Documents on the Rape of Nanking

Timothy Brook, editor. 1999

The book contains various documents concerning the Rape of Nanking, including Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone from 1939. Another set is a series of letters from Dr. Robert Wilson, the only surgeon who remained in Nanking during the invasion. A postwar investigation by th Nanjing District Court put the number of dead during the incident as 295,525, 76% of them men, 22% women and 2% children.

There were 27 non-Chinese in the capital when it fell. The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone was formed before the attack and had a German businessman as its head.

On December 13th (1937) the first Japanese soldiers entered the city. The businessman, John Rabe, wrote the Japanese attache asking to set up some kind of working relationship between the Japanese army and the International Committee. Apparently there was a lot of violence from December 15th to the 21st, and from January 28th until February 3rd which was six weeks after the city actually fell.

The first part of the documents is from the Nanking Safety Zone, and is reprinted from a 1939 work. The letters are from John Rabe to the Japanese attache, Fukuda. Tokuyasu. One of the things he addresses is the problem of Chinese soldiers who threw away their military clothing and tried to blend in as regular civilians and tried to stay in the Safety Zone that had been established by the committee. One of the documents was a translation of a communication from the Japanese commander. One of this statements was "Trust humanitarian attitude of Japanese Army to care for the disarmed Chinese soldiers" which was quite a statement considering what happened.

Things went badly quickly. In a document labeled from Dec. 16th, 1937, the secretary of the group , in "Cases of Disorder by Japanese Soldiers in the Safety Zone" noted six street sweepers killed, people robbed, women raped, more thefts, more rapes an still more rapes. He also notes many of their "police" had been taken away, presumably to be killed.

For those who say the Rape of Nanking/Nanjing never happened, it would be of value for them to read these documents since they site specific incident after specific incident, often with names, of thefts, rapes, and all being done by Japanese soldiers.

These accounts go on for page after page after page. Also included are letters from Dr. Robert Wilson and the "Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East."

The last includes more details about the murders, rapes, etc. and that such things were not limited to Nanking itself but occurred an area with a radius of over sixty miles from Nanking.

The book certainly does not make for pleasant reading, but as a historical document it is of great importance and interest. For anyone who wants extremely specific examples of what happened in Nanking, this is a book you will want to examine.



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