CHAPTER V

TERROR IN NORTH CHINA

The foregoing pages have dealt almost exclusively with the conduct of the Japanese Army during their occupation of Nanking on December 12-13, 1937, and after the occupation up to about February 9, 1938. This method of presentation has been followed because Nanking was the main objective of the Japanese Army, and because a proportionately large and international group of foreign residents remained there throughout and kept meticulous records of events.

It should not be supposed, however, that the events at Nanking were by any means exceptional. Similar outrages against civilians have been reported from widely separated regions of China ever since the beginning of hostilities in North China in the mid-summer of 1937.

No attempt is made here to give an exhaustive account of happenings elsewhere. Such an undertaking would require a volume very much larger than the present one. Instead, and following the general method of presentation in the earlier chapters, eye-witness accounts from various centers, large and small, will form the bulk of this chapter.

Without exception, the writers of the subjoined accounts are foreigners with many years* experience in China, and, in some cases, in Japan as well. In each instance the letters in which they recorded their impression's were intended not for publication but for the information of an intimate circle of their friends. As such they form a straightforward picture composed of intimate details of the happenings around them. Withal, it will be noticed that fairness is implicit in their accounts and, indeed, that restraint is the keynote. The names of the writers are omitted only because many of them are still engaged in relief activities in the districts from which they write, and publication might prejudice their ability to continue.

On September 18, 1931, were fired at Mukden the first shots which resulted in the creation of "Manchukuo" and the domination of Manchuria by Japanese militarists. From 1932 to 1937, Japanese forces applied gradual pressure in North China, especially in the Peiping-Tientsin district. On July 7, 1937, what has come to be known as the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" occurred on the outskirts of Peiping as the prelude to a large-scale Japanese drive in North China. Japanese troops poured into the Chinese Provinces of Hopei and Chahar daily, until by the end of November some 300,000 soldiers were on Chinese soil and, having driven the Chinese troops out of the greater part of these two provinces, were forcing their way into the neighboring provinces of Shansi and Shantung. Peiping and Tientsin were rapidly taken by the Japanese forces, which then proceeded to capture Paoting, provincial capital of Hopei, some eighty miles south of Peiping.

The following letter from a neutral foreign observer describes events in Shansi from early September to mid-December:

Peiping, December 17, 1937.

Dear---,

I left Paoting for Pingting, Shansi, on September 4 after quite a little bombing had been done in that city, but it was not occupied by the Japanese until some two weeks later. In Pingting I stayed with friends in the Brethren Mission and as a group it was decided we would stand by and await the Japanese occupation.

On October 23 our communications' with Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi, were broken, and on the 25th bombing planes filled the air from five o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening. No bombs were dropped in the city of Pingting as no Chinese soldiers had been stationed in the city. Some fell on the barracks less than two miles distant and many at the railroad station five miles away. That night many Chinese soldiers passed through the city, and the city police and officials fled to parts unknown. The next day, before daybreak (Thursday), we could hear the fighting, and by the next morning could see the tearing up of the ground and the smoke from the big guns. On Friday about four o'clock from my window I saw the planting of the Japanese flag on the city wall, and soon the troops poured through the gates. Since then we have been living under the rule of the Japanese. Our own compounds flew the American flag. The house in which I was living had a great American flag painted on the roof.

War is WAR, no matter what country is carrying it on, and I am glad that in reading Gone with the Wind during the summer I had some realization of what had taken place in my own country some seventy years ago. From 1,000 to 1,500 Chinese fleeing from their homes flocked into our compound. The first week of occupation by the conquering army will always be an indescribable nightmare. Many of our refugees were girls or young women, which the people were trying to hide. One instance will show how they were hunted down. In one home the mother was sick on the kang, and they hid their young daughter under a cupboard in a most cramped space. The soldiers looked everywhere for young women in the place and even came in several times during the night to see if some one had not come out of a hiding place. For two days and two nights the girl scarcely dared to breathe in this hole and was not in a position to eat, before they could get her out and to a Mission compound. Hundreds of women were hidden in nearby mines. One group of over two hundred was rescued by an American nurse after having been without food for over two da3/s. Another group was betrayed and carried off. The Mission housed refugees in three compounds inside the city as well as in the hospital compound outside the gate. One compound was not Mission property so could not fly the American flag. One day two soldiers came over the wall and grabbed a couple of young girls and carried them back of a house. Mr. C. was sent for and fortunately arrived before they were injured. During the day one or another of the foreigners stayed in these compounds during those first frightful days. At night over seventy girls and young women slept in our house, and all other houses were equally full. You may guess we did not undress and did not sleep very soundly....

After the main part of this army had passed on, Pingting was used as a base for supplies and sending soldiers north and south, east and west, so there has been a constant coming and going of troops. Those coming from the front would rest a day or so and loot and rape. The soldiers and their horses were quartered in the homes of the people, appropriating everything they wanted in them and using furniture, doors, everything of wood about them, to build their fires. I have been in homes in which nothing was left but the brick walls and dirt floors. The first lot that came in spent four days and went through books and everything written that they could find, gathering anything they could against everybody they could in the city. The shops as well as the homes were completely emptied of everything. If anything was left troops coming later picked it up. Anyone whose clothes had any resemblance to those of a soldier was killed on the spot without questions. One man I knew who happened to have grey inner trousers was thus cut down. Men were taken to serve them and if they did not understand immediately what was desired of them they were killed. So many tales one could tell. Yet this is WAR.

As they took possession of all food supplies, food was1 becoming more and more of a problem. Many of the refugees had neither foo nor money. Several hundred of those in the Mission compound were being fed by the Chinese Committee organized under the Japanese. Those who had money were finding it increasingly impossible to find anything that could be bought. The soldiers had eaten or carried off the pigs, sheep and chickens, so meat had to be very limited in our diet. They also absorbed everything in the line of fresh fruit, but some vegetables could be obtained. Fortunately the Mission families1 had had a big yield of tomatoes in their garden....

These things I am telling you out of the limited experiences of my own weeks in the midst of HELL. When one thinks of the great areas of this country of which this is a fair sample, it is too awful to contemplate. At no time did I feel in any personal danger. Mr. C. early established relations with the officers: of the conquering army and we met some very fine Japanese men, some of them had studied in American institutions. The soldier's attitude depends upon what kind of a man he is, and some of them are bad and some of them are good....

PAOTINGFU

Another letter, describing events in the Paoting district, follows:

Paoting, December 10, 1937.

By way of introduction for some who may see this let me explain that I have been keeping a diary that I head 'As It Happens' intended chiefly just to share with my family. Some matters that I have excluded from its pages I wish to record and comment upon here....

Now let me mention a few concrete matters of which I have intimate knowledge. It is now eleven weeks since the change of regime in this area, so we are somewhat away from the heat and the confusion of the actual war zone,--no main theater of war within sixty miles of us for two months.

For about seven weeks of this period we had here but a small army of occupation, and little movement of troops to and fro, probably less than two thousand Japanese here at any time. The body in control was the 'gendarmerie' here for maintenance of law and order. A fair amount of police order within the city walls was brought about within a month and has been maintained there since, so that for the most part the populace in the city feel as secure as in normal times. Yet the following incident happened but a few days ago and I am told that like occurrences are not infrequent: Three Japanese demanded entrance to the premises of a well-to-do resident. Caretakers were there but the owner away. He has held much of his wealth in the form of valuable antiques and Chinese works of art of different sorts. The Japanese helped themselves to all the more valuable objects they could find....

The first of the week one of our staff went to a nearby village to see the officers of a local cooperative society that we have helped foster. Soldiers live in some of the private premises of that village. At night, if anybody locks doors and does not open at once when the soldiers come along they break the door in. The night before soldiers had made a house-to-house search over the whole village with flashlights for women. That day a villager had been clubbed to death for the offense of not producing any women for them…

The common people around us ordinarily depend largely on leaves, grasses, and grain stalks for winter fuel,--affording little wood. But the Japanese search for wood everywhere, that they use in prodigal fashion for quick fires. As a result, loose wood now being exhausted, doors, window frames, furniture, farm tools, even the frames of houses that they are pulling down are rapidly being used for fuel. One of our refugee women was1 telling today with tears in her eyes of losing a weaving loom for fuel. 'It is my one means of livelihood,' she said. Just across the street from us is a yard that belongs to our native church. In it is one house built some thirty years ago semi-foreign style, with well carpentered panel doors. Day before yesterday two of these were wrenched off for fuel, and the others being strongly held by rusty screws, the soldiers just splintered out the panels from several of them. Yesterday we took off the remaining ones and stored them in our compound. Yesterday several of the soldiers scaled a back wall into a little side court off our main compound and before we knew it had sawed down a tree of five-inch diameter. When my American colleague accosted them just after the deed was done, they did seem a bit shame-faced....

I haven't arranged items in any order of climax, but have tried to give a bit of index to the aftermath of war in this particular zone. Just now in an interruption I have heard another fully authenticated story of three men, tenants in a yard not far to the south of us, who have taken a heavy beating for letting their women get out of reach,-one left with teeth knocked out, another with such a bruised leg that he can not bear weight upon it.

Are such happenings as I have mentioned the necessary aftermath of any war? Maybe War would make it worse! Aren't we told that the present expedition was just to settle 'a local North China incident'? No war has been declared. But, at any rate, now that trouble is on, 'there must be a fundamental settlement of the China question.' And 'this concerns just the two countries.' It is for no third party to intervene. Any settlement must be on the basis of an understanding for 'cessation of all anti-Japanese propaganda and effort' and of 'full cooperation against Communism.' And what excellent methods are used among the populace to get such fundamental understanding ! Is psychology--either theoretical or practical-- completely banned from army circles?

I haven't the least wish to condemn a whole people with any such words as I have here tapped out. Nor even would I, by any means, condemn all who are in the army. I could list for you a goodly number of instances of fine sympathy and human goodness on the part of individual soldiers and officers, that have come within the range of our knowledge or observation right here. And more than one have told me that they would prefer not to be at this, but 'we are under orders.' There you have it. They are caught in the meshes of a system, and carried along hardly half aware of what it is all about and where it is taking them. God, pity these men! and pity this old world that still does not cure itself of the terrible malady of the war system! Are we Christians so helpless as we have seemed to be hitherto to bring some remedy for war madness? How much are we actually undertaking to do?

These words are intended particularly for some of my closer friends and relatives:. I trust that they will not fan the flames of hatred on the part of any of you, but that they will equip you a bit for further thinking, and for giving testimony where ungrounded propaganda is spreading falsehood....

A GENERAL SURVEY

The following extracts have been taken from a confidential report headed "As It Looked in North China, February 1938" sent by a well-known American missionary to his colleagues at Shanghai:

Conditions throughout the countryside, south and west of both Peking and Tientsin, are best described as those of 'unprecedented lawlessness and anarchy,' as Mr. Pennell, editor of the Peking & Tientsin Times, put it on Feb. 16. Most of what he said in an article in the January Number of Oriental Affairs under the title of 'Anarchy in North China' remains true. There is, however, a slight difference in that in some sections this 'anarchy' is becoming somewhat organized, if such an Irish way of expressing the truth may be permitted. That is, with all the former organs of government removed except from the immediate vicinity of the railway lines anda few garrisoned county-seats and market towns, something has begun to come in to fill the vacuum. This something seems to be of three varieties: (1) local bands of bandits looking out only for themselves ; (2) more socially minded groups, such as the revivified 'Red Spears' who are particularly active in parts of Shantung but are also found in southern Hopei; and (3) mobile units of Chinese troops, with or without organic connection with the increasingly famous 'Eighth Route Army,' the so-called Communist element in the national defense. All three types are united in their whole- hearted hatred of the Japanese; the first type, of ordinary bandits, are hunted down and exterminated when possible by both the other two; and the third type gives promise of absorbing or consolidating the second.

In the meantime all three add immeasurably to the difficulties of the occupying forces. There are stories galore of their exploits, many of which have a good chance of being preserved as parts of a new collection to rival the fables of 'The Three Kingdoms.' They have certainly put the fear of something into the hearts of the Japanese all along the Peking-Hankow line. At Paoting Japanese soldiers no longer venture far from their barracks after dark-thereby removing one of the greatest causes of anxiety from the hearts of most civilian families. The garrison at T-- is reported to have been wiped out three times by sudden raids.

The tragic side of this is the retribution which is so frequently meted out to people living near the scene of Japanese reverses. After one of the attacks on the garrison at T-- a large number of civilians were reported to have been burned to death with kerosene or gasoline taken from the local stores of one of the foreign agencies....

The Father Superior of a group working in Shantung reached Peking only a few days before I came away. According to Dr. P. he reported atrocities repeatedly occurring in their vicinity of the same type that became so familiar here when news began to come out of Nanking. The ill treatment of women was not confined to houses and courtyards but was extended to the open streets, and on one occasion a civil officer had beaten one of the foreign priests. In Shansi the Japanese advance in November stopped short a little distance south of Pingyao, some thirty miles beyond Taiku. The hills on both sides of the plain have been held either by semi-independent mobile units or by forces directly connected with the Eighth Route Army, and frequent raids have kept the invaders in a chronic state of jitters, but have led to as frequent reprisals on the helpless villages who have remained within the area of activity.

One of the ways in which an enormous: amount of useless destruction of property has occurred is through the ignorance on the part of the Japanese of the use of coal. Many of them apparently know how to burn nothing but wood, even when large stocks of coal are available. They have therefore ransacked villages for fuel with a total disregard to its source. Doors, window frames, posts, rafters, tables, benches, wooden farm implements, timbers of all sorts, have been carried away or yanked out of the buildings and used for cooking and heating. In one of the gates at Paoting an enormous bonfire was kept going day and night in an extravagantly wasteful manner, and anything wooden that could be laid hands upon was considered legitimate fuel.

One of the worst stories which I heard was brought in only the day before I left Peking. A band from the Eighth Route Army had come down to the railway track not so very many miles from Paoting and requisitioned labor from the near-by villages to tear up the track. They did the job so well that for six days there was no through train between Shihchiachuang and Peking. (This we know from reports in the French newspaper-the Peking Chronicle, the official foreign-language organ of the new Government, had denied any such thing only two days before.) But in due time the railway was repaired and Japanese troops came on the scene in some force. They visited one of the villages and at first appeared bent on no particular errand. Shortly afterwards however they rounded up two hundred of the men of the town, took them out and shot them. When a long enough time had elapsed so that the terror-stricken people had for the most part returned to their homes, they suddenly appeared again and this time seized sixty of the huskiest young men of the village. It became known that these men were to be burned, but in some way during the confusion of making the preparations for the burning, somebody was able to set them loose and they all escaped. Two old men were thereupon seized and substituted for the younger men. As the narrator put it, people of that region have since determined that henceforth they will refuse to assist in any guerilla warfare efforts on the part of Chinese troops. It is better to be shot by our own people for disobedience than to suffer in this way at the hands of the invaders.' This raises an important question which I shall refer to a little later. The man who brought this story went on to say that as he came north on the train to Peking he saw a village very near the railway in flames with a cordon of troops surrounding it, who were actually shooting people as fast as they tried to escape from their burning homes: After very careful questioning, one of my closest Chinese friends, a man with whom I have been intimately associated during the past seven years, was convinced that the village must have been the one in which his own wife's parents and other relatives have always lived. A member of the staff of the --- Embassy received a report just after this that all the villages near the railway track for a long distance in that region had been burned....

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

Chapter VIII Organized Destruction

第八章　組織的な破壊