeding the people and keeping things fairly sanitary. But how long must we maintain these camps? When are the people going to be permitted to return to their homes--those who have any homes left? When will order ever be established?

I went over to the School today for the first time. It is located not far beyond my residence. Everything had been turned upside down and many of the instruments in the physics laboratory deliberately smashed. On the athletic field was a dead cow, half eaten by the dogs. The Embassy proclamation had been torn from the gate.

Wednesday, Dec. 29. Weather better today, fortunately. Registration continues, most inefficiently, and the people are given no information as to where and when to appear. More taken as ex-soldiers. Women and old men come kneeling and crying, begging our help in getting back their husbands and sons. In a few cases we have been successful, but the military resent any interference from us. Word comes through from Hsiakwan by a representative of the Chinese Red Cross Society that there are approximately twenty thousand refugees along the river front. The supply of rice we let them have before the Japanese arrived is nearly exhausted and there is great suffering. They ask to come into the Safety Zone, but we are already too crowded. Anyway, the Japanese wouldn't permit it, nor will they permit us to go out there and render help. For the time being they will have to get along as best they can.

Guards are at last posted at the various foreign embassies. But why wasn't it done two weeks ago? Our homes are still left unprotected; and the few guards posted at some of our camps are often more of a nuisance than a help. They demand fire and food, beds and often other things of the people.

Thursday, Dec. 30. I called in the servants today, eighteen of them, paid them up to the 15th of next month and told them that they must now try to find other work. It was a hard job. Some of them have been with us for many years and are fine, faithful fellows. W. and I hope it may be possible to start something in a small way in the old school buildings if and when we get order established, but few of our members are left and it will be a difficult matter to build up a new constituency from the material that is now in Nanking. W. has done a splendid job as assistant housing commissioner, and so has C. as one of the camp superintendents, while our servants have all been doing their bit in one way or another.

When I called at the Japanese Embassy this afternoon they were busy giving instructions to about sixty Chinese, most of them our camp managers, on how New Year was to be celebrated. The old five-barred flag is to replace the Nationalist flag, and they were told to make a thousand of these and also a thousand Japanese flags for that event. Camps of over a thousand must have twenty representatives present, smaller camps ten. At one o'clock New Year's Day the five-barred flag is to be raised above the Drum Tower, there will be 'suitable' speeches and 'music' (according to the programme) and of course moving pictures will be taken of the happy people waving flags, and welcoming the new regime. In the meantime the burning of the city continues, three cases of girls of twelve and thirteen years of age being raped or abducted are reported; Sperling has a busy time chasing soldiers out of houses in the immediate vicinity of headquarters ; the Sericulture building (a part of the University of Nanking--American property) has a cordon thrown round it while soldiers engage in a man hunt, etc. etc.

Friday, Dec. 31. A comparatively quiet day. For the first time no cases of violence were reported for the night. The Japanese are busy with their New Year preparations. Two days of holiday are announced. We dread them, for it means more drunken soldiers. Refugees are advised to stay indoors. Rabe invited our household to his house after dinner and lighted his Christmas tree for us, and each of us received a New Year's card with our Zone emblem--a circle with a cross within it in red--signed by all twenty-two of the foreign community in Nanking. He also entertained with stories of some of his experiences in South Africa. On his walk hang some magnificent trophies of his hunts. New Year's Eve! Thoughts of home and loved ones come crowding in. What wouldn't one give for a letter from 'home' ! Evidently we are going to have to exercise patience a while longer, for the Japanese Embassy tells us1 that it will still be weeks before the postal services are re-established here. They also tell us that it will be a month at least before any of us is allowed to leave the city on a visit to Shanghai. We are virtually prisoners here!

There is perhaps no purpose to be served by going further with this story and telling of acts of horror that have been committed since. It is now the 11th of January, and while conditions are vastly improved there has not been a day that has not had its atrocities, some of them of a most revolting nature. With the arrival on the 6th of three representatives of the American Embassy and on the 9th of three of both the British and German Embassies we feel a little more assurance that conditions will still further improve. But only last night I drove past four new fires that had just been started and saw soldiers within a shop just starting a fifth. There has not been a day since Dec. 19 that fires have not been started by Japanese soldiers. And Kroeger, who managed to slip out of the East Gate the other day, tells us that all the villages as far as he went, some twenty miles, are burned and that not a living Chinese or farm animal is to be seen.

We are at last in touch with the outside world through the radio, and that is" a great blessing; for last Sunday I got our house connected up and we now have electricity. At our Committee Headquarters we had current a few days earlier. Only the Japanese are supposed to have electricity, though, so we are not advertising the fact. Then we have seen a couple of issues of a Shanghai Japanese paper and two of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi. These tell us that even as early as Dec. 28 the stores were rapidly opening up and business returning to normal, that the Japanese were cooperating with us in feeding the poor refugees, that the city had been cleared of Chinese looters, and that peace and order now reigned! We'd be tempted to laugh if it all wasn't so tragic.

I have written this account in no spirit of vindictiveness. War is brutalizing, especially a war of conquest, and it would seem to me from my experiences in this, as also in the Shanghai 'war' of 1932, that the Japanese army, with no background of Christian idealism, has today become a brutal, destructive force that not only menaces the East but also may some day menace the West, and that the world should know the truth about what is happening. How this situation should be dealt with I shall have to leave with abler minds than mine to consider.

There is a bright side in this story, of course, and that is the wonderful spirit of service that has been shown by our Chinese and foreign friends alike and the intimate fellowship we have enjoyed in our common cause. Our hearts have been frequently warmed, too, by the innumerable times the refugees have expressed appreciation for what we have tried to do; and our own losses and inconveniences seem so trivial when compared with what they have suffered. Then our three German friends on the Committee have won both our admiration and affection. They have been a tower of strength--without them I don't see how we would have got through.

What of the future? The immediate future is anything but bright, but the Chinese have an unsurpassed capacity for suffering and endurance, besides their many other qualities, and right must triumph in the end. Anyway, I shall always be glad that I threw in my lot with them.

A selection of case reports covering this period will be found in Appendix A.

CONTENTS 目次

Chapter

Foreword (Timperley)

序（ティンパレー）

(洞富雄教授の解説）

Chapter I Nanking's Ordeal (Bates & Magee)

第一章　南京の試煉（ベイツ博士＆マギー牧師）

Chapter II Robbery, Murder and Rape (Magee)

第二章　略奪・殺人・強姦（マギー牧師）

Chapter III Promise and Performance (Bates)

第三章　約束と現実（ベイツ博士）

Chapter IV The Nightmare Continues (Bates)

第四章　悪夢は続く（ベイツ博士）

Chapter V Terror in North China

第五章　華北における暴虐

Chapter VI Cities of Dread

第六章　恐怖の都市

Chapter VII Death From the Air

第七章　空襲による死亡