THE NANJING MASSACRE

November is the time when we recall the horrors of war and pray that such brutalities will never be repeated. Sometimes we try to persuade ourselves that war is a “lesser evil”, other times we see that wars are nothing other than murder sanctioned by the state.

On a Sunday morning in July, I and two Chinese friends were in Nanjing. We went to the Memorial of the Nanjing massacre. Like most of the world until very few years ago, including myself, you have probably never heard of this. Yet here in Nanjing, a leafy city sandwiched between a bend of the mighty Yangzi and the Purple Mountain, 300.000 men, women and children, overwhelmingly civilians, were massacred in a reign of terror over only a few weeks.

The Japanese army, following their emperor’s dream and their ambition to be the rulers of all Asia, marched into Nanjing on December 13^th 1937. To prove their might and to subdue the population into stunned surrender, they aimlessly killed as the whim took them. There was little resistance. The Nationalist Government had already fled westwards, half the population (those with something to save) had likewise fled. The commanding General, Tang Sheng-chi was ordered to leave. The remnant of the inhabitants, devoid of leadership, bereft of support, stayed behind. The Japanese promised peace and plenty, provided there was no resistance. There was none, but neither was there peace, not even respect of the otherwise accepted rules of war.

Doom struck threefold: destruction, degradation and death. All this is documented with terrible clarity at the Memorial.

The visitors studied the exhibits in silence, some people wept. You could feel the emotion and suffering even after nearly 70 years.

There was a small group of foreigners left in Nanjing in 1937. People who had worked much of their lives in China and come to love the people and their style of life. They set up the International Safety Zone with John Rabe as their leader. Rabe, a German national, was an active Nazi, yet he showed courage in confronting the Japanese, officers, officials and soldiers, and inspired the others in his group to achieve superhuman acts. The ISZ could not prevent the aggressors from entering their area, but their authority deterred the worst atrocities in that 2½ square miles. Rabe and his colleagues challenged the inhumanity they witnessed and the Japanese, more often than not, showed respect to their faces. The anonymous bullet in the back missed or never came.

This was a ray of hope in the darkness, ironically from a party member of the very group that was embarking on similar horrors in Europe. When in 1938 Rabe left to return to Germany, he promised the Chinese that he would report to Hitler what had happened in Nanjing. Hitler never received him nor acknowledged the report, but Rabe was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. Worse than that, after the war, the winning side detained Rabe, declaring him to be an active Nazi. He was destitute, unable to get work, and only survived by selling off his beloved and precious collection of Chinese art. Finally, after endless delays, the British finally approved his “denazification” and he, by then a broken man, struggled through to 1951, when he died.

The Chinese worship him. When they found out in 1947 that he was starving in Germany, they collected money in Nanjing, sent a representative to Europe, bought food and sent monthly parcels from China. Rabe edited his diary and compiled his memoires which were kept in his family and are now available for researchers. Others in his group included Rev John Magee, Robert Wilson (surgeon) and Minnie Vautrin. For the Chinese they are still heroes. It is estimated that the International Safety Zone saved some 250.000 lives. More than that, it kept human values alive in a time of desolation.

Where were the resistance and the underground in Nanjing at that time? How could hope have deserted the population so totally that the invaders do not appear to have been harassed, passively or actively?

And why has the world kept silent? The Japanese army left after the defeat of Japan in 1945. It suited the Western powers, in particular America, to form an alliance with Japan against Russia. It even suited the new communist government of China to be friendly to Japan rather than Korea. The official government in Japan refused to acknowledge the crimes in their campaigns in China, denied wrong doing and declined reparations. However since then many unofficial groups and individuals from Japan have expressed their private anguish, have visited Nanjing and left their tokens of sympathy.

What a story of cynicism, distorted values, inhumanity and cruelty to the victims! The Chinese will never forget. Even now the wounds are raw and the pain is alive.

Have we learned? Events in Bosnia, and other war zones, where the civilian population has been cruelly abused by the invaders, indicate that civilisation has as long a way to go as ever.

As we left the Memorial after 2½ hours, my colleagues Yang and Ding and I looked at each other and said nothing.

Christopher Davies

If you want to explore this event more, read “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang, published by Penguin, 1998, ISBN 0-14-027744-7. (It is not an easy read).