Nanking Page #3

Three dangers are past:

that of looting soldiers,

bombing from airplanes,

and shelling from big guns.

But the fourth is still before us:

our fate at the hands of a victorious army.

It's not until we tour the city

that we learn the extent of the destruction.

We come across corpses

every 100 or 200 yards.

The bodies of civilians that I examined

had bullet holes in their backs.

These people had presumably been fleeing,

and were shot from behind.

From 8:
30 this morning

until 6:
00 this evening,

I stood at the front gate of Ginling College,

as the refugees poured in.

They'd disguised themselves

in every possible way.

Many had cut their hair,

most of them had blackened their faces.

Many were wearing men or boys' clothing,

or even that of old women.

Nanking has no lights, no water,

no telephone,

no telegraph, no city paper, no radio!

We are indeed separated from all of you

by an impenetrable zone.

The Japanese march through the city

in groups of 10 to 20 soldiers

and loot the shops.

They smash open windows and doors,

and take whatever they like.

We ran across a group

of 200 Chinese workers

whom Japanese soldiers have picked up

off the streets of the Safety Zone,

and after having been tied up

are now being driven out of the city.

At the last moment,

thousands of Chinese soldiers

threw away their uniforms and equipment,

looted civilian clothes,

and crowded into the Zone.

I had made up my mind

to bury the Chinese soldiers' clothes.

They had been thrown

onto the campus by the fleeing soldiers.

But when I got to the carpenter's shop

I could see that the gardeners were wiser.

They had burned them,

and thrown the grenades into a pond.

At headquarters,

we found a mob of men

outside that had been disarmed.

About 1,300 in all.

We argued the Japanese

would not shoot disarmed men.

So we went to our staff conference

quite relieved.

We knew that there were a number

of ex-soldiers among them.

But Rabe had been promised by an officer

that very afternoon

that their lives would be spared.

But in a half-hour, we were called back.

The Japanese had come back for them.

The men were lined up

and roped together in groups of about 100

by Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed.

I tried for hours to prevent the Japanese

from marching these men out for execution.

But I failed.

By the light of our headlights,

we watched them march away to their doom.

Not a whimper came from the entire throng.

Our own hearts were lead.

MILLS McCALLUM:
During this time,

we really felt

that we were contending

with the powers of evil.

This memory will remain with me forever.

We could do nothing to avert this tragedy.

Japanese 6th Brigade Operation Order 138.

" Since the defeated enemy soldiers

are believed to be in plain clothes,

"you must arrest any person

who is suspected of being so.

"Regard every adult man up to middle age

as a plain-clothes soldier."

There is no system.

Soldiers seize anyone they suspect.

Calluses on hands

are proof the man is a soldier.

Rickshaw coolies, carpenters,

and other laborers are frequently taken.

I took moving pictures of a group

of about 70 or so Chinese men

being gathered on the road.

And in the picture, the women are kneeling

before the Japanese,

begging for their menfolk.

How many thousands

were mown down by guns? Or bayoneted?

We shall probably never know.

But in many cases,

oil was thrown over the bodies,

and they were burned.

Charred bones tell the story

of many of those tragedies.

Some Japanese soldiers

were fierce and unreasonable.

And many of them

had their bayonets ready for use.

And on not a few of them,

I saw fresh bloodstains.

There seems to be no stop

to the ferocity of the brutes.

At first I tried to be pleasant to them,

to avoid arousing their ire.

But the smile has gradually worn off,

and my stare

is fully as cool and fishy as theirs.

A colonel and his staff called at my office,

and spent an hour trying to discover

where all the additional

disarmed soldiers were.

They insisted that they were hiding

within the Zone,

and that we were responsible

for concealing them.

Miss Vautrin ran to us,

and begged us to claim someone.

She told us if we claimed a man,

we would save a life.

As long as you had a relative,

the Japanese would assume

you were not a soldier.

There were two or three thousand

young men, some soldiers, some not.

We each claimed someone.

All day, I watched her running back

and forth across Ginling in this work.

Sometimes, one gets weary of spirit.

There is so much suffering.

So many in such difficult

and impossible circumstances,

it makes one hopeless.

And when will it end?

I can see little indication of God

in the tremendous wave of cruelty and greed

that has engulfed a big piece of our world.

I wish Emperor Hirohito

could see the mangled bodies

of these simple, Chinese common people,

which his spokesmen

profess to love so much.

Or that I could carry some of the men

and women with legs blown off

into the elegant parlors

of the rich Americans

who fatten on selling war supplies to Japan.

They would probably worry more

about their rugs

than about the wounded.

Religious faith is believing

that good things are worth doing

for their own sake.

Even in a world

that seems overpoweringly evil.

I remain assured in hard experience

that neither by national guns

nor by national gods

will mankind be saved,

but only by the genuine regard

for all members of the human family.

God, comfort the heartbroken

mothers and fathers of innocent sons

who were shot today.

And guard the young women and girls

through the agonizing hours of this night.

Speed the day when war shall be no more.

In Nanking, we had time on our hands

and nothing to do.

So we raped girls.

December 18th, Saturday.

All days seem alike now.

Went to gate at 7:30.

A stream of weary,

wild-eyed women were coming in.

They said

their night had been one of horror.

That again and again,

their homes were visited by soldiers.

Twelve-year-old girls,

If only the thoughtful people of Japan

knew the facts of these days of horror.

We had on the grounds of our college

more than 10,000

women and children refugees.

Every night, the soldiers

would enter our grounds to get the girls,

and every night Miss Vautrin

would try to keep them from the girls.

It seems in several homes

near West Flower Gate,

the soldiers, failing to find young girls,

are using teenage boys.

Tonight, I asked George Fitch

how the day went,

and what progress they had made,

and his reply was,

"It was hell today.

The blackest day of my life."

Certainly it was the same for me.

Tonight, a truck passed

in which there were eight or ten girls.

And as it passed,

they called, "Jo ming! Jo ming!"

"Save our lives!"

Six Japanese

climb over my garden wall

and attempt

to open my gates from the inside.

When I arrive and shine my flashlight

Rate this script:4.0 / 1 vote