TOP-SECRETCHINESE NATIONALIST DOCUMENTSREVEAL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE
NANKING INCIDENT

Higashinakano Shudo
Professor of Intellectual History
Asia University, Tokyo

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact

Published by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact
Shin Sakuma Bldg., 3F
2-13-14, Nishi-Shimbashi,
Minato-ku, Tokyo, 150-003
Japan
Copyright ©2008 by Higashinakano Shudo
Original Japanese Language edition
published by Seishisha, Tokyo, Japan 2006.
English translation rights
owned by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
All rights reserved, including the rights ofreproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Printed in Japan

Note:
Japanese, Chinese and Korean personal names have been rendered surname first, in
accordance with customs in those countries.
The hanyu pinyin Romanization system has been used to translate Chinese personal and place
names, with the exception of Wade-Giles translations that are still in common use (e.g.
Yangtze River, Chiang Kai-shek).

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: UNCOVERING A TOP-SECRET DOCUMENT§1 What War Means as the authority for the Nanking Massacre§2 Suspicions that What War Means was a work of propaganda§3 Getting hold of a top-secret document§4 What War Means was an anti-Japanese propaganda book after all§5 For a new investigation from the perspective of war propaganda

1

CHAPTER 2: BEFORE THE INSTITUTION OF INTERNATIONAL
15
PROPAGANDA DIVISION§1 From the Second Shanghai Incident to all-out warfare§2 The Nanking dilemma: abandon the city, or defend it to the last man§3 The establishment of the International Propaganda Section of theKuomintang’s Central Propaganda Bureau§4 Dong Xianguang and Zeng Xubai: the men who spearheaded theKuomingang’s CPB
CHAPTER 3: MASTERFUL INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA 25§1 The propaganda operations and anti-enemy propaganda that werethe core of international propaganda§2 Propaganda operations using Christian organizations§3 Propaganda operations using foreign friends§4 A thorough and rigorous screening of articles by foreign journalists§5 The aim of anti-enemy propaganda§6 Anti-enemy propaganda aimed at Japanese forces on the continent§7 Anti-enemy propaganda aimed at Japanese inside and outside JapanCHAPTER 4: THE PRELUDE TO REPORTING THE NANKING51
MASSACRE§1 The inauguration of the International Committee§2 Tea parties and meetings with journalists held in Nanking§3 The number of refugees§4 The site of the Safety Zone
§5 Chinese military installations that did not withdraw from the Safetyi

Zone§6 Defensive problems with the Safety Zone’s fatal defects§7 Those around Rabe, part one — the Americans involved with the
Guomindang government§8 Those around Rabe, part two — the hiding of Chinese soldiers§9 Those around Rabe, part three — why were Chinese soldiers left
behind?
§10 Disarming Chinese soldiers and letting them into the Safety Zone
CHAPTER 5: WERE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER ARTICLES PART77
OF THE CPB’S PROPAGANDA WAR?
§1 The CPB anticipated defeat in the battle for Nanking§2 The CPB and the newspapermen§3 Durdin’s article§4 There was another plan to make Japan pay dearly to occupy Nanking§5 Durdin and Steel report a “massacre in Nanking”§6 What did the other three journalists see?
§7 Smith’s talk
§8 Records of foreigners living in Nanking§9 Bates’ “report” to the American newspapers§10 Those concerned with What War Means get started§11 There was no response to the American articles§12 The CPB recognized that the “Nanking Massacre Story” was afalse report
CHAPTER 6: RE-EXAMINING THE PROPAGANDA BOOK WHAT109
WAR MEANS§1 The role served by Timperley’s foreword§2 The raw voices of Chapters One through Four of What War Means§3 Investigation 1 — the first chapter of What War Means§4 Population distribution up to the fall of Nanking§5 The four-day period after the fall of Nanking§6 Investigation 2 — the second chapter of What War Means§7 Investigation 3 — the third chapter of What War Means§8 Further evidence for a large number of executions§9 The burial detail’s report was revisedii§10 Investigation 4 — the first half of Chapter Four of What War Means
CHAPTER 7: THE CENTRAL PROPAGANDA BUREAU DIDN’T
153
THINK THERE WAS A NANKING MASSACRE§1 Chinese soldiers after the city’s fall viewed in the light ofinternational wartime law§2 Ironclad rules that remain unchanged even today§3 How should we regard Chinese soldiers who discarded theiruniforms?
§4 The CPB examined the legality of the Japanese army’s executions§5 The CPB erases Bates’ two sentences§6 The government of Chiang Kai-shek continued to remove theinsinuation of Japan’s unlawful execution of 40,000§7 Bates himself repudiated the claim of Japan’s unlawful execution of
40,000§8 Further evidence that the CPB considered the executions to be lawful
CHAPTER 8: THE TOP-SECRET DOCUMENTS WERE A
TREASURE TROVE — WITH AN EPILOGUE 173§1 Taking the viewpoint of propaganda warfare§2 The basis for the Tokyo Tribunal was “the statements of witnesses”§3 The witnesses who should have appeared at the Tokyo Tribunal did
not do so§4 The three American witnesses§5 Problems with Bates§6 Upon opening the treasure trove that was the top-secret documents
BIBLIOGRAPHY

183

AUTHOR PROFILE

191

iii

iv

CHAPTER ONE:UNCOVERING A TOP-SECRET DOCUMENT

They say that it is darkest at the base of the lighthouse, and it is true.
In writing about the Nanking Incident, one would think that all the historical
documents have already been used up, but the principal documents havebeen left out. What I had overlooked was documents of the Guomindang’sCentral Propaganda Bureau (hereafter CPB), who took on the duties ofconducting propaganda warfare against Japan during the Sino–Japanese War(1937–1945).
Due to the military weakness on the part of Chiang Kai-shek’s
Guomindang forces at the time, they began putting all their efforts into
conducting a war of propaganda starting just before the fall of Nanking on
Dec. 13, 1937. The CPB considered that, if one excludes the use of militaryforce in the prosecution of this war, propaganda becomes one of the prime
factors in deciding the victory. Therefore, their watchword became“propaganda takes precedence over tactics.” I wondered if there were notsomewhere to be found documents intended to make Japan look bad andisolate Japan internationally — documents critical of the Japanese army —and I exhausted every means to find them.
After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which burst forth on July 7,
1937, provoking the Second Shanghai Incident on Aug. 13, there is no way
they could have missed the Japanese army in Nanking with the fall of thecapital on Dec. 23. If, perchance, there had been some faults in the Japanesearmy in Nanking, what could it have been? They would certainly havedrawn more attention to it, and worked harder to get exacting information
about the situation.
In 2003, I decided to search for these records in historical documents
repositories in Taipei. It was about that time that I started to get the feelingthat the book What War Means, which is one of the most important
authoritative sources on the Nanking Massacre, was in fact a work ofpropaganda produced by the CPB.

§1 What War Means as the authority for the Nanking Massacre
According to the verdict of the Tokyo Trials, there was a massacre in
Nanking perpetrated by the Japanese army after the city’s fall, with thenumber of the slain counted as several tens of thousands, over a hundredthousand, or over two hundred thousand, and it was compared to the Nazi
Holocaust. Nonetheless, in China, where there would have to have been
many who were its victims, and in Japan, where there would have to havebeen many who had been involved in its perpetration, and even among theAllies who had decreed Japan’s guilt, it was different than the Holocaust: fora long time, no one ever spoke of the Nanking Massacre. It wasn’t in the
textbooks, either. The Nanking Massacre had been judged as happened, butthereafter it was not taken seriously as a historical truth.
If one reads A Detailed History of Japan, published in 1975, all thatappears is:
Therein, on July 7, 1937, after the establishment of the cabinetof Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, conflict broke out between theJapanese and Chinese armies on the outskirts of Beijing (the Marco
Polo Bridge Incident). Prime Minister Konoe declared his intent thatthe hostilities be confined and should not spread, but the military
actions of local forces caused the conflict to widen. At the end of
September, the Guomindang joined forces with the Communist Party
to create a united front to counter the Japanese army. Confronted bythis resistance, the Japanese threw a large force into the fray andexpanded the battle lines, but Prime Minister Konoe, unable to grasp
the opportunity to bring things under control, announced in January of1938 that “we will not deal with the Nationalist government of ChiangKai-shek.” 1
There is no record of the Nanking Massacre here. Now, however, it appearsin every textbook published in Japan. What follows are the particulars of
how this has come about.
It was less than half a century after the Tokyo Trials (in 1972) that
relations were reestablished between China and Japan. That same year,
Honda Katsuichi published Travels in China. Honda, a journalist with the
Asahi newspaper, had made a trip to China the previous year and written aseries of articles called “Travels in China” for his paper; the book was acompilation of his articles. It became a bestseller and had considerable
repercussions.
“My purpose in going to China,” said Honda, “was, as I had alreadyinformed the Chinese when I applied for permission [to visit], to make clear
the Chinese viewpoint on the actions of the Japanese soldiers who had
1

A Detailed History of Japan, Tokyo: Yamakawa Publishing Co., 1975.
2

fought in China during the War — in particular, putting emphasis on any
Japanese acts of brutality, visiting the actual sites of the brutalization andwalking around and hearing first-hand the voices of the surviving victims.”[Emphasis in the original] 2
For his book, Honda collected testimony from survivors on thequestion of whether the Japanese army actually committed brutalities during
the Sino–Japanese War.
The first time they read of “brutalities committed by the Japanesearmy” written from the viewpoint of the Chinese, it came as a considerable
shock to the Japanese people, who have achieved a post-war restoration
powered by a high level of economic growth and who are enjoying peace
and prosperity.
In point of fact, at that time, only 35 years had passed since the fall of
Nanking. We had among us many people who had participated in the battle
for Nanking. A great number of people who had no idea just couldn’t
believe it, and wondered if it might not be part truth and part lie. Moreover,even though evidence to back up the stories of Chinese eyewitnesses were
scarce, to be certain, Japanese hearts were pierced by the Chinese people’s
pathos-inducing accounts of “brutalities committed by the Japanese army.”
The next year (1973), the rediscovery of an English book written by
those charging that there had been a massacre, What War Means: The
Japanese Terror in China, seemed to present some authority to support theclaims of a massacre.
The book, published in New York and London in 1938, was put
together by Harold Timperley, a Shanghai-based correspondent for the
British newspaper Manchester Guardian, who compiled anonymous
manuscripts from European and American residents of Nanking. It was abook that was made with the intention of expressing the misery of war, andin particular it took up the issue of Japanese atrocities committed in Nanking.
To be sure, the independent, third-party perspective of Europeans andAmericans can be felt by those who read this unique book.
The contributors to the book were anonymous, but letters and“memos” from Americans who supposedly saw the whole thing from before
through after the fall of Nanking primarily accuse the Japanese army ofmurder, rape, looting, and arson.
What made the evaluation of What War Means rise by leaps andbounds was afterwards, when it was made known that two of the2

Honda Katsuichi. Chûgoku no tabi [Travels in China]. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun (Asahi
Bunko, 1972, p.10.
3

contributors were Professor Miner Bates and the missionary George Fitch.
Bates, in particular, had appeared at the Tokyo Trials, where he was one ofthose who accused the Japanese army of atrocities. The evidence he gave in
the Tokyo Trials was clearly identical to his accounts in What War Means(which came out only seven months after the fall of Nanking). This became
a novel way of presenting evidence supporting the verdict of the Tokyo
Trials.
Professor Bates, a famous missionary, taught at the prestigious
Nanking University. One would think that there was no way he would
commit perjury, and no reason for him to lie, so there was no need to verify
the content of What War Means.
With What War Means as the authority, books claiming a massacre in
Nanking came out one after the other. One example is The Road to Nanjing[sic.] (1986) by Honda Katsuichi, who collected the testimony of survivors
who had personal experiences of the Nanking massacre. Another is
Shimosato Masaki’s A Collection of Records Related to the Nanking
Incident Kyoto Division (1989), edited primarily from soldiers’ diaries andmemoirs. Yet another example is A History of the Battle for Nanking andCollected Documents of the Battle for Nanking (both 1989), produced by the
Nanking Battle Historical Editorial Committee, based principally on
testimony of people connected with the Japanese army and diaries of thosein the field.
In 1992, the Nanking Incident Investigative Research Committee
published Collected Documents of the Nanking Incident, America-relatedMaterials, further bolstering the claims within What War Means. This bookalso contains the American newspaper articles reporting the Nanking
Massacre which were published three days after the fall of the city, and thecorrespondence between the Shanghai-based journalist Timperley, whopublished What War Means, and the Nanking-resident missionary Professor
Bates.
By now, the contents of What War Means have come to be considered
immutable truths that are incapable of being brought into question. Reports
by Europeans and Americans at the scene were thrust under the noses of theJapanese as truths that had been unknown to them. The accusation was that
the Nanking Massacre had been made known to the world when it happened,at the fall of the city, while the Japanese knew nothing.
“NHK Special ‘World of Images’ Japan II,” a program featuring the
Nanking Massacre, was televised in 1996, re-broadcast in 2003, and later
released on CD-ROM. It showed newsreel footage from Paramount Newsand concluded with the commentary, “the so-called Nanking Massacre came4to be a problem known to the Japanese only after the post-war Tokyo
Trials.”The Japanese had not been apprised of the truth to that point, and thesocietal trend of accepting that there had indeed been a Nanking Massacre
spread. The verdict of the Tokyo Trials (lending a sense of truth in name but
not in substance) went on to impress on the Japanese the belief that theMassacre had, in fact, taken place.
Since all of this happened, the Nanking Incident — which had notappeared at all in the 37 years after Japan’s defeat in Japanese historicaltextbooks — has appeared in virtually every historical textbook published inJapan.
For example, a junior high-school Japanese history textbook
published in 2001 by Nihon Shoseki said:
Hostilities erupted on July 7, 1937, between the Chinese and Japanesearmies at the Marco Polo Bridge on the outskirts of Beijing. Without aformal declaration of war, Japan began an all-out war against China(the Sino-Japanese War). At year’s end, the Japanese army occupied
the capital city, Nanking. It is said that at this instance some 200,000
Chinese prisoners and civilians were murdered, and acts of violence
and looting were visited upon the Chinese. Because of this (theNanking Incident), Japan bore harsh international criticism. 3
A footnote to this entry says, “Most Japanese didn’t know of this incident
until after the war ended.”
A history textbook published in China offers:
When the Japanese army occupied Nanking, they exacted a bloody
slaughter on the citizens of the city, committing offenses thatblackened the heavens.... In the six weeks after Nanking’s fall, theybutchered over 300,000 civilians who didn’t even have side arms andsoldiers who had abandoned their weapons. 4
There is even a Nanking Massacre Memorial Hall in China,
inaugurated in 1985, which was built after a worldwide solicitation for
donations, much as had been done with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

3
4

Jubior High-School Japanese History Text Book , Tokyo: Nihon Shoseki, 2001.
A History of China, vol. 4 (Beijin: People’s Education Publishers, 1997)5

This has been the flow of events in Japan surrounding the Nanking
Incident over the 60-odd years since Japan’s defeat in World War II. What
War Means became the nucleus — or perhaps it became the filler — anddebate, writing, and theorizing on the Nanking Massacre have grown. Had
there been no What War Means, would the Nanking Massacre have made it
into the textbooks? Such are the manifest ramifications of this book.

§2 Suspicions that What War Means was a work of propaganda
From the particulars already laid out above, one can say with certainty
that there are those who charge that there was a Nanking Massacre — somuch so, in fact, that they said that the Nanking Massacre was made known
to the whole world immediately after the city’s fall. But wait a minute. To be
sure, after the fall of Nanking, American newspapers published accounts of
the “Rape of Nanking,” and seven months after the city fell, writings ofAmerican and European who claimed to have witnessed the brutality ofJapanese soldiers in Nanking were published in What War Means. Therefore,
there is no mistake in making the claim that people came to publicize
worldwide the Nanking Massacre from the time of the city’s fall itself.
Be that as it may, however, a matter may be “made known” — but theissue of whether the substance of that “made known” matter is true or false
is a completely different problem. To be honest, I, too, had been dragged
along by the strange power of “the Nanking Massacre was publicized to thewhole world at the time of the fall of the city,” and didn’t clearly see thedistinction of substance vs. concept. Researchers find themselves in aposition of clear distinctions, and have to academically verify historical
records that have been uncovered.
With research conducted in recent years, it has become obvious toeveryone the Nanking Massacre can not be conclusively identified as ahistorical truth. For example, if one compares the incidents described in
What War Means to other historical documents to verify them (as describedin Chapter Six), problems and contradictions appear one after the other. In
addition, with a careful reading of the “Daily Reports of Serious Injuries to
Civilians” that are collected as an appendix in What War Means, as laid out
herein in Chapter Five, what appears are clearly nothing but hearsay
accounts, and there is virtually nothing to confirm them.
What is more, it becomes clear that the people who were most deeply
involved in What War Means were not in fact working as an independent,
third-party. According to A Cyclopedia of Recent Foreign Visitors to China,
6the book’s editor, Timperley, is listed as a “adviser” with the Central
Propaganda Bureau. Suzuki Akira, in his New Edition: Illusions of the“Nanking Massacre” (1999) and Kitamura Minoru’s The Politics of Nanjing[sic.]: An Impartial Investigation (2001), both make this clear. Suzuki
concludes that the Guomindang CPB in the capital of Hankou “exerted alltheir efforts … and they were successful.” 5 Professor Kitamura, citing theauthority of Zeng Xubai: Autobiographyi 6 and Wang Lingxiao’s Research
on KMT’s News Administration Policy, argues that What War Means was “awork of propaganda.” In his Autobiography, published post-war, Zeng bears
witness that the CPB “paid out money, requested that [Timperley] write abook, and succeeded in having it published.” 7
The next item makes it even more clear. According to an editorial
note in the January, 1940, issue of China Monthly, the wife of Miner Bates,
the man who contributed to What War Means and appeared at the Tokyo
Trials, was a close personal friend of Soong Ch'ing-ling, the wife of ChiangKai-shek.
Both Timperly and Bates had connections of some sort to the
Guomindang — What War Means was not a book published independently
by a third party with no connections to the events.
More and more, suspicions are coming to the surface that What War
Means was actually a work of propaganda.
Thinking practically, as long as doubts and contradictions remain
concerning a given matter, one can not simply declare that it is a fact. It is
unforgivable that it is being published in textbooks from which children
learn. It would be difficult to erase in a day words that are in all the
textbooks the Japanese government certifies, however, and that have alreadyseared themselves in the Japanese consciousness. Even if one points out
one’s doubts, they would be rejected as mere conjecture. To make the truth
clear, one must understand what kind of book What War Means —the bookthat is both nucleus and filler of the Nanking Massacre — truly is; evidence
to prove that it is a product of Guomindang propaganda is necessary.
I reflected on the saying about darkness at the base of the lighthouse.
Somewhat belatedly, I realized that I had to look for the historical
documents of the CPB from that time.
5

Suzuki Akira, New Edition: Illusions of the “Nanking Massacre”, Tokyo: Asuka
Shinsha, 1999, p. 289.
6
Zeng Xubai was a professor at Nanking University, and later was head of theInternational Propaganda Activities Division of the CPB.
7
Kitamura Minoru, The Politics of Nanjing [sic.]: An Impartial Investigation (2001),
Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 2007, pp.30, 31.
7

§3 Getting hold of a top-secret document
The CPB documents I was searching for were resting soundly in the
Guomindang Historical Documents Archive in Taipei. According to
Wartime Chinese Reportage by Cheng Qiheng (1944), in the CPB were six
sections (the Regular Propaganda Section, International Propaganda Section,
Art Propaganda Section, Publication Propaganda Section, Newspaper
Operations Section, and the General Affairs Section) and four offices (theSpecialists’ Office, Supervisory Office, Publication Review Office, and the
Personal Affairs Office). There were nine other attached organs including acentral news agency and photography office. One of the documents of theInternational Propaganda Section was An Overview of Propaganda
Operations of the International Information Division of the Central
Propaganda Bureau of the Nationalist Party: from 1938 to April 1941,
which has ties to What War Means. It was stamped at the head “Top Secret.”
It was the first time that I had seen or held in my hands this highly
confidential document.
The photograph on the next page is that document’s first page. It is
handwritten, character by character, and typical for the time, was reproducedby mimeograph.
First, take a look at the diagram of the makeup of the International
Propaganda Department. The chart shows six sections (the Editorial Section,
External Affairs Section, Anti-Enemy [i.e., Counter-Intelligence] Section,
Photographic Section, the International Broadcasting Section, and theGeneral Affairs Section) and two offices (the Broadcasting Office and theDocuments Office).
Three domestic organs — the Shanghai Residential Office, theChengdu Editorial Committee Office, and the Overseas Telegraph Office —are attached to the Chinese international intelligence operations, while theoverseas offices listed are the Hong Kong, London, and New York
Residential Offices.
When exactly did the CPB begin conducting its international
propaganda operations? The activities of the various departments are allreported in this top-secret document. If one looks at the “Summary ofForeign Section Operations,” which reports on the administration of contacts
with foreign special correspondents and foreign embassies, one finds: “On
Nov. 1, 1937, this Division [the International Propaganda Division] ordered
the opening of an office in Hankou.” In “Summary of Anti-Enemy Section
Operations,” one finds: “On December 1, 1937, operations began.”

8

The CPB’s top-secret Overview of Propaganda Operations of the International Propaganda
Division of the Central Propaganda Bureau (1941 mimeograph). It is imprinted “Top
Secret” in the top-right corner. Preserved in the Guomindang Party Archives in Taipei,
Taiwan.

Thus we find that the operations of the various sections began at
different times, but they all appear to have begun about a month before thefall of Nanking, which occurred on Dec. 23, 1937. This top-secret document— An Overview of Propaganda Operations of the Central Propaganda
Bureau — holds classified accounts that record the details of all of thediverse propaganda operations conducted by the offices of the International
Propaganda Division over the three-year period of 1938 to April of 1941.
We can get a glimpse of the nature of CPB meetings by looking at theSummary of Propaganda Operations (hereafter [Oral] Summary of
Propaganda Operations), which were booklets in which the oral reports
from the executive committees were recorded.
It must be noted that this summary, also housed in Taipei’s
Guomindang Historical Documents Archive, are different reports than the
Overview of Propaganda Operations of the CPB. One report begins:
Chairman, comrades —9

Written accounts of ten months of propaganda operations since
the Fifth National Convention of the Central Executive Committee
have been presented under a separate cover, but we will here present
to you the basics of these operations in an oral report. As concerns theconcrete details of the various types of propaganda operations: before
discussing each of the articles, we would like to apprise you of thegeneral disposition of the current status of propaganda operations.
First, we feel that the “combative nature” of propaganda
operations [conducted] since the Resistance [began] is growing
particularly strong. Propaganda hitherto has been a type of warfare,but the combative nature of propaganda operations only grows higher
in times of war.… Second, we believe that the since the Second-stage
Resistance, the nature of the organization of propaganda operations
has become particularly important. 8

The (Oral) Summary of Propaganda Operations (1938). This document, highlighting thenature of the conflict in propoganda efforts, is preserved in the Guomindang Party Archives
in Taipei. The line was placed by this author
8(Oral) Summary of Propaganda Operations, 1938. Taipei: Guomindang Historical
Documents Archive., p.1.
10This was the state of things at the assembly in November of 1938,
almost a year after the fall of Nanking. How about it? With the usage of“you” in that first paragraph, can’t you just feel the breath of those people
back then, huddling together over their propaganda plots? It is as if one canfeel their enthusiasm for propaganda when they use the term “combative
nature” and make the catchphrase “propaganda has priority over tactics.”§4 What War Means was an anti-Japanese propaganda book after all
As I have said, I went looking for historical documents of the CPB to
determine whether What War Means was or was not actually a work ofpropaganda.
Inside the top secret document I found, in a section titled “Summaryof Anti-Enemy Operations,” the heading, “I. Editorial production of a bookfor anti-enemy propaganda” (emphasis mine), and under that heading, “1.
Books.” The following is that section, which makes it all clear:
1. Books
There were two pieces of anti-enemy propaganda publicationsedited and produced by this Division [the International
Propaganda Division].
A. Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners
This book was written by the famous English journalist
Timperley. 9 The book records detailed accounts ofheinous acts — rape, arson, looting — and a breakdown
in military discipline and circumstances of depraved
human conditions after the enemy entered Nanking in
Dec. 13, 1937.
In Section “A,” the name “Timperley” is written in phonetically in
Chinese characters. Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners was
published in English translation as What War Means. What War Means,edited by Timperley, was one of the two books that were “anti-enemy
propaganda publications edited and produced by this Division [theInternational Propaganda Division].” The other book mentioned in “1”9Written in hanzi: 田伯烈; in Pinyin, this is Tiánbàliè.
11

above is the here omitted subsection “B,” identified as The Offspring of God
Are in China, said to have been written by an Italian. (See page 61 for thisentry.)
Some may object and say that “anti-enemy propaganda publicationsedited and produced by this Division” could simply mean that theInternational Propaganda Division oversaw the translation of a work into
English. To make doubly certain, let me add that both the English edition ofWhat War Means and the Chinese edition of Japanese Atrocities Witnessedby Foreigners were published in July of 1938. Given the fact that they were
published at the same time, and that, as I already mentioned, Zeng Xubai
recalled that the CPB “paid out money, requested that [Timperley] write abook, and succeeded in having it published,” objections that they are
different books simply cannot stand.
Given all of the above, it is confirmed that What War Means was the“propaganda book” that was produced by the CPB. What War Means and its
appended data, which have for a long time been the basis of “the Nanking
Massacre,” have to now be viewed from the position that they are wartime
propaganda.

§5 For a new investigation from the perspective of war propaganda
Thus have I fulfilled my intentions in unearthing that top-secretdocument. So that there will be no misunderstandings, let me state that I am
not saying that just because What War Means was a work of propaganda
produced by the CPB, we can immediately say that there was no Nanking
Massacre. Accordingly, at that point I decided to put the top-secretdocument aside, and thereafter intended to analyze other historical
documents with the added viewpoint of wartime propaganda.
In January of 2003, as I was again going over the top-secret document
I had gotten hold of the first time I went to Taiwan, by chance something
strange caught my attention. Even though depictions of what was called“murder after murder” appeared frequently in What War Means, as I read theafore-mentioned “Summary of Anti-Enemy Section Operations,” I realizedthat in the description that summarizes What War Means, the word “murder”— to say nothing of the word “massacre” — does not appear at all! Whowould summarize What War Means, and yet not mention murder andmassacre as they appear so prominently in the book? Wouldn’t it be only
natural to mention them?

12Even if I carefully went over the 43-page copy I made of theOverview of Propaganda Operations of the CPB the first time I went to
Taiwan, I could find no mention of “murder” or “massacre” at Nanking. If
there had been a massacre in Nanking, it would only be natural that it would
be mentioned in this top-secret document, as it would get considerable
attention for propaganda purposes in every section of the CPB — but it was
simply not to be found. It was very strange. What could this mean? I had
become caught up in yet another problem and inconsistency.
Thereupon, to unravel this mystery, I once again made my way to
Taiwan. The first time, through the courtesy of the Guomindang Historical
Documents Archives, I was able to copy the 43 pages of the document a bit
at a time; since the second time I went, however, even though these are
documents available to the public, I was not able to get copies. Instead, I had
to copy them out by hand. Since it took considerable time to copy the
documents longhand, the third time I went to Taiwan, I prevailed upon aperson I knew in Taiwan to input the text into a computer. This was how I
got a complete copy of the CPB’s top-secret Overview of Propaganda
Operations of the CPB.
I had gotten hold of a priceless historical document. While I wasdigesting it, I set to work to do something that I had not tried before: I
looked at the previous historical documents once again — this timeinterpreting them from a new viewpoint. This book is the result of thatinvestigation and analysis.
Finally, I would like to point out the distinctive feature of the topsecret Overview of Propaganda Operations of the CPB, which is the focusof this book.
First, this is a contemporary document from the period whichsummarizes three years’ worth of operations conducted by the International
Propaganda Division of the CPB, based on the CPB’s use of every possiblemeans to counter the Japanese army. Second, this is different from private
memoirs or diaries. This is an official record of the CPB which at the time
was at war with my country, and which exerted its full force against Japan.
Third, this was a secret, internal report that was written confidentially andnever intended to be released to the outside.

13

14

CHAPTER TWO:
BEFORE THE INSTITUTION OF INTERNATIONALPROPAGANDA DIVISION

After the fall of Shanghai on Nov. 12, 1937, with Chiang Kaishek’s decision that the capital of Nanking would be defended to the lastman, it was obvious to everyone that China’s Nationalist Army wasgoing to lose. If Chiang Kai-shek could draw the Japanese army into
China’s interior and use the vast territories of China themselves as aweapon, however, by fighting a sustained war of attrition against theJapanese he might not lose — even if he couldn’t win. He decided to
employ that strategy, so he launched a propaganda war with the statedintent that “propaganda takes precedence over tactics.” To make thisfully operational, with the forming of the Second United Front of the
Guomindang and the Communists just before the battle for Nanking,the International Propaganda Division was organized within the
Guomindang’s Central Propaganda Bureau with personnel from boththe Guomindang and the Communist Party.

§1 From the Second Shanghai Incident to all-out warfare
In the 1930s, Japan’s neighbor China — full as it was with military
factions — was in a state of continuous civil war. It was not a unified nation
as China is today. Among the factions, the most powerful was Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang. Militarily, Chiang set out to unify the country with thenorthern expedition to bring down the other factions. He also went after Mao
Zedong’s Communist Party.
In 1934, Mao, hotly pursued, began the migration to Yenan, where it
would be easy to obtain needed resources and supplies from the Soviet
Union. This flight became famously known as “The Long March.” ChiangKai-shek was in a position to crush the Communists once and for all, but heheld back. In Mao: The Unknown Story, authors Jun Chan and Jon Halliday
say that Chiang agreed to allow the Communists to continue to exist toensure the safety of his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who was living in Moscow
at the time.
Starting in 1935, Mao began calling for an expansion of “the people’s
war against Japan” and for the implementation of a campaign of resistanceagainst Japan, and there were complaints that Chiang should redirect the15

target of his attacks from the Communists to the Japanese. Chiang, however,
had no plans to engage in an all-out war against Japan. Then, something
happened that totally turned everything around. On Dec. 12, 1936, ChiangKai-shek was taken captive in Xi’an by Zhang Xueliang in what became
known as the Xi’an Incident. After about two weeks of captivity, Chiang
agreed to end the civil war against the Communists and give full priority to
the war with Japan. He was then released.
Why did Chiang agree to place the war against Japan over theextermination of the Communists? That has long been a puzzling question.
The explanation for this, found in Mao: The Unknown Story, came from anextensive reading of letters and related documents from Chinese militaryleaders now kept in a historical archive in Moscow.
According to the authors’ finding, Stalin was concerned about Japan
moving north toward the Soviet border, and he wanted Chiang to engage theJapanese army and draw them into the heart of China and away from hisborder. Chiang, held captive in Xi’an, heard that Stalin was willing to agree
to return his son to China, so he agreed to give priority to fighting theJapanese.
Seven months after the Xi’an Incident, on June 7, 1937, at the Marco
Polo Bridge north of Beijing, shots were fired at the Japanese army.
Following the Boxer Protocol, the Japanese were drilling with blankammunition. It was an attack by the Chinese 29th Army. The attack
continued for a second wave, and then a third. The Japanese army tried torespond to the attacks with self-control, but at 5:30 in the morning of the 8th,
the fourth attack came; it had been seven hours since the first. With a clear
field of vision in the early morning, the Japanese army finally counterattacked after the fourth assault.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was followed by the Guanganmen
Incident, the Tongzhou Massacre, and so on. The incident in Tongzhou isparticularly notable. On June 29, in Tongzhou, east of Beijing, Chinese
soldiers rose up without warning and massacred the 300 Japanese residents
living in the area. When it was all over, the bodies of men with their eyes
gouged out and their organs spilled, and the nude bodies of women who had
been stabbed to death, were scattered all about. It was a pitiful scene.
Japan had a policy of not expanding the sphere of conflict, however.
Chiang Kai-shek, too, had no plans to move toward all-out warfare between
China and Japan. To that end, peace talks were scheduled to take place inShanghai on Aug. 9. In Shanghai, however, there was an incident in which
members of the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps shot and killed a Japanesenaval lieutenant junior grade named Ôyama Isao and another man.
16

Shanghai at the time was divided; one part was “Shanghai city” andwas governed by Chiang Kai-shek, and the other part was the “foreign
concession,” which was territory governed by foreigners. There was aFrench concession, and a co-governed group of British, American, Italian,and Japanese concessions. Americans, Europeans, and Japanese lived inthose concessions, and there were troop detachments from each country inplace to defend each concession.
According to the 1938 edition of the China Yearbook, there were1,700 American troops, 2,500 British troops, 2,500 French troops, and 770
Italian troops. To protect the 30,000 Japanese residents of Shanghai, there
were but 2,500 Japanese naval troops. Between Aug. 13 and 19, 20,000
Japanese residents returned to Japan, but there were 10,000 who stayed. The
naval detachment was reinforced from Japan, bringing their total strength up
to 5,000.
Chiang Kai-shek had already given the order for widespreadmobilization on July 12, ordering the Central Army 10th Division into
Shanghai on Aug. 9, before the Shanghai Incident took place. Three days
later — on Aug. 12 — the total Chinese forces in Shanghai numbered
50,000. That was not all. Under the leadership of German advisors, theChinese had launched a program to train a corps of picked troops andconstruct a series of strong bunkers. Preparations for war in Shanghai were
nearly complete.
Chiang still was wary of expanding the scope of the war, however.
Gen. Zhang Zhizhong, commandant of the Shanghai-Nanking MilitaryDistrict, requested permission to attack the Japanese army, but he wasrefused. Disregarding his instructions from Chiang Kai-shek, Gen. Zhang
went ahead with his assault on the Japanese. On Aug. 8, it became an all-out
war between China and Japan. According to Mao: The Untold Story, the one
who took advantage of the situation to expand into full-fledged war between
the two countries was none other than Gen. Zhang Zhizhong. This central
figure in the Guomindang military was, in fact, a Communist Party spy
hiding in their midst.

§2 The Nanking dilemma: abandon the city, or defend it to the last man
The Japanese forces in Shanghai were being hard pressed. This was
because the Chinese army firmly held their positions by means of their
bunkers and trenches. At this, the Japanese struck at Shanghai from thesouth. On Nov. 5, the Japanese 10th Army, dispatched from Japan in haste,17

landed at the port of Hangzhou, seven kilometers south of Nanking. Struck
from behind by the Japanese assault, the Chinese army was routed. The
Japanese were finally able to take Shanghai on Nov. 12. The battle caused ahuge number of Japanese and Chinese fatalities.
The day before Shanghai fell — Nov. 11 — Chiang Kai-shek was indiscussions in the capital of Nanking with generals Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi,
He Yingqin, Tang Shengzhi, Xu Bingchang, and the German advisor
Alexander von Falkenhausen. The question was whether Nanking should beabandoned or defended to the last man.
Gen. Li Zongren is recorded in volume one of Collected Documents of
the Battle for Nanking as arguing, “I am opposed to the defense of Nanking.
The reason for this is strategic in nature. Nanking is isolated from other
cities, and there is potential for it being surrounded by the enemy on threesides. What’s more, the Yangzi River blocks any retreat to the north. If wepost troops who have been defeated already in that isolated city to protect it,it would be difficult to hope for a sustained defense.”
The German advisor strongly agreed, “forcefully arguing” theabandonment of Nanking and that there was no reason to make a pointless
sacrifice. Many were in favor of this position, but Gen. Tang Shengzhi
suddenly made an impassioned plea to defend the city. At this, Chiang swore,“we will defend it with our bodies and our blood — we will live or die with
Nanking,” and he appointed Tang commandant in command of the defenseof Nanking. It was decided: Nanking would be defended to the last man.

§3 The establishment of the International Propaganda Section of the
Guomindang’s Central Propaganda Bureau
With the decision to defend Nanking to the last man, it was clear to allthat the Guomindang was going to be defeated. In truth, however, although
the decision had been made to defend the city, five days later a secretdecision was made to abandon Nanking. Orders were issued to the effect thatwithin three days from Nov. 16, preparations must be made for a withdrawalof all officials.
Nonetheless, preparations for the an ambush of the Japanese forces
made by Gen. Tang, as commandant in charge of the defense of Nanking,proceeded apace. Chiang Kai-shek took the view of making the most of theadvice of his German advisors to “use the area as a weapon,” drawing theJapanese into the Chinese interior. And there was another thing. With his

18

Photograph by Central News Agency photojournalist Wang Xiaoting in the Oct.4,
1937, issue of the American magazine Life.

policy of “propaganda has precedence over tactics,” Chiang had set out on a
global strategy lending serious attention to propaganda warfare.
The above photograph appeared one month before the fall of Shanghaiin the Oct. 4, 1937, issue of Life magazine. This photograph, which
propagandized the brutality of the Japanese army, had a strong impact on theAmerican populace. It was chosen by the readers as one of the top ten news
images for the year 1937. Most people would probably have never thoughtthat this image was a propaganda photo, but I would like to direct the readers
to the book, Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking
Incident, which I co-authored with Kobayashi Susumu and Fukunaga
Shinjirô. This was, in fact, a piece of the propaganda war. Dong Xianguang,
who would later be chief of the CPB, wrote about this photograph in The
Autobiography of Dong Xianguang. He said:
The military situation in Shanghai was steadily growing worse,
and we gradually moved our propaganda operations from Shanghai to
Nanking.… Working with Xiao Tongzi, I was able to establish aparticularly effective photography group in the Central News Agency.
At its inauguration, there was only one photographer working in thisgroup — a pro news photographer named Wang Xiaoting. Many of
19the photographs he had taken had been used in newspapers all over
the world. In particular, his photograph of the lone, crying baby sitting
amidst the ruins of a bombed train station during the battle for
Shanghai was the most highly-praised masterpiece of that groupthroughout the Sino–Japanese War. 10
According to Wartime Chinese Reportage, from 1926, this Central
News Agency, which was subordinate to the Guomindang Central Party
Bureau, was China’s largest news agency. As a detached arm of the CPB,
the Central News Agency photographic group was certain of the tremendous
effect their photographs were having. They labored carefully to manufacture
photographs to draw attention to and criticism on the Japanese forces. Theirmasterpiece was Wang Xiaoting’s photo.
The “Summary of Editorial Operations” section of the top-secret
Overview of Propaganda Operations of the CPB says the following:
Upon receiving his orders, Deputy Director Dong Xianguangtransferred from Shanghai to Nanking and took on the burden of[overseeing] the Fifth Board, realizing the necessity of external
propaganda.… In the middle of the same month [that is, November,
1937] … he tightened the scope of the Fifth Board and turned it into
the International Propaganda Division and attached the [new] division
to the Central Propaganda Bureau. 11
The middle of November, 1937, was when Shanghai fell. This “Fifth
Board” was the board inside the Nationalist Political and Military Affairs
Committee which managed international propaganda, and Dong Xianguang
became its deputy director two months before Nanking’s fall. It was Dong
himself, having a high opinion of external propaganda, who suggested thereworking of the Fifth Board into the Int’l Propaganda Division.
In his Autobiography, Dong said this:In a large-scale restructuring, the government abolished theFifth Board, and international propaganda operations were integrated
into the Propaganda Bureau, which was attached to the central Party
10

Dong Xianguang. Dong Xianguang zizhuan [The autobiography of Dong Xianguang].
Translated by Zeng Xubai. Taipei: Xinsheng Publishers, 1973 p.75.
11
An Overview of Propaganda Operations of the International Bureau : from 1938 toApril 1941, Taipei: Guomindang Historical Documents Archive. pp.23, 24.
20

office. As the deputy director of the Propaganda Bureau, I oversaw
the International Propaganda Department with Zeng Xubai in charge.
During the eight-year resistance [against the Japanese], many
Propaganda Bureau directors came and went, but I stayed in my job
until the very end, completely without change. 12
It is believed that the reason for many directors of the CPB coming
and going was that there was a power struggle in the CPB between the
Guomindang and the Communist Party. Incidentally, the first director of the
CPB was Shao Lishi, a Communist Party spy. Given this situation, Dong
Xianguang of the Guomindang, as the deputy director, was the real key
figure in the CPB until the war’s end. He and Zeng Xubai were central inrunning the international propaganda war, and they were entrusted with
China’s hope to “surround the enemy with propaganda warfare and take thefinal victory.” 13§4 Dong Xianguang and Zeng Xubai: the men who spearheaded theGuomindang’s CPB
We need to look at Dong Xianguang’s Autobiography to find out
more about Dong, deputy director of the CPB, and Zeng Xubai, the directorof the International Propaganda Division. Dong was born in Ningbo,
Zhejiang province, in 1887. Chiang Kai-shek, who was born in the same
year, was also from the same province — and that’s not all. When Chiang
was a middle school student at Longjin Academy in his hometown provinceof Fenghua, he was an English instructor at the school.
He was born into a Christian family, and was educated at the theUniversity of Missouri and then attended graduate school at Columbia. After
working as a correspondent at the New York Evening Post and other places,
he became editor of the Peking Daily News (an English-language
newspaper) in 1913. In 1926, he became editor of the Chinese paper Dalu
Bao (The Content) in Tianjin. After that, he served as chairman of the China
Press, China Times, and Da Wan Bao (China Evening News) in Shanghai.
After the war, he served the Weng Wenhao cabinet in Taiwan as Director ofNewspapers. In 1953, he became ambassador to Japan, and later was madeambassador to the United States. He died on Jan. 9, 1972, at the age of 84.
12
13

Dong, op. cit., p.77.
(Oral) Summary of Propaganda Operations. p.3.
21

He was a devout Christian, of whom it was said he never missed a Sunday
service in his life.
In the winter of 1935, while recuperating from an illness, a man
named W.H. Donald asked him to “screen overseas newspaper telegraphs.”
Donald was a close foreign advisor to Chiang Kai-shek. From his time as ajournalist with the London Times, he had been in correspondence with Dong,and he knew of his wit, so it is probable that Donald recommended Dong to
Chiang Kai-shek. Of this incident, Dong recalled, “for my new appointment
this time, it was only because I had earned the favor of Chairman Chiangand I was specially selected, and Mme. Chiang recommended me moststrongly.” 14
Upon taking up the screening of the newspaper articles, Dong’s lifechanged completely. As he reminisced:
The second half of my life was completely different than it had
been before. Thanks to my experiences from when I was with The
Continent, I have had a comparatively diverse life. I have been able tocome into contact with many people of considerable influence both
inside and outside the country, and through them I have been able tocontinually discover new worlds and gain new knowledge.… Moreand more I went on to new, enriching, and meaningful levels. 15
After the screening of the newspaper telegraphs, the operation of theFifth Board were entrusted to Dong, and he became the heart of the CPB andcame to lead the propaganda bureau. “With that,” he recalled, “I got the
chance to get some new blood into the organization I led. As a condition of
employment for new operatives, I rigidly required people with academic
backgrounds and experiences with newspaper activities and connections topropaganda.” 16 As this shows, he put strength into the CPB’s humanresources.
It was Dong Xianguang who had selected Zeng Xubai to be head of
the International Propaganda Division. Of Zeng, Dong said this:Fortunately, I was able to join and work with Zeng Xubai, andhe became my greatest helper. He had been my old partner in the 20
years I was in the newspaper business. This time, he cleanly broke
14

Dong Xianguang. op cit., p.71.
ibid., p.61.
16
ibid., p.77.
15

22

with a famous Shanghai evening paper with continuing management
difficulties and joined the government’s resistance operations. During
the resistance, he always thoroughly demonstrated his exceeding
intelligence and abilities. 17 [Emphasis mine.]
Zeng Xubai was born in 1895, and so was eight years Dong’s junior.
He graduated from St. John’s University in the United States. He taught
Chinese at Nanking University from 1930 to 1931, and in March of 1932 —
immediately after the First Shanghai Incident — he went to work as editorin-chief of Shanghai’s Da Wan Bao (China Evening News).
Dong Xianguang, who promptly addressed the necessity of
propaganda with, “propaganda is just as essential a weapon as an airplane ora tank,” and Zeng Xubai, praised by Dong as the possessor of “exceeding
intelligence and abilities,” 18 became the central figures leading the CPB untilthe very end. When one considers that What War Means has not beenrecognized as a work of propaganda until now, one understands how
ingeniously waged the propaganda war actually was.

17
18

ibid., p.74.
ibid., p.76.
23

24

CHAPTER THREE:
MASTERFUL INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA

It goes without saying that the international propaganda
hammered out by Dong Xianguang and Zeng Xubai was propaganda
aimed at foreigners (including Japanese). These operations had the CPB
acting behind the scenes and not showing their faces, so that they would
not be recognized as works of propaganda. It was “propaganda
activities” and “anti-enemy propaganda” that the International
Propaganda Division focused on particularly closely so as to “surroundthe enemy with propaganda warfare and take the final victory,”§1 The propaganda operations and anti-enemy propaganda that werethe core of international propaganda
What was the international propaganda of the CPB?
The (Oral) Summary of Propaganda Operations goes into
“international propaganda.” It might be a bit long, but allow me to quotefrom it. The following text is from a progress report made at theJanuary,1938, meeting of the Fifth National Convention of the Central
Executive Committee, by the Guomindang’s Propaganda Bureau:
INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA
In international propaganda, in addition to editing propaganda
telegrams in all manner of languages — for example, English, French,and Russian — we have put out 71 different pamphlets in English,
French, Russian, etc. in the name of the People’s Press. We havefocused particularly on propaganda operations and anti-enemy
propaganda.
As for propaganda operations, we have directed various
international organizations, maneuvered domestic diplomacy, andcontacted newspaper correspondents from different countries.
Everything we have done using them in our resistance propaganda hasgone smoothly. With using the truth of the appeal of thegeneralissimo’s 19 great personality and the intense strategy of the19

Chiang Kai-shek.
25

officers and men as the authority for our propaganda, currently we areleading international propaganda operations in a victorious trend.
As for anti-enemy propaganda, for example, we published andshipped to Japan the generalissimo’s An Appeal to the Japanese
People; however, it was shipped secretly to Japan so as not to arouse
the enemy’s notice. Also, we have had considerable success withpropaganda using the war-weariness of prisoners to our benefit bymaking broadcast productions with them and so on. Recently, weorganized a propaganda committee to strengthen opportunities forinternational propaganda, establishing an overseas network of foreignresident government officials, special correspondents, and battlefield
propagandists (for the accumulation of international propaganda
documents). We anticipate progress in the efficacy of our operations.
20[Emphasis mine.]
As indicated by the section in italics, the international propaganda
most strongly attended to by the International Propaganda Division was“propaganda operations” and “anti-enemy propaganda.”
First is “propaganda operations,” which is described as the Division“directed various international organizations, maneuvered domestic
diplomacy, and contacted newspaper correspondents from different
countries.” The part about “using them” — the Guomindang’s CPB
maneuvering Christian organizations, international friends, and journalists
from behind. In other words, propaganda operations meant getting foreigners
to do the propaganda work for the CPB.
Next comes “anti-enemy propaganda.” On this subject, the (Oral)
Summary of Propaganda Operations is not very specific. To quote on this
topic from the top-secret report’s “Summary of Anti-Enemy Section
Operations,” anti-enemy propaganda included text, graphics, and broadcasts.
The purpose was “wide-scale propaganda aimed at the enemy’s forces in
China, people in the enemy’s country, and people of the enemy’s country
living anywhere else in the world, intended to reveal the truth of the brutalityof the enemy’s military factions and that their defeat is inevitable, and tobuild up the sentiment of war-weariness.” 21
The Guomindang’s propaganda war looked down on Japan in moral
terms; anti-enemy propaganda aimed at getting the Japanese themselves tocome to hate Japan and thereby inflict a psychological defeat on them.
20
21(Oral) Summary of Propaganda Operations, p.2.
Overview of Propaganda Operations, p. 56.
26

This top-secret document highly valued the “propaganda operations”
where foreigners were put to work and this “anti-enemy propaganda,”
stating it was how the CPB was “leading international propaganda
operations in a victorious trend.” Let us take a detailed look at the operations
that were conducted.

§2 Propaganda operations using Christian organizations
As I have already quoted, the top-secret document makes reference tousing “various international organizations” in conducting resistancepropaganda. When we look at the document to see what internationalorganizations were most important, we find that it was Christianorganizations. From 1920 to 1930, the New York Times’ Pacific bureau chief,
residing in Shanghai, was Hallet Abend. According to his Collapsing China(published in 1930), propaganda operations surrounding Christianorganizations seem to have already started by 1920. In An Overview of
Propaganda Operations of the International Propaganda Division of theCentral Propaganda Bureau, the following secret report appears:
The Chinese Foreign News Agency:
From the beginning, it relocated to Chongqing using the nameYishi Foreign News Agency. The president was Father Yang Anran,and this Division 22 entrusted French operations to his company.
Expenses were allocated and paid out in the name of the church so as
to erase any trace of propaganda. We were able to get subsidies frommany people connected with French churches, and published a weekly
magazine in French. It was launched on Apr. 16, 1939, and each issue
was 10 pages. Each issue published four or five manuscripts with noset page count. The content was primarily propaganda about thesituation with our resistance [against the Japanese] and our progresswith the building up of China. As a rule, the articles were written to fit
with a French and Vietnamese readership. 23 [Emphasis mine.]
We don’t know the nationality of the Father Yang Anran mentioned
here, but in December of 1939 he left the Yishi Foreign News Agency andestablished the China Foreign News Agency, an attached organ of the CPB.
22
23

That is, The Overseas Propaganda Division.
Ibid., p.11.
27

Perhaps the substance of the Yishi Foreign News Agency was like that of the
China Foreign News Agency, and the Yishi Foreign News Agency that heled took on the task of dealing with the French-language propaganda
operations. Be that as it may, as the italicized section shows, in order toerase any vestiges of connection to Chinese propaganda operations, they
made it look as if the pamphlets were all independently published by the
church, and payments were made in the name of the church. We also
understand they were able to get subsidized by many people associated withthe church.
Let us read on:
In addition to this, we published a monthly French-language
magazine in the Belgian capital, Brussels. The editor-in-chief was R.P.
Edward Neat, a French professor at Luowen University and a priest ofBelgian nationality. Many of its materials had been published by the
Yishi Foreign News Agency, and in addition to editorial direction
from this Division as required and with the direction and cooperationof [our] ambassador in France, Gu Weijun, each issue was widely
circulated. 24 [Emphasis mine]
It should be clear that people involved with the church wereconnected to propaganda operations under the direction of the International
Propaganda Division. The readers and faithful who read the pamphlets
probably viewed them as genuine church publications.
There is one more element of participation by Christian churches.
Here is one example from the section, “Summary of Foreign Section
Operations”:
In the resolution of the All-China Association of Christian
Churches is the article, “Those men, women, and children in the primeof life who cannot remain in the zone of surrender 25 should
immediately be evacuated to free China.” As a result of this resolution,
four or five hundred people who possessed the abilities [to conduct
operations] were withdrawn to the rear of the resistance to participate
in church operations in the resistance. Our government planned forconvenience of transportation, sending them on trips at no cost, andwhile traveling they sheltered with the military or police; once they
24
25

ibid., p.11.
A euphemism for occupied Chinese territory.
28

reached their destination, they were able to demand absolutecooperation on their operations. This division’s deputy director Dongtransmitted this to the generalissimo, who instructed him to “deal withit like that.” Thereupon, on Nov. 23, 1940, we activated missionaries
in Chongqing and created an advisory committee. From March of
1941, missionary groups were evacuated one by one to Chongqing, allunder the direction of deputy director Dong, who arranged a meeting
among all the related departments with an eye toward facilitating
communication. 26 [Emphasis mine.]
With this, the connection between the Christian church and theInternational Propaganda Division can be understood. What needs to be
noted here is the “1940”; the International Propaganda Division had
acquired operatives inside the Christian church before 1940.

§3 Propaganda operations using foreign friends
The top-secret document makes reference to using “domestic
diplomacy” in conducting resistance propaganda. This “domestic
diplomacy” meant the use of foreign friends by the CPB in conducting
propaganda. In his autobiography, the director of the International
Propaganda Division, Zeng Xubai, said, “in the international propaganda weoversaw, Chinese themselves absolutely could not be seen to be in front ofthings. We sought out foreign friends who understood the state and policies
of our resistance and got them to agree to act as our surrogates.” 27 In this
aspect, nothing has changed. Just as those who have been cooperative withthe policies of today’s government in Beijing have been called “old andgood friends of China,” there were foreigners — “foreign friends” — at thattime cooperative with the Guomindang government who were privately
called “our good friends” — a term which appears in the top-secretdocument. Consider some examples.
We have brought in under special contract many foreign
professors of Huaxi University in Chengdu and Nanking University.
In addition to their academic affairs, they were responsible for final
26
27

ibid., pp. 44, 45.
Zeng Xubai. Zeng Xubai: zizhuan [Zeng Xubai: Autobiography]. 3 Vols. Taipei:
Lianjing Publishers, 1988, p.201.
29

screening operations and the translation and editing of material in
English language pamphlets for this Division. 28 We established an
editorial committee and put the American professor Bi Fanyu incharge. Bi Fanyu is our good friend, and his cooperation is truly agreat help. 29 [Emphasis mine.]
The top-secret document doesn’t actually name the names of theforeign professors of Huaxi University in Chengdu and the University of
Nanking, but as mentioned in the prologue, Miner Bates was a professor at
the University of Nanking. Prof. Bates has recently been determined to havebeen an “advisor” to the Chinese (see page 118). Might the “special
contract” mentioned in the quoted passage — an agreement carrying special
conditions or profit — be something like this?
The Bi Fanyu called “our good friend” in the top-secret document has
been identified as Frank Wilson Price, an American professor of French at
Huaxi University, and his name appears four times in that document. In
addition to this, the names of Fei Yingsheng, an American on the Christian
Alliance, and Father Neat, the afore-mentioned Belgian priest, also appear,
among others.
In Dong Xianguang’s memoirs, W.H. Donald, Hallet Abend,
Matsumoto Shigeharu, 30 and the correspondent Timperly are mentioned as“good friends,” “old friends,” or “close friends.” There were actuallyprobably many more foreign friends, but because the names are all renderedin hanzi rather than Roman letters it would be difficult to determine exactly
who they are. The person referred to in his autobiography as Doudian’an 31
has now finally been identified New York Times correspondent Durdin.
Dong writes thus:
On Nov. 18, Doudian’an, a colleague from my days at The
Continent and then a correspondent for the New York Times residing
in China, came to my office. He brought the unfortunate news that
Suzhou had already fallen. The next day I received an order from
Chairman Chiang [Kai-shek] to immediately leave Nanking and go to
Hankou. Chairman Chiang made arrangements for the boat Zeng
Xubai and I left on that evening. However, I was suddenly requested
28

That is, The International Propaganda Division.
Overview of Propaganda Operation, p.15.
30
Shanghai bureau chief of the news agency Dômei Tsûshin.
31
In hanzi, 竇奠安.
29

30

by Chairman Chiang to translate the contents of a telegram given to
Doudian’an to send to the New York Times for publication. 32[Emphasis mine.]
At the time, Durdin was the only New York Times correspondent inNanking, so the italicized name — Doudian’an — must be understood as his
name. In the top-secret document, Durdin’s name is rendered as Diandeng 33(see page 49). Durdin was the special correspondent who reported toAmerican newspapers immediately after the fall of Nanking.
The president of Nanking Women’s University also appears in the
top-secret document.
China’s New West, jointly edited by Bi Fanyu and Ying Yifang,
the president of Nanking Women’s University, was published in the
United States. The original edition and reprints totaled 500,000 copies.
It was sent to American school libraries and various groups. 34
I don’t know what type of content was in China’s New West.
Nevertheless, it is clear that it is a book the publication of which theInternational Propaganda Division was involved. Americans who got theirhands on this book in libraries and so forth had no way of knowing that it
was a book with which the CPB was deeply involved — they probably justviewed it as a book co-edited by an American professor at Huaxi University
and the president at Nanking Women’s University.
The following shows yet another example of a foreign friend
cooperating with the CPB.
Answering the call of leftwing writers acting in concert with
Communist Party overseas propaganda, eminent foreigners conducted
propaganda harmful to our government in accordance with
Communist Party strategies. Snow was the most important of these.
At the outbreak of the New Fourth Army Incident, 35 Snow took on the
Chinese allied front and made public wily criticism that it was as if
32

Dong Xianguang, The Autobiography of Dong Xiangguang, p.78.
In hanzi, 竇登.
34
Overview of Propaganda Operations, p.21.
35
Under the Second United Front, the Communist army joined forces with Chiang’s
forces. The Communist forces became the New Fourth Army in south China, and theEighth Route Army in the north.
33

31

civil war was just on the verge of breaking out. This Division 36 used
American-related newspaper journalists residing in the Far East to
counter this, ending up refuting it. According to the report of the New
York resident office [of this Division], all the most prestigious
newspapers in America inflicted a reversal on Snow’s account. In
addition, the American professor Bi Fanyu of Chengdu’s Huaxi
University and the American Fei Yingsheng of Chongqing’s Christian
Alliance made several broadcasts geared toward Americans. These
Americans fought hard with an impartial eye against the complete
nonsense of Snow and others, giving copies of the manuscripts of
their broadcasts to all the American news agencies in Chengdu. They
didn’t just telegraph digests of the broadcasts on the same day — they
sent the full text out by air mail and distributed them to all theimportant newspapers via the New York resident office. Afterward,
tear-sheets from the newspapers arrived [back in China], proving thatthe articles by these two were widely circulated. 37
Edward Snow arrived in China in 1928, and in the summer of 1936
visited Yenan. He was the first American journalist to interview Mao
Zedong, Zhu De, and other members of the Chinese Communist Party
leaders. It only recently became clear for the first time that he waspersonally picked by Mao to be the writer of The Story of Mao Zedong.
Snow shot to fame when his Red Star Over China, mixing fact with fiction
as Mao himself apparently had a heavy hand in the book’s editing, waspublished in October of 1939 in London by Victor Golencz Co. Many young
people in China flocked to join the Communist Party. Today, Snow rests in agrave on the Beijing University campus. Snow had a deep relationship with
Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.
With the Second United Front of Nationalist and Communist Parties,
the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party worked in unison; but aspresented in the top-secret document and quoted herein, we can see that
there was still deep-rooted antagonism between the two. The Communist
Party used the American Snow, and the Guomindang also used Americans— academics and church-affiliated people — to exchange criticism of eachother. Nonetheless, both parties had foreign friends supporting anti-Japaneseinternational propaganda.

36
37

That is, the International Propaganda Division.
Ibid., pp. 9, 10.
32

§4 Propaganda operations using newspaper journalists
Compared to magazines and books, newspapers are published in muchlarger numbers, and are seen by far many more people. There is no way thatthose involved in propaganda warfare would not make use of them. As thequoted top-secret report says, they contacted various newspapers and usedthem in propaganda operations.
The best result would be gained by getting foreign journalists topublish our propaganda texts unchanged; but if the propaganda texts
we put out are to be published by foreign journalists, we first have togain their confidence. These operations are truly troublesome anddifficult, but we absolutely have to do them carefully. 38 [Emphasis
mine.]The International Propaganda Division, recognizing that using foreign
journalists for propaganda operations was “truly troublesome and difficult,”
and that they had to do things carefully, turned all of its efforts to dealing
with this important point. Let us look at the “Summary of Foreign Section
Operations” section in the top-secret Summary of Propaganda Operations.
The bar graph on the next page shows the “Frequency of Tea Parties Held
Each Year.” As a supplemental note says, “a tea party was held each day in1938.” The following appears:
Contacting foreign journalists, foreign residents, and evenofficials in embassies and consulates.
Item: Press conferences. Since this Division 39 was ordered toopen an office in Hankou on Nov. 1, 1937, press conferences were
held in accordance with our agenda with resident foreign
correspondents of all newspapers and foreign military officials andnews specialists from official residences in China.… In the 42 months
from December, 1937, to April, 1941, a total of 600 press conferenceswere held in Hankou and Chongqing, with the number of speakers inChongqing being around 100. To expedite the explanation, it isbroken down by periods.…

38
39

ibid., p.8.
That is, the International Propaganda Division.
33

Item: Press conferences held in Hankou from Dec. 1, 1937, toOct. 24, 1938, had an average of over 50 people participating.
Information on the military front was presented by military officials,
while governmental material was the responsibility of government
officials, and diplomatic matters were addressed by the foreign office.
There were 300 held. 40 [Emphasis mine.]

Graph displaying the number of “tea parties” held by the CPB. Sections of text poorly
reproduced in the mimeograph were over-written by this author below and to the right.
40

ibid., pp.33, 34.
34

As shown by the italicized text, CPB tea parties and press conferences
began before the fall of Nanking, and 300 were held in the 11 months
between Dec. 1, 1937, and Oct. 24, 1938, right through the time of
Nanking’s fall (see the top of the next page). Dong Xianguang, who
supervised these events, wrote of them in his Autobiography, saying, “As
one of the first things I did when I started the job, I had a session to get tomeet with all the newspaper journalists.” 41 The photograph at the bottom of
the next page is not from the time of Nanking’s fall, but rather a scene fromsuch an event later in Chongqing.
In addition to hosting tea parties and conducting press conferences —even though “truly troublesome and difficult” — the CPB also undertook thefollowing five actions to gain the confidence of newspaper correspondents:

The “Summary of Foreign Section Operations” in the top-secret document. It showsthat “a total of 300” press conferences were held in Hankou between Dec. 1, 1937,(just before the fall of Nanking) and October of 1938. The lines were placed by thisauthor.

41

Dong Xianguang, op cit, p.74．
35

First:Twice a week on average, the foreign affairs section was incommunication with the foreign correspondents and gave directions
to them to participate in meetings of popular cultural groups, citizen’s
diplomacy associations, “anti-invader” chapters, 42 sessions withcolleague-journalists, etc., in addition to holding their regular or
extraordinary meetings. There were about 35 foreign journalists andresident foreign diplomatic personnel on average who attended thesesessions. In the approximately 28 months between January, 1938, andApril, 1941, 250 meetings with journalists took place. 43 [Emphasis
mine.]On the surface they were being introduced to a variety of different
groups with these meetings, but as the italics show, in truth it was all under
the direction of the CPB.

After the fall of Hankou in October of 1938, the CPB transferred operations to the capitalof Chongqing. The photograph depicts one of the monthly tea parties held in Chongqing
for foreign and domestic journalists. The man in front at the left is Deputy Director Dong
Xianguang. Undated photograph. (From The Reminiscences of Mr. Dong Xianguang.)

42
43

That is, groups in opposition to the Japanese invasion/occupation forces.
Overview of Propaganda Operations,p.35
36

Second: The data on the next page is part of a table taking up eightpages in the “Summary of Foreign Section Operations” section, in a
subsection called “2. Cooperating in Gathering Material for Journalists.”
From 1938 to 1941, the CPB recorded the particulars each year for“journalists from major news agencies [to whom the CPB has] issued
credentials, and people accommodating data collection [on our behalf]”
under the headings of name, nationality, occupation, destination,
classification of certification issued by the person’s agency, data
accumulation methodology and type of data sought. Therein, as detailed
later the name of American special correspondent Archibald Steele, whowrote the “Nanking Massacre Story,” appears twice; the journalist F.
Tillman Durdin’s name appears three times. Along with them, the name ofReuter’s correspondent Leslie Smith, who left Nanking, appears twice. The
name of Central News Agency photographer Wang Xiaoting, introduced inthis book on page 19, also appears twice.
Third: The following is a secret report of the CPB “inviting a groupof journalists to inspect the military gains in the northern part of Hunan.”
There was a major military victory in the northern part of
Hunan in the winter of 1939. When this was made known, spirits allover China were lifted and voices were raised in jubilation. This
Division 44 took journalists from various countries to Guilin by charter
flight, and then by car to Hengyang and Changsha so they could
inspect the military gains that had been made. Journalists invited bythis Division included Durdin 45 of the New York Times, Stewart of the
Associated Press, Yeshamin of Tass, Morris of the United Press, andSelby Walker of Reuters. 46 [Emphasis mine.]
As the italics show, Durdin’s name appears here, too.
Fourth: The CPB also reports the names of journalists “invited tomilitary academy reviews.”

44

The International Propaganda Division.
All the journalist’s names are rendered in hanzi. They are: Durdin, 竇登 (Diandeng);
Stewart 司従華 (Sizonghua); Yeshamin 葉夏明 (Yexiaming); Morris 毛里斯 (Maolisi);
Selby Walker 賽爾貝華幹 (Saierbei Huagan).
46
ibid., pp.36, - 39.
45

37

38

When the Central Military Academy 47 held its commencement
ceremonies in Chengdu in 1939, the foreign affairs section invitedalong foreign journalists and cameramen. The wives of Sun [Yat-sen],
Chiang [Kai-shek], and Kung [Hsiang-hsi] 48 were also in attendance,
and they inspected the Air Force school as well. There were sevenforeign journalists invited, including McDonald, 49 Wang Xiaoting,and [David] Griffin. 50 [Emphasis mine.]
Note that cameraman Wang Xiaoting is mentioned here.
Fifth: Let us look at the top-secret report on “leading and directing
journalists and foreign friends in meetings with Party, civil, and military
authorities.”
When foreign journalists or foreign friends covered or met withauthorities in Hankou or Chongqing, submitting various questions on
government, economy, transportation, money market, industry, or thesocial situation, they asked for the views of the responsible authorities.
Of these, the most numerous were those of McDonald of the London
Times. When he arrived in Chongqing in 1940, he submitted over
2,000 questions to the authorities. The foreign affairs section dealt
with them by taking them around to the various directors and getting
them answered one by one.… There were on average fifteen meetings
with the various directors and each of the journalists who arrived in
Chongqing. In addition to the foreign affairs section being responsible
for the language interpretation in meetings with directors, they
explained without fail the background and political leanings of theperson requesting the meeting to the directors and determined just
how much would and could be told to the journalists. There was a
total of over 300 foreign writers and journalists who visited Hankou
and Chongqing. The submitted documents and information, once
turned into book form, totalled several dozen volumes. The most
famous of these were John Gunther’s Inside Asia [E.F.] Carlson’s 51
47

The Whampoa Military Academy — it had relocated to Chengdu when the Japanese
invaded.
48
That is, the three Soong sisters: Soong Ching-ling, Soong May-ling, and Soong Ai-ling
49
As before, the names were rendered in hanzi: McDonald 麦唐納 (Maitangna); Wang
Xiaoting 王小亭; and Griffin 格里芬 (Gelifen).
50
ibid., p.46.
51
The names are rendered in hanzi: Carlson 卡爾遜 (Kaerxun); 尤脱萊 (Youtuolai).
39

Twin Stars Over China, Yootorai’s Muddy Japanese Feet, etc.
Additionally, there were several thousand magazine and newspaper
articles that were published. Please consult with the complete details,
which are kept catalogued in this Division’s document room.
The number of foreigners and journalists who came to China
from January, 1938, to April, 1941, as well as the number of meetings
they had with directors, are indicated by the following graph.
52[Emphasis mine.]

The graph above shows the number of foreign journalists and famous
writers who went to Hankou and Chongqing and the number of meetings
they had with Guomindang authorities. What should be noted here is the
explanation of the graph, the text of which follows:52

ibid., pp.46, 47.
40

1. Does not include 30 journalists who lived in Hankou andChongqing.
2. Does not include the 20 people in the news staff or militaryattachés of the British, American, French, or Soviet
embassies.
3. Journalists who made five or six round-trip visits in a year
are still only counted once. 53
One can perceive by this entry to what extent the diplomats andjournalists comprising 1, 2, and 3 above had contact with the CPB.

§5 A thorough and rigorous screening of articles by foreign journalists
In this manner, the CPB’s International Propaganda Division paid
scrupulous attention to dealing with special foreign correspondents,
recognizing the importance of working with them even though it was “truly
troublesome and difficult.” It goes without saying that they had thejournalists write articles for them in accordance with the expectations of the
CPB. The Overview of Propaganda Operations of the International
Propaganda Division of the Central Propaganda Bureau has this to say:Foreign journalists have a considerably frank sentiment, so this
Division deals with them in a sincere manner. Most of them deeply
sympathize with our country, but journalists by temperament will
always write down whatever they hear, and they are quite capable ofpicking up rumors and sending off telegrams [to report what they haveheard]. As an expression rife with implications, they excel at cleverly
escaping the censors’ attention. If the telegrams dispatched by[foreign] journalists living in China are published in newspapers allover the world, people overseas who are observing the situation in the
Far East would consider them something of importance, so it isnecessary to make a thorough and rigorous screening of these reports.
Those telegrams lacking in propriety were either censored or
prohibited, and then the reason was explained to the sender and we

53

ibid., p.47.
41

attempted to gain reliable consent to amend the mistaken viewpoints.
54[Emphasis mine.]

An excerpt from “Summary of Foreign Section Operations” in the top-secret document.
The chart shows the number of foreign journalists’ articles “passed” and “censored” by
the International Propaganda Division censors.

Foreign correspondents cooperated with the CPB in this rigorous andthorough screening. Of this process, the accompanying graph from Overview
of Propaganda Operations of the International Propaganda Division of theCentral Propaganda Bureau shows “the number of wires sent by foreign
journalists and the number of cancelled characters as screened by this
Division from December, 1937.”
After every telegram has received an introductory-levelscreening and if there is no problem, the censor applies this Division’s“Passed Screening” stamp and it is then sent to the telegraph officefor transmission. If there was any censoring, it is stamped either“Passed With ___ Characters Censored” or “Entire Text Censored.”54

ibid., p.8..
42

There were a total of seven “Passed Screening” stamps. 55 [Emphasis
mine.]
What did the International Propaganda Division examine, and what
did they censor? That much information was not recorded, so we do notknow for certain. As shown by the italicized portion on page 41, however,the International Propaganda Division decided that, if articles sent by
journalists resident in China were published in newspapers all over the world,“people overseas … observing the situation in the Far East would consider
them something of importance.” If there was a viewpoint irreconcilable to
the Guomindang government’s point of view, it is easy to imagine that the
CPB would completely censor matters disadvantageous to them. A thoroughand rigorous screening is extremely necessary to smoothly developinternational propaganda.

§5 The aim of anti-enemy propaganda
As laid out so far, propaganda operations making use of foreigners raninternational groups, foreign friends, and foreign journalists operating in
English, French, Russian, etc., so that their operations would not be seen to
be propaganda by the CPB. “Anti-enemy propaganda” covered in thissection is, as indicated by the name, information warfare operations
targeting the enemy — the Japanese army and the Japanese people.
Let us look again at what the “Summary of Foreign Section
Operations” in the top-secret Overview of Propaganda Operations of theInternational Propaganda Division of the Central Propaganda Bureau has
to say about the subject:
Anti-enemy propaganda is text, graphics, broadcasts, etc., andis wide-scale propaganda aimed at the enemy’s forces in China,
people in the enemy’s country, and people of the enemy’s country
living anywhere else in the world, intended to reveal the truth of thebrutality of the enemy’s military factions and that their defeat isinevitable, and to build up the sentiment of war-weariness. 56

55
56

ibid., p.55.
ibid., p.56.
43

The CPB had set its sights to “reveal the truth of the brutality of theenemy’s military factions … and to build up the sentiment of warweariness” — in other words, the weakening of the emotional state of theJapanese people. Let us take a look at the lead-in of the “Summary ofForeign Section Operations.”
Anti-enemy propaganda materials include books, pamphlets,
periodicals, propaganda handbills, graphics, etc. They were each
distributed differently, depending on the location and thecircumstances. For example, books and periodicals were distributed
overseas, and of course circulation was extensive also in surrendered
territories, and within the enemy’s home country and colonies.
Without fail, the aforementioned materials could be seen wherever
there were citizens of the enemy nation. The majority of pamphlets,
handbills, and graphics were used at the front lines and in cases whensurrounded by enemy forces. 57
The intent of anti-enemy propaganda was that the Guomindang’s
propaganda materials should be seen by the Japanese forces on the continent,
Japanese people living in Japan, and Japanese living overseas in America
and other places. Propaganda materials were put to their appropriate use
depending on location and circumstances.
So exactly what kinds of anti-enemy propaganda were developed?
The target of the propaganda was divided into two: Japanese military forceson the continent, and Japanese living at home and in Japanese colonies.

§6 Anti-enemy propaganda aimed at Japanese forces on the continent
The International Propaganda Division developed the following
propaganda operations directed at Japanese officers and men fighting on thecontinent in China:
During large-scale battles, propaganda materials like fliers andgraphics written in Japanese were immediately printed up and theneither strewn about by plane by the aviation committee or they were
scattered about by front-line units. There were over ten types of
propaganda fliers, with texts addressing shared connections as
57

ibid., pp.57, 58.
44

compatriot peasants, compatriot factory workers, compatriot citizens,etc., and in principle their content was made to suit the specificbattlefield and distribution that was intended. As for graphics, suchthemes as “For whom is this war being fought?”, “How will this war
turn out?”, “Cherry-blossom front,” “The current state of your family
and friends back at home,” and so on, were meant to create
homesickness in the Japanese soldiers, to give rise to feelings ofdispleasure about the war, and to create a sense of war-weariness. 58
Readers will probably be surprised at the usage of the term“compatriot” here. In literal terms, a compatriot is a fellow countryman. If
the propaganda fliers were aimed at compatriot peasants, workers, andcountrymen from China, the fliers would of course have been written in
Chinese, but for Japanese language fliers, the usage is a little odd.
Nonetheless, as I have laid out here, this was anti-enemy propaganda, so it
was a Chinese military secret, and this was probably meant to make it look
as if it was a Japanese plane that was dropping leaflets and graphics over abattlefield in China for the sake of compatriot Japanese peasants, compatriot
Japanese factory workers, and for compatriot Japanese citizens. Even if
Japanese officers and men on the battlefield read the fliers and graphics andunderstood that they were the work of the enemy, they would probably start
to think of home, and the will to fight would likely weaken.
Since I was unable to copy these fliers and graphics at the Party
Archives in Taipei, I can’t present any of them here. The ones I saw,
however, I remember as war propaganda graphics where the Japanesesoldiers were doing bad things and the Chinese soldiers would punish them.
Concerning anti-enemy propaganda, the CPB reported that, “over a
period of three years, we had similarly striking results in every campaign.”
The International Propaganda Bureau took the position on Japanesesoldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Chinese, that “reformation of
the prisoners, along with using them in anti-enemy propaganda, is one of our
extremely important works,” so they made use of prisoners in theirpropaganda operations.
From time to time we sent people to Hankou or Chongqing, (1)directing foreign correspondents to meet with prisoners, (2) and in an
atmosphere of kindness we put them together and had them talk. (3)They interviewed them closely about their mental state around the58

ibid., p.64.
45

time they deployed, and the state of affairs on the enemy side. 59 (4)Also, we fully explained the significance of our resistance war to getthem to change the erroneous notions they had held up to that point.
(5) We had them write down their impressions since coming to China,or (6) we had them write letters to send home to Japan. (7) We had
those manuscripts printed up via copperplate and used them forexternal propaganda. (8) There are also times we invited them in to dobroadcasts, and (9) these had considerable power in terms of antienemy propaganda. 60 [Numbers mine.]
Reading the above section numbered in sequence, one should be able
to well understand the consistent plan from brainwashing prisoners to using
them in anti-enemy propaganda.
Since number eight mentions “broadcasts,” this would be an
opportune time to address the issue of broadcasting.
The enemy government held cabinet meetings and debatedcountermeasures regarding our Japanese-language broadcasts, while
even the enemy’s imperial headquarters issued rebuttals to
camouflage the issue. The enemy’s newspapers and magazines took
up the subject from time to time. It was an intense matter. Given all of
this, we can say that the effect of this form of propaganda deeply
penetrated [the enemy’s psyche]. 61
In all probability, these broadcasts reached the Japanese officers andmen in China and newspaper correspondents as well. The top-secretdocument tells us of the permeation of these broadcasts, but we don’t know
the level of their effect.

§7 Anti-enemy propaganda aimed at Japanese inside and outside Japan
Chiang Kai-shek’s An Appeal to the Japanese People, touched on inthis book on page 26, was also a work of anti-enemy propaganda. As
previously mentioned, the top-secret documents report that “it was shipped
secretly to Japan so as not to arouse the enemy’s notice.” This was different
59

That is, in Japan.
ibid., p.70.
61
ibid., p.57.
60

46

from scattering fliers about on a battlefield. It was necessary to find someone
to help who would secretly take copies to Japan so that the book could end
up in Japanese hands.
Examples of the books and pamphlets used in anti-enemy propaganda
appear in the secret documents, so we should take a look at them. For
example, on the pamphlets, the document explains, “We translated andpublished our leader’s 62 pronouncements and vital literature refuting theenemy, as well as foreign correspondents’ on-the-spot reports, [accounts of]acts of violence by the enemy army, and [accounts of] monstrous deeds ofthe enemy’s secret service; we compiled, printed, and distributed the warweariness of the people and military of our enemy.” It offers the following
nine examples:
1. The Collected Words of Chiang Kai-shek, “Resistance and NationBuilding”,
2. Chiang Kai-shek’s Refutation of the Konoe Statement,
3. On the Second Anniversary of the Resistance — Chiang Kai-shek’s
Words to the Japanese People,
4. Chiang Kai-shek Thoroughly Rejects the False Government of
Wang [Jingwei], Which has Been Recognized by the Enemy’s
Military Faction,
5. The Battle for Northern Hunan as Seen by Foreign Journalists,
6. Address from the Sixth Plenum of the Guomindang’s Central
Executive Committee,
7. I’m So Sorry For You
8. The Cruelty of Japan’s Secret Agency,
9. Pocket Edition — Anti-Enemy Propaganda Booklet.
A summary of all of these nine pamphlets is written down in the topsecret document. For example, the first booklet — The Collected Words of
Chiang Kai-shek, “Resistance and Nation-Building” — is covered thus: “Itscontent was text of important speeches, instructions, conversations withforeign journalists, transcripts of broadcasted addresses, information forpeople within and outside China, telegrams to the International Peace
Conference, since the [beginning of the] resistance. It totals 24 sections andhas about 80,000 characters.”

62

Chiang Kai-shek.
47

As I have already presented herein, the CPB also produced books asmaterials for anti-enemy propaganda. The top-secret document says thisabout two book projects:
1. Books
There were two pieces of anti-enemy propaganda publicationsedited and produced by this Division 63 .
A. Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners 64
This book was written by the famous English journalist
Timperley 65 . The book records detailed accounts of heinous acts —rape, arson, looting — and a breakdown in military discipline andcircumstances of depraved human conditions after the enemy entered
Nanking in Dec. 13, 1937. In addition to publishing this book in
Chinese and in English, it was also translated into Japanese. The
Japanese edition’s title was changed to “What is War?” 66 The prefaceof the Japanese edition is by Japanese anti-war author Aoyama Kazuo,
and there are many photographs of brutality inside. This book was
widely sold in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and everywhere overseas aswell. Afterward, the enemy’s chief of the General Staff, Prince Kan’in[Kotohito], put out a book to inform the officers and men of theJapanese army, acknowledging that this was conduct disgraceful tothe nation and the Imperial Army in China, to admonish them.
B. The Offspring of God Are in China
This book is the work of the Italian Fansbo. 67 It provides the
lowdown on how the enemy’s intelligence service looted assets of thethree northeast provinces, overrunning our compatriots. This book is
an extremely powerful work of anti-enemy propaganda. It disclosed
how the enemy’s militarist faction deceived their people and paints a
picture the oppressive state under which our compatriots in theenemy-governed three northeast provinces live. In addition to Chineseand English editions, there was also a Japanese translation. On the63

That is, the International Propaganda Division.
This is a translation of the Chinese title: the actual title of the book in English is What
War Means.
64

The name is rendered in hanzi: 田伯烈 (Tianbalie).
This is an English translation of the Japanese Sensô to wa?
67
The name is rendered in hanzi: 范思伯 (Fansiba).
65
66

48

cover of the Japanese edition was printed “Postwar policies and thearmy’s attitudes.” It was taken into Japan where it managed to avoid
being stopped by the Japanese censors. 68
I have said several times that the purpose of anti-enemy propaganda
was to break down the spirit of the Japanese. If these works were read by
Europeans and Americans, they would bring scorn on the Japanese. If theeditor of the work should happen to have been Chinese, what would thereader think at that moment? During the war, one would probably suspectthat it might be nothing but a work of propaganda produced by the enemy,
and so would probably not read the work through to the end. Even if it wasread, then, it would have been read with a dubious eye, would it not? The
CPB did not forget this critical point.
Therefore, for both books above, the editors were foreigners. It was
just as if the foreigners did the editing on their own, and they gave theappearance that they had published the books by themselves. With the belief
that the authors and editors were writing from the position of independent,
third-party foreigners, the readers’ interest would probably be piqued andthey would have no suspicions about reading them. For example, the London
Times published a highly favorable review of What War Means, saying “It isclear that the evidence presented herein is genuine and accurate.” Thisskillful work of the CPB was displayed even at the moment of Nanking’s
fall.
Up to now, I have only introduced just a part, but this shows just how
incredible were the operations of the CPB. I have not presented any of it
here, but the CPB’s film department began full-scale operations in 1938,
producing photographs to appeal to the eye for use in news and in film as alink in their propaganda operations. By 1939, 95 percent of the photographs
concerning China that appeared on the world market were the product of the
CPB’s Central News Agency. For more on this, see Analyzing the“Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Incident, which I co-wrote with
Kobayashi Susumu and Fukunaga Shinjirô.

68

ibid., pp. 57 – 60.
49

50

CHAPTER FOUR:
THE PRELUDE TO REPORTING THE NANKING MASSACRE

When the Japanese army made its way steadily toward Nanking,
the CPB promptly launched in Nanking by holding tea parties and press
conferences. As shown in Chapter Three, the CPB brought in foreigners
as a link in propaganda operations to readily expand the propaganda
warfare. From when Japanese forces first took Nanking, an opposition
organization said to be Europeans and Americans antagonistic to theJapanese army was apparently in place, but the shadow of the CPB canbe seen to have been lurking behind that organization. In particular, let
us take a look at the lead-in to the creation of the anti-Japaneseorganization thanks to the work of John Rabe, Nanking branchmanager of the German firm Siemens AG and chairman of theInternational Committee.

§1 The inauguration of the International Committee
Chiang Kai-shek decided on Nov. 12, 1937, to defend Nanking to thedeath, but on the 16th he decided in secret to abandon the city and issued anorder to all the authorities therein to withdraw. Chiang stayed in Nanking for
20 days, and then secretly fled by airplane. That was on Dec. 7 — six days
before the city fell.
On Nov. 17, the day after his decision to abandon the city, theEuropeans and Americans in Nanking formed the International Committee
to create a “safety zone” for the protection of non-combatants. Minnie
Vautrin wrote about this in her diary. Miss Vautrin had worked as head of
the pedagogy department at Ginling Women’s College since its founding by
an American Christian group in 1916. She wrote:
Wednesday, Nov. 18. Conditions seem slightly improved today
although the trek out of the city continues. Almost all who can go aregoing.... At our informal publicity meeting today we heard reports on
the plan for a “Zone of Safety.” It is remarkable how much has beenaccomplished. The idea was only mentioned two days ago. An

51

influential international committee was formed yesterday andtomorrow morning will interview the Mayor of Nanking. 69
On Nov. 16, as the withdrawal of all the officials began, theEuropeans and Americans put out the idea of a Safety Zone. The next day,they formed the International Committee. It was certain that with thecommencement of hostilities there would be refugees, and they wanted toprepare as soon as possible. Vautrin’s comment that “It is remarkable howmuch has been accomplished” meant that plans for the Safety Zone andInternational Committee had already been informally moving forward, andthat a model had already been developed.
Just who was it who had been moving it forward?
At the farewell party upon Rabe’s leaving Nanking, he said, “The one
who first put out the idea of a Safety Zone was Wilson Plumer Mills, theAmerican missionary.” In a letter addressed to his wife on Jan. 24, 1938,
Mills said that he had been inspired to create a Safety Zone in Nanking by
the one in the south of Shanghai which Father Jacquinot de Besange hadorganized.
On Oct. 7, Mills left Nanking, relocating around Oct. 14 to the homeof Lossing Bak (a professor at the University of Nanking who had left thecity). Those who shared his life there as refugees included Miner Bates,
Lewis Smythe (sociology professor at the University of Nanking), Robert
Wilson (a surgeon at the hospital affiliated with the University of Nanking),and George Fitch. Afterward, when Rabe left Nanking, he said that the Bak
house was the brains of the International Committee. Vautrin wrote in her
diary on Nov. 24 that “those who worked night and day for this [Safety
Zone] plan were all there — Mills, Bates, Smythe, and Han Li-wu.” 70 As
both Rabe and Vautrin said, it appears that the people staying in Bak’s housewere central in moving the plans forward.
Thus the Safety Zone idea surfaced on Nov. 17 and the International
Committee was formed. Over time the membership fluctuated a little, but ingeneral there were six Americans, four Germans, five British, and one Dane.
On Nov. 22, Rabe was recommended to be the International
Committee’s spokesman. Previously, on Nov. 19, Rabe recorded in his
journal that the idea for the Safety Zone was presented and, “I was
69

Minnie Vautrin’s Diary 1937 – 1940, in Miscellaneous Personal Papers Collection,
Record group No. 8, Box 206, New Haven, Conneticur: Yale Divinity School Library,p.73.
70
ibid. p.80.
52

approached about whether I would like to join the committee. I agreed and atdinner this evening at Professor Smythe’s home, 71 I made the acquaintanceof a good number of the Americans members.” 72
Earnest Forster and John Magee, pastors at St. Paul’s Episcopal
Church, said several times — as did Rabe — that there could absolutely be
no military presence in the Safety Zone. It had to be neutral territory for noncombatants. Therefore, when Magee wrote a letter to his wife on Dec. 12,
1937, about the International Committee managing the situation, he said it
would only be natural to refer to them as “the Neutral Zone Committee.”§2 Tea parties and press conferences held in Nanking
It was at about this same time that the CPB started holding tea parties
and press conferences in Nanking. As shown by the tea party bar graph andthe press conference graph recorded in the section, “Summary of Foreign
Section Operations” in the top-secret Summary of Propaganda Operations,the tea parties and press conferences appear to have occurred frequently
before the fall of the city. The one who suggested holding the tea parties in
Nanking was Dong Xianguang, the man who directed the actions of the CPB.
In his Autobiography, he recalls that, “[o]n Nov. 25, on my advice, Madame
Chiang Kai-shek hosted a tea party and invited the foreign journalists
residing in Nanking.”
The day and time given varied, but the tea parties appear to havebegun on Nov. 23, 20 days before the city fell. On that day, Rabe wrote in
his journal:
5 p.m.: Tea party given by Mr. Chang Chun [Zhang Qun],former foreign minister and now chief secretary of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs. In addition to about 50 Americans and Europeansfrom various countries, the party was attended by: General Tang, who
is in charge of the defense of the city; General Wang Kopang [Wang
Gupan], the chief of police, and Ma [Ma Chaojun], the mayor. The“main idea” is that all of us remaining Europeans and Americans areto gather each evening between eight and nine o’clock at the71

That is, Bak’s house, where Smythe was staying.
John Rabe, The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. (New York, Alfred
A. Knop, 1998), p. 65.
72

53

International Club, so that we can remain contact with leading
Chinese figures or their representatives. 73
The same thing appears in the Nov. 23 entry in the Vautrin Diary.
According to her entry, 50 people assembled at the International Club, which
was managed by the Chinese government to foster communication between
Chinese and foreigners. It says that representatives from all the embassies in
Nanking, businessmen, missionaries, and many journalists were there.
Starting on the 23rd, anyone who wanted could go every day from 8:30 to
9:30 P.M. to meet with representatives of the defense forces, the police
agency, or the city government.
In a letter dated Dec. 2, Vautrin wrote about the daily press
conferences held at the Anglo–Chinese Culture Center. In a letter dated Jan.
28, she wrote “the daily Press conference which took place until Sunday,
Dec. 12.”From this, we understand that tea parties and press conferences were
held in the Anglo–Chinese Culture Center on Beiping Road inside the Safety
Zone from Nov. 23 until the fall of the city on Dec. 12. For Rabe (who had
become the chairman of the International Committee), it was more than justcreating the Safety Zone — getting help from the Chinese was surely
essential, and his exchanges with other members of the International
Committee likewise must have been of great importance. It was only naturalthat he would have considered the tea parties and press conferences “a goodidea.” As to the Europeans and Americans having contact with “either aChinese leader or his representative,” this was organized by the CPB. We
don’t know exactly what subjects came up during these press conferences as
they were not recorded in detail, but we can speculate based on entries indiaries and so forth made at the time.

§3 The number of refugees
Having created the Safety Zone, the subject that was now the greatest
concern of the International Committee was the number of refugees who
would be in residence in the zone. In managing the Safety Zone, it wasessential to the International Committee to keep a grip on the population. For
their part, they needed to verify the information as quickly as possible.

73

Rabe, op. cit., p.29.
54

Detailed diagram of the complete boundaries of Nanking. This map shows the
population density by depth of shading, and was dated November, 1937. (Furnished by
Inagaki Kiyoshi.) The Safety Zone is indicated by the heavy dotted lines. The
horizontal dotted line below it connects Zhongshan Gate (on the right) and Hanxi Gate
(on the left).

55

Map of the Saftey Zone and its environs inside Nanking.

The shaded section shows the Safety Zone. (Produced by Takamura Kazuyuki.)56

At one of the press conferences, the population-count of Nanking was
inquired about (likely on behalf of the International Committee), and theGuomindang government official seems to have immediately responded.
Looking at Rabe’s journal, his entry for Nov. 25 says “imminent battle for
Nanking otherwise endangers the lives of over two hundred thousandpeople,” and, “[I] have decided to remain in Nanking — have acceptedchairmanship of International Committee for creation of neutral zone toprotect over two hundred thousand non-combatants.” On Nov. 28, herecorded, “Wang Kopang, chief of police, has repeatedly declared that
200,000 Chinese are still living in the city.” 74 [Emphasis mine.] That Wang
Gupan repeated this information suggests that the International Committee
had requested verification of the population several times.
In other words, 15 days before the fall of Nanking, the population had
been verified to be 200,000.
How can we confirm the population just before Nanking’s fall? Just
before the fall, the International Committee attempted a truce proposal “[f]orthe sake of 200,000 helpless civilians.” 75 That is to say, in the hours before
Nanking fell, 200,000 was the official population count.
How did the Guomindang arrive at this number? Moreover, was thenumber 200,000 correct? We just don’t know. Guomindang governmental
officials, people affiliated with the CPB, and members of the International
Committee were assembled at these press conferences, however. Therefore,
the number 200,000 was a well-known figure. This was also common
knowledge to those remaining in Nanking.

§4 The site of the Safety Zone
Look at the map on the next page. This is a detailed map of the entire
city of Nanking. This map, published in Shanghai in November of 1937, onemonth before the fall of Nanking, by the Qianjin Yudi Co., indicates
population density by the color saturation. According to this, we can clearly
understand the highest population density was south from the center of thecity (an imaginary line connecting Zhongshan Gate and Hanxi Gate). If thesafe zone for the city’s residents were to be established there, many people
74

Rabe, op. cit., p.39.
W. Plumer Mills’ letter to his wife dated on January 31, 1938 in Miner Searle Bates
Papers, Record group No. 10, Box 4, Folder 65

75

57

would not have to leave the houses they had gotten used to living in, and it
would also certainly reduce the burden on the International Committee when
it came to the issue of housing the refugees. Another likely issue was the
problem of protecting the houses from both the Chinese and Japanese forces.
In point of fact, however, what became the Safety Zone wasestablished north from the center of the city in the area I have indicated by
the dotted lines on the map. If one looks at the next map, one can see — inaddition to the Japanese embassy — the University of Nanking, the Gulou
Hospital (which is affiliated with the university), the Ginling Women’sCollege, and other sites tied to American property. I have not indicated theirlocations on the map, but within this zone are the Bak house (in which Bates,
Wilson, and Smythe were living), the homes of Rabe and others, the homesof Zheng Qun (whose house had become the headquarters of theInternational Committee) and other Guomindang governmental officials, theAmerican embassy, the Italian embassy, the German embassy, and theAnglo–Chinese Culture Center (the home of the tea parties and press
conferences). There were also military installations inside the area.
It is not clearly recorded as to just exactly how the boundaries for the
Safety Zone were decided upon, but it seems that hard fighting wasanticipated in the southern area, so they decided to put it the north. In Aprilof 1938, however, when Cabot Coville, the American military attaché at theembassy in Tokyo, came to Nanking, an English businessman named Swills
complained to him that the setting of the Safety Zone in the northern part ofthe city (unlike Shanghai where it was in the south) was, “in actuality, toprotect the property of Americans, Germans, and affluent Chinese.”
At any rate, the International Committee had to get recognition byboth the Japanese and Chinese armies for the Safety Zone. To get
recognition by the Japanese army, committee chairman Rabe sent a telegram
to the Japanese headquarters in Shanghai via the wireless set at theAmerican embassy. Rabe recorded the contents of the telegram in his diaryon Nov. 22:
The International Committee will undertake to secure from the
Chinese authorities specific guarantees that (1) the proposed “Safety
Zone” will be made free and kept free from military establishments
and offices, including those of communications; from the presence ofarmed men other than civilian police with pistols; and (2) frompassage of soldiers or military officers in any capacity. The
International Committee would inspect and observe the Safety Zone58

to see that these undertakings are satisfactorily carried out. 76[Numbers and emphasis mine.]
The Safety Zone, as neutral territory, was a neutral, demilitarized zone
wherein no military installations or personnel would be. To establish the
Safety Zone, this was the most essential and basic condition. As George
Fitch wrote in his diary, “a certain area in the city which would be kept freeof soldiers and all military offices … ” 77 , and everyone in the International
Committee understood this point full well. Therefore, with the decision
made that the International Committee would manage the Safety Zone, all
the Chinese military installations inside the zone would have to evacuate thearea.
The International Committee designated all manner of Chinese army
military installations inside the Safety Zone, including the newest Germanmade anti-aircraft guns. The committee probably thought that the Chinesearmy would withdraw their military installations immediately, and chairman
Rabe promised the Japanese army that he would guarantee it. This didn’t
happen, however. This was negligence on the part of the International
Committee, and it was their first big mistake.

§5 Chinese military installations did not withdraw from the Safety Zone
The International Committee requested that the Chinese army remove
their men and materiel from the Safety Zone as soon as possible, and the
Nationalist government promised to see it done. Be that as it may, whether it
was just that the promise was broken or that on the contrary they wereexpanding their military installations, this was, unfortunately, not carried out.
Let us return to Rabe’s journal.
Dec. 3. Although General Tang, who is in charge of defending
the city, promised us that all military personnel and installations
would be kept out of the refugee zone, we now learn three new
trenches and/or foundations for anti-aircraft batteries are being dug in
the Zone.
…
76

Rabe, op. cit. p. 28.
George Fitch’s Diary in Eyewitness to Massacre (edited by Zhang Kaiyuan), New
York: E. Sharpe, 2001, p. 84.

77

59

Dec. 4. Soldiers continue to build new trenches and install
military telephones inside the Safety Zone. 78
The withdrawal of military installations and the pull-out of the army
were the critical conditions for the Safety Zone, and Rabe, as chairman of
the International Committee, was worried about it. Rabe suddenly realized
the following: “Dec. 5.… I pay a call on General Tang, who is in charge ofthe city’s defense, in order to get his consent to have all military personnel
and establishments removed from the Zone at once. Imagine our amazement
when General Tang tells us that this is quite impossible, that at best it will be
another two weeks before the military can evacuate the zone.… But the fact
is General Tang himself received us today in a house inside the refugeezone.” 79Rabe went to see Gen. Tang Shengzhi, commandant of Nanking’s
defense forces, to request the withdrawal of all military personnel andinstallations. He had expected that they had already been removed from theZone, but Rabe suddenly realized that Tang, who shouldn’t have been there,
was himself in the Zone.
To add one more thing to this subject, the daily press conferenceswere being held at the Anglo–Chinese Culture Center on Beiping Road,
which was inside the Safety Zone. What this means is that Chinese officers
and soldiers regularly entered the Zone as a matter of course.
For that reason, Rabe wondered if, in fact, the press conferences wereno longer needed or perhaps that they should be held in a different placeoutside the Safety Zone. He didn’t bring it up however; it was not somethingfor discussion. It was likely for the protection of their own assets that they
had chosen a place with an accumulation of European houses as the locationof the Safety Zone. For their part, the Chinese accepted this, designating theestate of Zhang Qun as the headquarters of the International Committee.
Moreover, the International Committee received money and foodrations from the Guomindang government. For example, on Nov. 29, Raberecorded in his journal, “The generalissimo has placed 100,000 dollars at thecommittee’s disposal.” 80 Vautrin also writes in her diary next day, “Mayor
has said municipality will give $100,000 and also a large quantity of rice.” 81
In his diary, Fitch wrote that “Mayor Ma virtually turned over to us the78

Rabe, op. cit., pp. 48, 49.
Ibid., p.50.
80
Ibid., p. 50.
81
Minnie Vautrin’s Diary 1937 – 1940, pp. 89, 90.
7960

administrative responsibilities for the Zone together with a police force of450, 30,000 piculs (2,000 tons) of rice, and 10,000 bags of flour, and somesalt, also a promise of a hundred thousand dollars in cash －80,000 of
twhich was subsequently recieved.” 82 [Emphasis mine.]
We can therefore imagine that the International Committee received
provisions from the Guomindang government and believed that it was being
made responsible for managing the Safety Zone. On the contrary — basic
military installations developed stealthily. Rabe, as chairman of theInternational Committee, had told the Japanese that he would have theGuomindang government promise to meet the principal condition of the
Safety Zone — the withdrawal of all military — but in reality, that didn't
happen.
On Dec. 2, Rabe received a reply from the Japanese via the French
priest, Fr. Jacquinot de Besange. He recorded its contents in his journal.
Japanese authorities have duly noted request for safety zone but
regret cannot grant it. In event of Chinese forces misbehavior toward
civilians and or property cannot assume responsibility, but they
themselves will endeavor to respect the district as far as consistent
with military necessity. 83
Rabe was in a hard place, stuck between the Chinese and Japanese. It
was only natural that the Japanese government had responded, with regret,that they could not approve the concept of a “Safety Zone.” The Japanese
government doubted that the International Committee actually had theauthority to be able to get all the Chinese military installations moved out of
the Zone, or that they could effectively maintain neutrality within it.
Consider Rabe’s journal just before the fall of Nanking:Dec. 11, 8 A.M. … there are still armed soldiers inside, and all
our efforts to get them out have thus far been to no avail. We cannot
tell the Japanese, as was our intention, that the Zone is now free of all
military.
Dec. 12. … Under such circumstances there’s no hope ofclearing them out of the Zone. 84

82

George Fitch’s Diary in Eyewitness to Massacre, p.85.
Rabe, op. cit., p.46.
84
Ibid., pp. 60, 62.
83

61

The battle to take Nanking began on Dec. 10. Nanking fell before
dawn on the 13th, and even just before that the Chinese army was failing tokeep its promise. The International Committee had been unable to get the
Chinese army and its military installations out of the Safety Zone. We cansee that behind Rabe’s assessment of their attempts as “utter failure,” he wasresigned to the fact from the beginning that it was a pointless discussion toinsist on expelling the Chinese military from the Zone.

§6 Defensive problems with the Safety Zone’s fatal defects
The original model for Nanking’s Safety Zone was a safety zone
established for the protection of refugees in a part of the Chinese residencyzone called Nantao, south of the Shanghai international settlement and theFrench concession, when a total withdrawal of the Chinese army from
Shanghai and its environs was anticipated (from the end of October to earlyNovember) by the French missionary priest Fr. Jacquinot de Besange. The
French army strictly preserved neutrality in the safety zone in the south ofthe city, dubbed the “Jacquinot Zone.” Naturally, there were no Chinese
soldiers or military installations inside the zone, and when Chinese soldiers
fled from the battle in the north of the city to the neutrality zone, the Frenchsoldiers forcefully stopped them.
If the Nanking Safety Zone is compared to that of Shanghai on thatpoint, we find several fatal defects.
First, there were Chinese soldiers and military installations in the
Nanking Safety Zone.
Second, the Safety Zone’s boundaries were not made securely distinct.
Unlike the Jacquinot Zone, which was isolated by barbed wire
entanglements, the boundaries of the Nanking Safety Zone were wide
avenues where flags were flown at intervals along the streets to indicate thezone. With this, the Chinese soldiers were able to come and go in the Safety
Zone wherever and whenever they wanted.
Third, unlike Shanghai, there was no third-party military force toregulate the entrances and exits of the Nanking Safety Zone and to preventthe comings and goings of Chinese soldiers. And that wasn’t all. All thegovernment agencies, the city government, and the police, had fled Nanking.
Everyone in authority had speedily evacuated and there was not one personof responsibility left. In the south of Shanghai, authorities and officials of
the city government and police remained; but all that stayed behind in62

Nanking, as Rabe and Bates said, were “the poorest of the poor.” There was
not even ability to maintain public order.
Fourth, the Shanghai International Committee recognized that theJacquinot Zone was “under the full authority of the Japanese military,” andthey declared that the zone’s control was not the concern of the committee;
but the International Committee in Nanking made no such declaration. In
fact, Rabe wrote in his journal on Dec. 8 that, “since the committee, with his
approval, is forced to deal with all the administrative problems and workingsof municipality inside our Safety Zone, I have in fact become something
very like an acting mayor.” 85 The Safety Zone in Nanking was not under thefull authority of the Japanese army.
Having seen thus much, it was futile to try to create in Nanking aneutral safety zone as in Shanghai where soldiers were forbidden entry,
surrounded as Nanking was by giant ramparts and protected by the latest
anti-aircraft artillery and so forth (and on top of that, a city that was soon to
be a battlefield).
The International Committee was aware of these fatal flaws. As seenin Rabe’s note (1) on page 58 of this book, it seems that at the beginningthey thought to establish a force of “our own policemen armed with pistols.”
But consider this — though called settlement policemen, the personnel were
civilians, and it was only natural that they would have been unable toprevent the entry of Chinese officers or soldiers.
After all was said and done, the Safety Zone created by theInternational Committee encountered the occupation of Nanking by theJapanese army while still unable to overcome these fatal flaws.

§7 Those around Rabe, part one — the Americans involved with the
Guomindang government
While the Guomindang government approved the establishment of
the Safety Zone, they were not about to cooperate with the most essential
points. It must be obvious to anyone looking at it that one can only conclude
that the fault was on the Chinese side. It is fair to assume that, like Rabe, all
the Europeans and Americans in Nanking were concerned about theuncooperative attitude of the Chinese military. In point of fact, however, thiswas not the case.

85

Ibid., p. 54.
63

When George Fitch, one of the International Committee members,
wrote an anonymous contribution for What War Means, he wrote that quite
the opposite was true. “Gen. Tang, recently executed we have been told,
charged with the defense of the city, cooperated splendidly on the whole inthe very difficult task of clearing the Zone of the military and anti-aircraft,
and most commendable degree of order was preserved right up to the very
last moment when the Japanese began, on Sunday the 12th, to enter thewalls.” 86
In an article published in the New York Times on Dec. 8, the journalist
Durdin, writing from Nanking, said, “An anti-aircraft battery and a numberof military offices moved out of the zone today, giving further indication of
the Chinese military’s intention to carry out demilitarization pledges.” 87
A journal entry made by Rabe on that same date (Dec. 8) expressing
his fears stands in contrast to the afore-mentioned accounts:
We are working feverishly to develop the Zone. Unfortunately
we must deal with endless encroachments by the military, who still
have not left our zone and apparently are in no hurry to do so.… We
are all close to despair. Chinese military headquarters is our worst
problem. Chinese soldiers have moved a whole section of the flags we
had just managed to set out around our perimeter. The size of theZone is to be reduced; they need the reclaimed area for their artillery
and fortifications.… if the Japanese get wind of it, they’ll bombard us
without mercy. And they may well turn the Safety Zone into the High
Danger Zone.… None of us expected this sort of dirty dealing. 88
As I have mentioned before, George Fitch’s wife was a close friend ofSoong Ch'ing-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek. Afterward, Fitch set out ona lecture circuit in the United States to tell of the Nanking Massacre. As I
have also laid out, Durdin was an “old friend” and a “good friend” of the
CPB’s Dong Xianguang, and he was one of the people who reported the
Nanking Massacre to newspapers in America. Speaking of ties to the
Guomindang government, Miner Searle Bates (who was also a member of
the International Committee, it should be remembered) was an advisor to thegovernment of the Republic of China (see page 95), and in 1930 had been acolleague of Zeng Xubai’s at the University of Nanking.
86

Timperley, op. cit., p.24.
New York Times, December 8, 1937..
88
Rabe, op. cit., p. 54, 55.
8764Though we only know this today, there were many Americans who
had some kind of connection to the Guomindang government around
International Committee chairman Rabe. Of course, we have no way ofknowing whether Rabe knew of their connections, or what kind of
influences they may have had on him.

§8 Those around Rabe, part two — the hiding of Chinese soldiers
As chairman of the International Committee, Rabe had frequent
opportunities to meet with “Chinese leaders or their representatives” outside
the regular journalists’ meetings.
On Dec. 7, Chiang Kai-shek fled Nanking along with his wife andtheir foreign advisor W. H. Donald. Gen. Tang Shengzhi, who had publicly
proclaimed that he would defend Nanking to the death, abandoned Nanking
and his subordinates the night before the city fell (leaving at 8 p.m. on Dec.
12), fleeing along with several other high-ranking commanders. Tang left
behind many ranking officers, however.
The night before Nanking fell, Rabe wrote in his journal: “Dec. 12,
Shortly before eight o’clock Colonels Lung [Long] and Chow [Zhou] arrive… and ask if they can take shelter in my house. I agree. Before Han 89 and I
left for home, these two gentlemen deposited $30,000 in the committee’ssafe.” 90Long and Zhou were both Chinese army colonels. Rabe was also
sheltering an air force captain. Rabe left Nanking on Feb. 23, 1938, to returnto Germany, but the night before leaving he wrote in his journal that, “Mr.
Loh Fu Hsian [Luo Fuxiang], whose real name is Captain Huang Kuanghan,an air force officer…. His real name is Wang Hanwan [Wang Hanwan].…
[H]e can finally escape from danger, because he’s been hiding in my housesince the fall of Nanking.” 91
Rabe was hiding at least three Chinese officers. In Rabe’s unpublishedjournal (published as Feindliche Flieger über Nanking [Enemy Planes Over
Nanking]), the registry of names of “employees of the Nanking branch officeof Siemens” is recorded. In that registry, Rabe has recorded as employees
the names of the military people he himself was hiding.

89

Han Xianglin.
Rabe, op. cit., p. 64.
91
Ibid., pp. 201, 202.
90

65

Ten signatures including the names of Chinese army officers on a New Year’s greeting.
It appears in “Enemy Planes Over Nanking,” the unpublished journal of Rabe, in vol. 4,
page 84. Preserved in the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry.

In the employee list, the names were typed alphabetically in romanletters, but the employees themselves wrote their names in pen in hanzi. It
was excellent penmanship. The name Luo Fuxiang appears clearly and he isindicated as a “salesman.”
We don’t know the names for colonels Long and Zhou who came toRabe before Nanking’s fall to ask him to hide them, but for argument’s sake,
if we take them to be the Long Weiguang and Zhou Wenbai who appear on
the list, Zhou was listed as a 43-year-old accountant from Guangdong whosename appears in roman letters as “Chow Wen Po,” and Long was listed as a
38-year-old translator also from Guangdong using the English name“William Long.”
As Fr. John Magee said, the International Committee was “a neutralcommittee.” Member of the International Committee had to occupy a
position of neutrality, but for activities like hiding Chinese military
personnel, chairman Rabe himself was a violator of their public promise of
forbidding Chinese military entry into the Safety Zone (see Rabe’s note (2)on page 58).
In his memoirs, My 80 Years in China, George Fitch wrote that when
air force captain Wang Hanwan came to him in the Safety Zone to ask forprotection, “I took his uniform to be hidden away in some safe place after66

having it dried. At a staff meeting it was decided to appoint him as special
assistant and interpreter to our Chairman, Dr. Rabe.” 92
Tsuji Masanobu addressed the question of how great a problem theissue of soldiers hiding during and immediately after a battle is in his book,
Traveling 3,000 Leagues Incognito. When Japan met with defeat in Thailand,
Tsuji just went into hiding there as he was, but he says that when the English
army entered Thailand then, they issued a country-wide special order stating,“If anyone is found to have sheltered a Japanese or assisted in his escape,regardless of whether he is a Thai or a Chinese merchant, he shall be
executed on the spot by firing squad without a trial.”
The Japanese army in Nanking was different than the English army.
They did not issue a special order such as this, though the sheltering ofenemy soldiers was an act benefiting the enemy. In his Discourse on
International Law in Wartime (1933), Prof. Tachi Tarô introduces theopinions of Cambridge University’s Prof. Westlake (professor ofinternational law) and others who say that citizens of a neutral country“enticing enemy forces and inducing them to desert” is forbidden underinternational law as “war treason.”
It must certainly have occurred to Rabe that hiding Chinese soldiers
would raise any number of problems in terms of wartime international law.
So what caused Rabe to do so? He was asked “please hide me” by Chinese
soldiers he had known before Nanking’s fall, and though one may say he
was motivated to acquiesce to their requests out of humanitarian motives,
might that have really been all there was to it?
In Rabe’s unpublished journal (Enemy Planes Over Nanking), kept at
the governmental archives of the German foreign ministry, the signaturesfrom a New Year’s greeting addressed to Chairman Rabe appear. On theprevious page the photo shows one page of the collected signatures. We
can’t be sure if these are all their true names, but the names given are as
follows (with the modern pinyin reading of the name in brackets): Han [Han
Xianglin], Loh [Luo Fuxiang] (Wang Hanwan), Chow [Zhou Wenbai], Lung[Long Weiguang], Ma Naiping [Ma Naibin], Wang Din [Wang Ding],
Chang [Zhang Ruchun], Hsu Chuan-ying [Xu Chuanyin], KZ Tsao [CaoGengquan], and Chen Zeong-liang [Chen Zhongliang]. The names are all
written in hanzi and roman letters with fountain pens. All the signatures
were speedily written. Because of the facility with writing in roman letters, itwould appear that they have all received a high level of education.

92

George Fitch, My 80 Years in China (Taipei, Mei Publishing, Inc., 1074), pp. 96, 97.
67

The name of Luo Fuxiang, whom Rabe hid, and the names of Long
Weiguang and Zhou Wenbai, whom we also suspect Rabe hid, appear. Since
the signatures of these people all appear together on the same paper, they are
doubtless all acquaintances.
Just to add one more thing, by the way, about Rabe. Prof. Nakanishi
Terumasa indicates that Rabe’s “public face” was his position as the chief of
the Nanking branch office of Siemens, but he “moved in secret as aconfidential contactee of the German military assistance advisory group.” 93
When considering Rabe’s actions, this fact should not be overlooked. As towhether Rabe was actually a secret agent, I would like to explore that at afuture occasion.

§9 Those around Rabe, part three — why were Chinese soldiers left
behind?
It appears that it was not just Rabe who was hiding Chinese soldiers.
Many Chinese officers and men were in the Safety Zone, and this means thatthey were in hiding and getting shelter from someone. Maj. Gen. Iinuma
Mamoru, chief of staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, wrote in his
journal in camp on Jan. 4, “The military police continue to seize outlaw
gangs hiding in the Nanking refugee area or in foreign embassies and soforth. The commanding officer of the security forces, the second-incommand of the 88th Division, etc., are principal among them.” 94 There
must have been those who, with nowhere else to go, hid in the Safety Zone,
but that can’t be said to have been the only reason. Let us return to Rabe’s
journal. On Feb. 15, 1938, eight days before Rabe finally left Nanking, hewrote:
Lung and Chow left my house yesterday evening; they intend toleave the city today. I don’t know how. They haven’t volunteered
their plan to me, and I haven’t asked. Our friendship has in fact been
ruptured. All the same, I wish them a good journey home to HongKong. But I have no wish ever to see these people again. 95
93

Nakanishi Terumasa, National strategy and historical awareness. Ashita e no Sentaku,
November, 2005.
94
Diary of IInuma Mamoru in Source Materials Relating to the Battle of Nanking Vol 1,
Tokyo: Kaikosha, 1993, p. 173.
95
Rabe, op. cit., p. 196.
68

It should be remembered that the two colonels, Long and Zhou, werehigh ranking officers who were hiding in the home of chairman of theInternational Committee, John Rabe. But what could engender so muchresentment from him? What had they done to form a break in theirfriendship?
What follows is my conjecture of what happened.
After the fall of Nanking, Chinese soldiers hiding in the Safety Zone
worked evil deeds. These were publicized as being the doings of theJapanese military. These became matters of particular concern to theInternational Committee. This is especially evident in a letter written by an
unknown party and addressed to the Japanese embassy, dated Dec. 31. It is
recorded in Bates’ writings, kept at Yale University.
The letter refers to the Japanese unmasking of an incident that took
place at the sericulture facility at the University of Nanking, where Chinese
officers raped women in the Safety Zone, then buried their guns to hide them.
The letter then explains that the suspects, “Chen Mi (Chen Mei) and Wang
Hsing-lung (Wang Xinlun),” had no connection to the University of
Nanking.
We don’t know who wrote this letter, but what is important is that it
vindicates the suspicion that Americans and Europeans were hiding Chinese
soldiers at the University of Nanking. What must be noted is that the writerof this letter sent it to the Japanese embassy, that there was no protestationthat the suspicion and arrest of Chen Mi and Wang Xinlun were invalid, andthat there was no connection between Wang and the university.
What happened after the incident at the university’s sericulture
facility? We know what happened thanks to an article written by an
American and published in the Jan. 25, 1938, edition of Shanghai’s China
Press. The same paper recounts that before Dec. 28, 23 Chinese army
officers (including Chen Mei and Wang Xinlun), 54 non-commissioned
officers, and 1,498 soldiers were found out. Moreover, on the previous day,they received a public notice from the Japanese military police in Nanking.
The paper reported:
Among them, it is claimed, was the commander of the Nanking
peace preservation corps, Wang Hsing-lau [Wang Xinlun?], “whomasqueraded as Chen Mi” and was in command of the fourth branchdetachment of the international refugee zone, Lieutenant-General Ma
Pou-shang [Ma Pauxiang], former adjutant of the 88th Division, anda high official of the Nanking Police, Mi Shin-shi [Mi Xinxi].
69General Ma, it claimed, was active in instigating anti-Japanesedisorders within the zone, which also sheltered Captain Hwan An[Huang An] and 17 men with a machine-gun and 17 rifles, while thereport states that Wang Hsing-lau and three former subordinates were
engaged in looting and raping. 96 [Emphasis mine.]
The italicized “former adjutant of the 88th Division” appears also inthe camp journal of Maj. Gen. Iinuma, cited before. It says that the Chinese
officers were in hiding, but it does not say who it was who was hiding them.
That being said, for the time being we shouldn’t be suspicious ofwhether the reports of the Japanese military police in Nanking were true.
If we were to take it that the arrests were improper, the Americans andEuropeans on the International Committee surely would have objected. For
example, consider another letter in Bates’ papers sent to the Japanese
embassy by an unnamed writer, this one dated Jan. 8. This letter protests thesudden arrest by the Japanese military police of one Liu Wen-pin, who, it
said, had been working inside the Safety Zone as a Japanese translator. In
addition, in a letter from Bates himself to the Japanese embassy dated Jan. 1,
Bates protests that the military police arrested Liu Wen-pin at his home withno cause. However, in a letter dated Jan. 24 and addressed to Consul Allison
at the American embassy, Bates reverses himself and says that Liu Wen-pin
was just a “hooligan.” After this, Bates ceased his protestations.
As this shows, when the Americans and Europeans thought something
untoward was being done, they quickly protested it. Despite this fact, there
was no complaint made over the arrests concerning the incident at theuniversity’s sericulture facility. Based on what we have seen thus far, it
should be fair to say that the notices of the Japanese military police in
Nanking that as reported by the China Press were valid.
There are other recorded examples of Chinese soldiers hiding in the
Safety Zone carrying out evil deeds that were being attributed to theJapanese army. The article “Looting Outrage in Nanking by [Offenders]
Impersonating the Imperial Army: Outlaw Chinese Gang Captured,”
distributed by Nanking’s Dômei Tsûshin News on Feb. 26, was published in
the Feb. 27, 1938 edition of the Osaka Asahi News.
According to the article, the military police in Nanking arrested 29year-old Wu Yaobang and eleven confederates who were pretending to bemembers of the Japanese military and who were doing nothing but looting.
Since rumors had reached some foreign countries that Japanese soldiers had
96

China Press, January 25, 1938.
70

committed countless outrages from the time the Japanese army entered
Nanking, the Nanking military police had exerted great pains in theirinvestigations. The result was the arrest of this gang. The article says that
innocent citizens of Nanking who were attacked believed that the gang ofWu Yaobang, who was skilled at Japanese, were Japanese soldiers, and only
too late realized the truth.
The members of this gang were originally policemen, but since thefall of Nanking they had set up three places inside the city as their bases
from which they launched their robberies and acts of violence. It is notcertain if the house where they were hiding was located at No. 50 Yutai
Town as reported, but another of their hideouts — No. 14 Shanghai Road —was inside the Safety Zone. If the address of the third hideout, given as No.
106 Ganhe Road, is a mistake for 106 Ganhe Bank, 97 then it is also inside
the Safety Zone — and also very near the residence of International
Committee Chairman Rabe in the neighborhood of Xiaotao Yuan.
The background explanation would take considerable time, but let’s
return to Rabe’s journal, and consider why he writes that his friendship withthe two Chinese officers “ruptured.”
What is strange in reading Rabe’s Journal is that rapes and arson were
occurring all around Rabe’s home, and Rabe was even a witness to theevents. For example, at 6pm on Dec. 18, as he was returning home, someJapanese soldiers had forced their way in and were about to rape a servant.
Rabe said his appearance saved her in the nick of time. Moreover, on Feb.
27, as Rabe and the servant went to look around the Sino–Japanese JointManagement Store, flames began shooting from the store. He waswitnessing an act of arson. Almost as if they had been waiting for Rabe toarrive, the Japanese soldiers’ crime occurred right in front of his eyes. It wasoddly good timing.
It would be fair to say that the Americans and Europeans in Nanking
really couldn’t distinguish between Chinese and Japanese. This was
doubtless all the more the case when something totally unexpected suddenly
happened. Given this, we have to wonder if it wasn’t someone who knew
Rabe’s daily schedule who was using Chinese people for various schemes.
If Cols. Zhou and Long were using Rabe’s home as their hideout andmaking schemes to create disturbances behind the Japanese army, and if thisbecame something that Rabe grew concerned about, would he not havecome to feel betrayed? Rabe, finally realizing the truth about the events thatwere occurring one after the other all around him and ultimately coming to97

That is, if we take 乾河路 (Ganhe Lu) as a mistake for 乾河沿 (Ganhe Yan).
71

the understanding that his good will was being taken advantage of, hadfallen into the dilemma of wanting to say something about it but being
unable to do so. Rabe couldn’t even write the whole truth in his journal. Was
the truth hidden behind Rabe’s words that their “friendship has in fact been
ruptured,” and he had “no wish ever to see these people again” possibly
something like this?
As the chairman of a neutral zone, Rabe’s act of sheltering Chinese
officers and men itself was a huge violation of his agreement. As you havealready seen, Rabe understood this fact more than anyone else. By hiding
Chinese soldiers, he had already renounced neutrality, and committed an
offense against the Japanese army for which he would not have been able to
make a defense. In point of fact, if by chance this had come to light, might
not Rabe have been charged under international wartime law?
When looking at it from the perspective of the CPB, the Guomindang
had Rabe —who represented the International Committee and who enteredinto talks with the Japanese army — on their side.

§10 Disarming Chinese soldiers and letting them into the Safety Zone
At 8 p.m. on Dec. 12, several hours before the fall of the city’s gates,
the highest ranking officer in Nanking — Gen. Tang Shengzi — fled the city
along with several other high-ranking officers from the solitary narrow exitthat was Yijiang Gate (the north gate). What might the Chinese soldiers at
the gates battling the Japanese army have thought upon hearing that theircommanders had abandoned them? It is only natural that panic must have set
in amongst them. They then all ran off to take various actions.
First, some escaped from within the city to the outside. To do that, agreat number of Chinese soldiers descended on Yijiang Gate, which was the
only open gate in the city, to get outside to the banks of the Yangzi Riverand to try to cross it. In front of the river, however, the Chinese army’s
front-line supervising unit was lying in wait as they had been ordered: to fireon any friendly troops attempting to flee the line of battle and kill them.
Before long, the supervising unit also realized the critical nature of theirsituation. When the supervising unit fled, many soldiers continued to rush
into the narrow escape route. As Durdin wrote in the New York Times on
Dec. 18, “[t]he capture of Xiaguan [=Yijiang] Gate by the Japanese wasaccompanied by the mass killing of the defenders, who were piled up among72the sandbags forming a mound six feet high.” 98 As Durdin recalled 60 years
later, however, whether the bodies were those of soldiers who had been shotdead by their own supervising unit or those who had been crushed to death
all at once in the rush through the narrow gateway, it made no difference as
they were dead.
Second, soldiers who decided that they couldn’t escape via Yijiang
Gate tried to get outside by climbing down ropes from the top of the city’s
walls. The walls were 10 meters high, however, and escaping that way was
not easy. One after another, Chinese soldiers fell to their death.
Third, soldiers threw away their arms and stripped off their uniforms
to impersonate the civilian population, hiding in the Safety Zone anddisappearing among Nanking’s refugees. As explained on pages 62 and 63,
since the Safety Zone was not cordoned off with barbed wire and there wereno troops stationed to prevent soldiers coming and going, all anyone had to
do was walk across the street and they were in the Safety Zone. As one
would think, all those who decided that there was no avenue of escape frominside the city chose this as their only remaining option.
What becomes a problem here is how the International Committee
responded to the Chinese soldiers swarming into the neutral, demilitarized
Safety Zone.
It was to be expected that the International Committee had to exert all
their efforts to prevent their entry into the Safety Zone. As shown earlier, theInternational Committee promised the Japanese that the “‘Safety Zone’ will
be made free and kept free from … passage of soldiers or military officers inany capacity. The International Committee would inspect and observe theSafety Zone to see that these undertakings are satisfactorily carried out.”
Implementation of this promise was something that they had to carry out.
On the 13th (the day Nanking fell), Rabe recorded in his journal thatthey were “able to save three detachments of about 600 Chinese soldiers by
disarming them.” 99 As this shows, rather than prevent Chinese soldiers fromcoming into the Safety Zone, the International Committee allowed them toenter the zone once disarmed.
Rabe said that they were able to help the Chinese soldiers,“disarming” them, but this went completely against his agreement. To begin
with, disarmament is the occupying army relying on the enemy army to lay
down their capacity to fight (weapons and soldiers) under their own control.
Civilian intrusion into the disarmament process was itself a military problem.
98
99

Durdin, New York Times, Dec. 18, 1937.
Rabe, op. cit., p. 66.
73

If the International Committee wanted to say they had carried out
disarmament, they should have been able to say they started thedisarmament by handing over to the Japanese a list of the Chinese army’s
weapons and soldiers, and differentiating the latter from the townsmen.
Instead, the International Committee failed to hand the Chinese soldiers overto the Japanese.
Was the International Committee, then, unaware of all of this? No,
they weren’t. After Nanking’s fall, the International Committee wrote thefollowing (“Document No. 2”) to Fukuda Tokuyasu, attaché at the Japanese
embassy, on Dec. 15, signed by Rabe as chairman:
The International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone is verymuch perplexed by the problem of soldiers who have thrown away
their arms. (1) From the beginning the Committee strove to have thisZone entirely free of Chinese soldiers and up to the afternoon of
Monday Dec. 13, had achieved considerable success in this respect.
At that time several hundred soldiers approached or entered the Zone
through the northern boundary and appealed to us for help. (2) The
Committee plainly told the soldiers that it could not protect them. But
we told them that if they abandoned their arms and all resistance to
the Japanese, (3) we thought the Japanese would give them merciful
treatment.
In the confusion and haste of that evening, (4) the Committee
was unable to keep the disarmed soldiers separate from civilians,
particularly because some of the soldiers had abandoned their militaryuniforms. 100 [Emphasis and numbering mine.]
As indicated by number four above, the International Committee
plainly recognized that their most basic responsibility was separating thesoldiers from the civilians. While they clearly knew this, they didn’t doanything about it. In fact, Rabe himself was already hiding Chinese officers,
and had been doing so since before the city fell. In other words, though theyshould have been making an effort to distinguish the civilians from thesoldiers, they let the Chinese soldiers who had cast away their uniforms runloose in the midst of the civilian population. It doesn’t matter what country
the army is from — a mixture of civilians and non-uniformed enemy
combatants presents an incredibly dangerous situation.

100

Shuhsi Hsü, ed. Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, pp. 4, 5.
74

What might the Japanese army have done with this dangerous
situation upon entering Nanking? Surely the International Committee also
speculated that the Japanese may revert to a normal status assuming only
civilians to be in the city, that they may hunt out the soldiers to separate
them from the civilians, or that they might even go so far as to execute them.
Military action by the Japanese to expose and perhaps punish thesoldiers was critical to resolve the situation with the military–civilian
mixture that the International Committee had created.
As exemplified by number three above, however, though theInternational Committee itself had committed the offence, they hoped to relyon the good nature of the Japanese army if they could get the Chinese
soldiers who had disarmed to agree to cease hostilities against the Japanese.
For any army, separating the soldiers from the civilians would be a criticallyneeded military operation; yet it had somehow gotten turned to a question ofwhether Japan had a “kind disposition.”
This meant that the International Committee recognized the Japanesearmy and that they were in a position to criticize them. On this point, a
confrontational posture toward the Japanese army had become clear. This iswell expressed by numbers one and two above.
As I have shown, even though Rabe wrote in his journal on Dec. 11
that, “there are still armed soldiers inside,” and on Dec. 12 that, “there’s nohope of clearing them out of the Zone,” he also wrote that the International
Committee “strove to have this Zone entirely free of Chinese soldiers,” thatthey had “achieved considerable success” and that they “plainly told thesoldiers that it could not protect them.” This was clearly far from the truth.
The document (“Number Two”) that Rabe had signed was completely
divorced from reality. This was not some random spoken falsehood. Though
he knew it to be a lie, he wrote it anyway.
At any rate, the desperate plan of “an International Committee tostand up to the Japanese army” was put together in this fashion when theJapanese army entered Nanking. That is just what the CPB had not asked
them to do.

75

76

CHAPTER FIVE:WERE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER ARTICLES PART OF THE
CPB’S PROPAGANDA WAR?

Three days after the fall of Nanking, on Dec 15, 1937, an American
newspaper reported on the front page and above the fold a massacre in
Nanking. It was the first report in the world of a Nanking massacre.
There is no definitive evidence, but does this not fit with the CPB’s
propaganda war as stated in the third chapter of, “contact[ing]newspaper correspondents from different countries.… [and] using themin our resistance propaganda”? As shown herein, the possibility for thiscannot be denied.
§1 The CPB anticipated defeat in the battle for Nanking
Regard the map on the next page. Nanking is environed by fortified
walls and huge gates. Forming formidable natural defenses is the 500-meterhigh Mt. Zijin, which soars above Nanking’s walls in the east, and theYangzi River, which runs from the west to the north of the city. If one were
to attack Nanking, it would have to be from the east, the south, or the southwest.
Let us return to the opinion expressed by Gen. Li Zongren when
Chiang Kai-shek was debating whether Nanking should be defended to thelast man. He said, “I am opposed to the defense of Nanking. My reasons are
strategic in nature. Nanking is isolated from other cities, and there ispotential for it to be surrounded on three sides by the enemy. What’s more,
the Yangzi River blocks any retreat to the north. If we post troops who havebeen defeated already in that isolated city to protect it, it would be difficult
to hope for a sustained defense.”
This was an extremely sensible assessment. Even the civilian W.
Plummer Mills wrote this in a letter to his wife some 40 days after
Nanking’s fall, saying “It was perfectly clear from a variety of reasons that
the Chinese could not hold the city.” 101Gen. Li had concluded that it would be difficult to hope to defend
Nanking, but Chiang agreed with the advice of Gen. Tang Shengzhi, who

101

W. Plumer Mills’ letter to his wife on January 24, 1938 in Eyewitness to Massacre,edited by Zhang Kaiyun, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001, p.247.
77

said, “We will never be able to apologize to our supreme commander 102
unless even one or two commanders makes a sacrifice in Nanking. My
advice is to defend Nanking to the death, and go all the way with theenemy.”As has already been recounted several times, however, Chiang
secretly decided five days later (Nov. 16) to abandon Nanking, and issuedorders to all the officials in the city to make preparations for withdrawal inthree days’ time. Dong Xianguang, head of the CPB, wrote in his
autobiography, “Restructuring the government and large-scale movement
were taking place at the same time. We would not be able to defend Nanking
for much longer. In our battle for the defense of the capital, we could but
slow down the enemy’s rapid march.” 103
The Chinese army and the CPB thus fairly acknowledged that there
were no prospects for victory in Nanking, following as it did China’s loss of
Shanghai. Still, this didn’t mean they were going to abandon their fightagainst the Japanese. As the 1943 book, The Propaganda War in the Past
Six Years of Resistance, says, “In the present war, propaganda warfare
carried out alongside military warfare will play a conclusive part indetermining the outcome.” The Chinese had a policy whereby even if theymight lose the war militarily, they could potentially win by fighting the war
on the propaganda front — and the CPB, led by Dong Xianguang, planned a
propaganda war the likes of which had never been seen.
The “Summary of Editorial Operations” part of the top-secret
Summary of Propaganda Operations references “English Dailies” in theeditorial operations section, where it reports:
In the early part of November, 1937, we pulled out of Shanghai
and the front moved westward. The battle for the defense of thecapital [Nanking] was already under way and we were about to lose
the city.… We modified, as situational changes dictated, the material
collected for English-language dailies over the past three and a halfyears. For example, during the battle for the defense of the capital, we
propagandized strategies to muster the courage of our soldiers andoperations to reinforce the rear. After the fall of the capital, we
exposed the enemy’s outrages, and in the phase for the battle for

102
103

That is, Chiang.
Dong, Autobiography, p. 77.
78

Wuhan, 104 we propagandized that our martial power was increasing
day by day. 105 [Emphasis mine.]
In other words, according to the CPB itself, a focal point for the battle
for Nanking was the propaganda war through which they would squeeze out
all possible propaganda value for the outrages of the Japanese army after thecity’s fall. The italicized section, however, can be taken in two ways: thateither the enemy’s actions after Nanking fell were from time to time sooutrageous that the CPB made propaganda use out of them, or that theyplanned beforehand to conduct a propaganda war after Nanking fell.

Illustration emphasizing Nanking’s environs. (Provided by Inagaki Kiyoshi.)
104
105

The city of Wuhan fell to Japan on Oct. 27, 1937.
Summary of Propaganda Operations, p. 2.
79

§2 The CPB and the newspapermen
As shown in Chapter Three, referencing the Overview of Propaganda
Operations of the International Propaganda Division of the Central
Propaganda Bureau, one of the most vital aspects of international
propaganda carried out by the CPB was “contact[ing] newspaper
correspondents from different countries.… [and] using them in our
resistance propaganda.” In other words, “[t]he best result would be gainedby getting foreign journalists to publish our propaganda texts” — andoperations to those ends were critical.
In Dong Xianguang’s Autobiography, he says that, “[International
Propaganda Div. chief] Zeng Xubai and I decided to stay in Nanking until
the final phase.” 106 Exactly how long Dong remained in Nanking isn’t clear,but Minnie Vautrin in her diary mentions Dong being there on Nov. 26.
Until the end of November, while Dong was in the city, he was working togain the trust of foreign journalists. He recalled the events in his
Autobiography:
Most of the foreign journalists remained in Nanking until theend. Their staffs (who did the things they needed to be done) were nolonger there by that time, and they were distanced from people who
had had dealings with them publicly, so I became a true friendly
connection for them. I met with them daily without fail and I called onthem at the Central Hotel where they were, and either chatted withthem or we just ate together individually. 107
There were five journalists and photographers who remained in
Nanking after it fell: Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News, FrankTillman Durdin of the New York Times, Arthur Manson of the ParamountNews (telefilm), the Englishman L.C. Smith of the Reuters News Service,and the American C. Yates McDaniel of the Associated Press.
Dong says he met with them and ate individually with them, but hedidn’t go so far as to say with whom he met or what they discussed. At thevery least, however, it is believed that he met with Durdin. He mentionedthat Durdin had been “an old colleague” since moving to the China Press inShanghai in 1931, and in his memoirs, Durdin’s name pops up from time to

106
107

Dong, op cit, p. 78.
Ibid, p. 77
80

time. The article that Durdin wrote for the New York Times is of
considerable interest.

§3 Durdin’s article
Durdin, a special correspondent with the New York Times, wrote thefollowing in an article published on January 9, 1938:
It is evident that the Chinese command never contemplated thatany but a few thousand of the defending Nanking troops could
evacuate across the river. The absence of all means of conveyanceacross the river except a few junks and steam launches throughout thesiege period was proof of this.
Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable that statements of the
Defense Commander Tang Sheng-chi and division commanders
subordinate to him － made before the siege － that no Chinese
withdrawal was ever contemplated were sincerely meant and wereexpressions of the real intention of Chinese command.
In other words, the Chinese command, fully realizing thepractical certainty that the Chinese Army would be completely
surrounded in the walled city of Nanking － trapped like rats while
Japanese land and naval artillery and airplanes would be in a position
to pound them to pieces － chose voluntarily to place themselves injust such situation, apparently with the intention of making the captureof the city as costly to the Japanese as possible in a final heroic
gesture of the kind so dear to the Chinese heart.
The Japanese army, as Gen. Li had predicted, attacked Nanking fromthree points: the east, south, and the south-west. The Chinese army
strengthened the walls of Nanking and fortified the city’s defenses inside.
They had also reverted to China’s ancient scorched-earth tactic and had
burnt to ashes all that lay outside the walls to remove any potential cover forthe enemy and at the same time deprive them of supplies. The South Gate
(Zhonghua Gate) heavily fortified and defended by five hold gates. The
walls were 24.5 meters high; the east and west walls were 128 meters thickand the north and south walls 129 meters deep. Still, the Japanese army wasfighting a desperate, determined battle to take the gate.

81With this going on, if the Chinese army were to flee the city, they had
no other option but to flee north across the Yangzi. Moreover, there werehardly any available transport ships; they hadn’t even entered into ChiangKai-shek’s plans for withdrawal preparations. The Chinese army commandassumed before the attack began that their army, surrounded by the walls of
Nanking, were trapped like rats, and said, “the Chinese army is not eventhinking of withdrawing.” The Japanese army had caught the Chinese
soldiers like rats in a trap, and in addition to anticipating they would besmashed to smithereens, Durdin wrote that even under those conditions“they chose to carry on.” Why was this? It was because they thought that thecourageous behavior of the Chinese army when placed under thoseconditions would, itself, inspire the Chinese people.
Durdin continued:
The disgraceful part of the whole business is that the Chinese
command Proved lacking in the courage needed to carry through theiroft-announced and apparent intentions. When Japanese troops
succeeded in breaking over the southwestern wall and while the
Hsiakwan back door was still open, though threatened by a rapidly
encircling Japanese Army and the approaching fleet, General Tang A
few close associates fled, leaving subordinate commanders and wellnigh leaderless troops to the mercy of a hopeless situation, which
probably had never been explained to them in the first place.
As the Chinese soldiers engaged in a death struggle with the Japanesearmy, they were certain to face death as the Japanese artillery rained downon them and cut them to pieces. The courageous actions of the troops whochose to share the fate of Nanking moved the Chinese people and raised
their determination to resist the enemy. Ultimately, this would only have
served to make the Japanese army’s taking of Nanking a costly one. Thiswas checked, however, by the flight of General Tang Shenzhi. Just before
the city fell, Gen. Tang left many Chinese soldiers just where they were in
Nanking and fled via the narrow road of the only open gate in the city,
Yijiang Gate, making his way outside the city and then over to the northbank of the Yangzi by boat. Durdin criticized Gen. Tang for his loss ofcourage.
On Dec. 27, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun published an article with theheadline, “Commandant Tang Shengzhi Shot Dead: Bore the Blame for
Abandoning the Capital Nanking.” The article reported, “Special telegraphreport from Nanking, sent [Dec.] 26.… It was confirmed that on the 18th, at82

a court martial, a death sentence was passed down and on the 19th, thesentence of death by firing squad was carried out.” 108 In the propaganda
book produced by the CPB, What War Means, George Fitch wrote, “Gen.
Tang, recently executed we have been told.…” 109
The Japanese army in Nanking, as well as the Europeans andAmericans, recognized that with his death sentence Gen. Tang wasanswering for his responsibility in abandoning the city. Everyone believedthat the battle for Nanking’s defense ended with Tang’s flight and thisresulted in his execution. It isn’t known whether Durdin knew of Gen.
Tang’s sentence when he wrote the article, but he did write that Tang’s flight
put a halt to the Chinese army’s plan to make the Japanese army pay heavily
to take Nanking.

§4 There was another plan to make Japan pay dearly to occupy
Nanking
Chiang Kai-shek made Gen. Tang Shengzhi commandant in charge ofthe defense of Nanking and announced that the city would be defended to
the last man, but Tang abandoned the city and fled in the face of the enemy.
It was unforgivable. This is why everyone reacted as if it was only naturalwhen, on Dec. 18, six days after Tang’s flight, Chiang Kai-shek’s
government announced that “the verdict of the court martial [against Gen.
Tang Shengzhi] is death.” The report of the execution, it seems, also
indicated just how much Chiang Kai-shek’s government supposedly had
wanted Nanking to be defended to the last man.
In truth, however, Gen. Tang was not executed. According to the 1966
edition of Who’s Who in Communist China, published in Hong Kong, Tang
dropped the Guomindang and ran to join the Communist Party in 1949 (theyear that the People’s Republic of China was declared) and over the years
held many posts in the Communist Party, including that of vice governor of
the province of Hunan. Since the important announcement of Gen. Tang
Shengzhi’s execution was put out only by Chiang Kai-shek’s government, it
is only natural to think that its source was the CPB. If this is so, Chiang Kaishek’s government made up the lie that it had executed Gen. Tang.
Why did they spread false reports? Let us put that aside for the
moment. What must be considered here is why Chiang didn’t execute Tang
108
109

Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, Dec. 28, 1937.
Timperley, op. cit., p. 24.
83

for his betrayal, and why Tang’s flight in the face of the enemy was
overlooked.
There can only be one answer to these questions, and that is this:Chiang Kai-shek had approved Gen. Tang’s flight beforehand. In otherwords, Chiang’s government’s announcement that Nanking would be
defended to the last man was only a front, and that Tang Shengzhi’s flight
had been taken into account from the beginning.
Just why was this? It would be good at this point to recall the CPB’s
propaganda operations. The top-secret document’s section titled “Summaryof Editorial Operations” reports that the CPB had decided to make their aim
the propagandizing of “outrages committed by the enemy after the fall of thecapital.” Their method for doing this was to get foreigners to spread the
propaganda for them.
Let us consider what would have happened had Gen. Tang Shegzhi
not fled. Had all the Chinese forces — including Gen. Tang — died anhonorable death in the Japanese onslaught, their heroic deeds would surely
have inspired the Chinese people just as Durdin wrote. The CPB surely
would have propagandized that enthusiastically. If, by some chance, Gen.
Tang raised a white flag and surrendered after a fierce battle, the Japaneseforces probably would have disarmed the Chinese forces, and the Japanesearmy would have occupied Nanking completely in accord with internationallaws of warfare.
Thus, if Gen. Tang had not fled, the CPB would not have been able topropagandize any “outrages committed by the enemy after the fall of thecapital.” That would have been a problem.
Having seen this much, one can understand what Gen. Tang
Shengzhi’s flight actually meant.
Let us take a simple look back at what transpired after Gen. Tang’s
flight.
Gen. Tang Shengzhi fled leaving many soldiers in place and giving noorder for surrender. If the commanders fled right before capitulation, there
would be no margin for the remaining soldiers make their way out of the city.
It is only natural that the situation would develop like this: the soldiers
trapped inside the walls and with no avenue of escape would fall into panic
mode. They would start stripping off their uniforms and throwing them away,
fleeing into the refugee area (the Safety Zone). This was something theAmericans and Europeans inside Nanking had not anticipated. The
International Committee, too, fell into a panic, unable as they were toprevent armed soldiers from entering the Safety Zone. They felt pity for the84

Chinese soldiers who were running every which way seeking help. The
International Committee put the Chinese soldiers under their own protection.
Then the Japanese army moved in. For the Japanese army to totallyoccupy Nanking, they would have to remove the Chinese soldiers who were
hiding in the Safety Zone. Since it was a battlefield, as long as the Chinese
soldiers were resisting, they were subject to punishment or being shot. In
any battlefield, “mopping up” would have been standard operational
procedure, so it was only natural that the Japanese army would do exactly
the same.
What might the Americans and Europeans inside the Safety Zone
have felt about this? The International Committee established the Safety
Zone in Nanking to protect refugees. The occupying force — the Japanesearmy — that moved into Nanking was one they didn’t know. New leaders
appeared in front of the Americans and Europeans (who had been in aposition of leadership) in Nanking. As previously laid out, a “confrontationalarrangement” had already been created with International Committee vis-àvis the Japanese army. The new leaders would expose the Chinese soldiersthat they were protecting and secretly hiding in the Safety Zone — which theInternational Committee regarded as sacred space. And punish them. The
Europeans and Americans of the International Committee naturally musthave been concerned and displeased about this, and were frightened andagainst it. Moreover, it was shocking to the civilians, as it was the first timein their lives they had encountered such exposures and punishment.
Thus after Nanking’s fall there was a definite pattern where on one
hand the Japanese army made great efforts in following the rules of war withthe total occupation of a Nanking that included the Safety Zone while on theother hand the Americans and Europeans opposed the Japanese entry into
the Safety Zone and the Japanese army’s occupation of Nanking. Of course
Durdin wrote of none of this. This was the CPB’s true plan in making Japanpay dearly for occupying Nanking. After this, it was essential for the CPB to
propagandize that there were outrages committed by the Japanese during
their total occupation of Nanking. Gen. Tang Shengzhi’s flight put an end to
the defensive battle for Nanking but it was the opening for the Chinese “warof information.”§5 Durdin and Steel report a “massacre in Nanking”
As you have seen, Dong Xianguang met daily with the foreign
journalists who remained in Nanking and ate with them. To reiterate who85these people were: (1) Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News, (2)Frank Tillman Durdin of the New York Times, (3) Arthur Manson of theParamount News, (4) England’s L.C. Smith of the Reuters News Service,and (5) American C. Yates McDaniel of the Associated Press. On Dec. 15,
the third day of Nanking’s occupation, since there was no electricity at thatpoint in Nanking, they headed off to the international concession in
Shanghai to send off their articles. It seems that McDaniel set out on the
16th, however.
On the 15th, Steele sent out the first report on Nanking’s occupationfrom the American navy’s USS Oahu. The article appeared the next day (butwas dated on the 15th in America owing to the International Dateline) as thelead story in the Chicago Daily News under the headline “Account of
Massacre in Nanking”:“Four days in hell” would be the most fitting way to describe
the siege and capture of Nanking. … The story of Nanking’s fall is astory of indescribable panic and confusion among the entrapped
Chinese defenders, followed by a reign of terror by the conqueringarmy which cost thousand of lives, many of them innocent ones. … It
was like killing sheep. … This account is based on the observations ofmyself and other foreigners remaining in Nanking throughout thesiege. [Emphasis mine]
Durdin’s article, sent somewhat later, appeared in the New York Timeson Dec. 18 (Dec. 19 in China):
Wholesale looting, the violation of women, the murder ofcivilians … turned Nanking into a city of terror. … Any person who
ran because of fear or excitement was likely to be killed on the spot …
Many slayings were witnessed by foreigners. [Emphasis mine]
Expressions appearing in these articles like “four days in hell,” “terror
under the thumbs of the occupying army,” “slaughtered like sheep,”“wholesale slaughter and barbarism,” “Nanking has been turned into a cityof fear,” and “as if everyone was slain on the spot,” gave readers theimpression that occupied Nanking was a Japanese horror. In addition, withthe writing of things like “many were innocent” and “killing of civilians,”
the reader would probably believe that the killing of civilians — townsmen— was being carried out. The killing of townsmen was itself an unlawful act,
so it could only have been a massacre.
86

In general, we don’t distrust journalists; we expect that they are
writing the truth. Therefore, people who read these articles probably thoughtthat the Japanese army’s occupation of Nanking brought with it frequentinstances of murder. In view of the propaganda operations of the CPB thathave been covered thus far, however, it becomes necessary first to verify
whether these journalists reported the truth. Three points should be
examined when making that determination.

§6 What did the other three journalists see?
As indicated by the italicized sections of the above articles, given
Steele and Durdin’s accounts of “four days in Hell” in Nanking being theirown eyewitness accounts, and given that they said other foreigners
witnessed it, if the observations of the other three foreigners who left
Nanking along with them (Smith, McDaniel, and Mason) were the same,then the others surely would have reported the same information to theworld. Let us see what these other three reported.
I looked in the Nanking Incident Source Material, Vol. 1, America
Rferences, but as hard as I searched, it would appear that these three neversent out any articles. We can, however, find several articles containing
conversations with them.
One month after the fall of Nanking, “An Eyewitness Account of L.C.
Smith of Reuters News” was published in the Jan. 14, 1938 edition of Shijie
Ribao. The article begins, “[t]ransmitted from Shanghai Dec.18. Englishman
L.C. Smith, a journalist with Reuters News Service who witnessed the siegeof Nanking, left Nanking when its occupation began and came to Shanghai.”Over 90 percent of the article is his account of the battle between the
Chinese and Japanese as he witnessed it on the afternoon of Dec. 12 from Mt.
Zijin, and the Chinese army’s panicked flight.
On searching through the article to see if there might be any
descriptions of the city after its fall, I found this account: “By one a.m. on
Dec. 13, much of Nanking was in Japanese hands. The north part of the city
was still held and being defended by the Chinese, however. The Japanese
took the north part on the morning of the 15th. The Chinese armycompletely abandoned the capital.” This was all that Smith saw.
It would be fair to assume that this article, “[t]ransmitted from
Shanghai Dec.18,” was sent right after Smith arrived in Shanghai. He musthave spoken of the shocking matters freshest in his mind, but he nevermentioned any killing of civilians. Durdin and Steele make a forceful87argument and both say that foreigners witnessed the civilian deaths, but
Smith’s account stands in stark contrast. Exactly what are we to make of
this?
How, then, did the two cameramen — McDaniel of the AssociatedPress and Manson of Paramount News — report the events? McDaniel’sname doesn’t appear in any articles, but if we just use “AP” reports, there isan article that appeared in the Washington Post on Dec. 17 with the tagline“Sun., Dec. 17, Shanghai (AP).” We can’t verify whether this is McDaniel’s
report, but in the article there is a mention of a Paramount News cameraman
named Arthur Menken.
From the American gunboat Oahu came the first eyewitness
account of the Japanese capture of Nanking. Arthur Menken,
Paramount newsreel cameraman, radioed that the once proud capital
was a shambles, dotted with corpses of soldier and civilian victims ofthe terrific Japanese air and land attack. …
All Chinese males found with any signs of having served in thearmy were herded together and executed, Menken said. But heconfirmed Japanese reports that magnificient tomb of Sun Yat-sen,father of Chinese republic, east of Nanking’s walls had come throughunscathed. 110
Menken, who probably saw Nanking as a photographer, reported
about bodies and executions of soldiers and townsmen in the battle (that is,
the “attack from both ground and air”). In order that there be no
misunderstandings, let me state this: most of the Japanese army held backfrom striking (by land or air) the Safety Zone where the townsmen were all
assembled. In their first communiqué to the Japanese army, the International
Committee wrote, “[w]e come to thank you for the fine way your artillery
spared the Safety Zone.” 111 From this, we can imagine that there were notmany strikes therein.
Be that as it may, the civilian dead mentioned in his report were thosecaught up in the battle and slain. The exposing of young men who had theappearance of serving in the Chinese army was one of the duties of theJapanese army in “mopping up” operations. According to the reports of110

Washington Post on Dec. 17
Hsu Shu-shi, ed., Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh,1939),, p.1.

111

88

Steele and Durdin, the “killing of civilians spread” after the Japanese army
entered Nanking, but we just don’t see this in Mencken’s account.

§7 Smith’s talk
L.C. Smith’s “eyewitness account” as told to the Shijie Ribao was
generally concerned with the condition of the battle and the Chinese
soldiers’ panic. Smith appears in Rabe’s journal in an entry dated Dec. 15
referencing “Smith’s (of Reuters) talk.” 112 As I mentioned in my book The
Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction, the text in its entirety is recorded in
The Sino-Japanese Strife, a work composed of public documents from theGerman embassy in Nanking. The date of his talk wasn’t written down. It’s
rather long, but I would like to excerpt as much of it as possible.
(1) By the morning of 13 December, there were still noJapanese soldiers to be seen in the city.… (2) Two serious battles had
been fought at the south gate during the night, and the number of theChinese dead was put at over 1,000. (3) By the eve of 13 December,
Chinese troops and civilians began to loot. Mainly grocery stores were
pillaged, but Chinese soldiers were also seen leaving private homes
with food.… Hundreds of soldiers thronged before these shops.
Ready-made civilian clothes of every sort sold like hotcakes. Soldiers
spent their last cent on these clothes, changed into them out in thestreet, threw their uniforms away, and vanished as civilians.… (4) It
was not until almost noon that Mr. McDaniel spotted the firstJapanese patrols in South City.… (5) Occasional shots could be heard.
Here and there one saw dead civilians at the side of the road, who, or
so the Japanese said, had been shot while trying to flee. (6) At thesight of the Japanese, a sense of relief seem to pass through the
Chinese civilian population, and they came out ready accept theJapanese if they would have behaved humanely.… (7) By night
Japanese troops had entered the Safety Zone as well.… (8) By themorning of December 14, the Japanese soldiers had still adopted no
hostile attitude toward the Chinese civilian population. (9) By noon,
however, in many locations small groups of six to ten Japanese hadformed, who then moved from house to house, looting. Whereas the
Chinese had restricted their theft primarily to food, nothing was
112

Rabe, Diary, pp.72.
89

secure from the Japanese. They had looted the city systematically andthoroughly. Until the day I departed, 15 December, by my own
observation and that of other Europeans, the houses of the Chinese
had without exception been looted, as had most of those belonging toEuropeans.… They appeared to have a special preference for wall
clocks.… Outside the firm of Kiessling & Bader I ran into Herr Rabe,
who with the help of the owner threw out several Japanese.… (10)On 15 December the Japanese granted foreign correspondents
permission to board a Japanese gunboat leaving Nanking for
Shanghai.… When the wait for departure lasted longer than expected,
we used the time to undertake a short investigative walk. We saw how
the Japanese had tied up some thousand Chinese out in an open field,
and watched as small groups of them were led away to be shot. They
were forced to kneel and were then shot in the back of the head. We
had observed some 100 such executions, when the Japanese officer incharge noticed us and ordered to leave at once. 113 [Numbers mine.]
When we compare it to the articles by Steele and Durdin, terms like“four days in hell,” “slaughtered like sheep,” and “terror under the thumbs of
the occupying army” do not appear in Smith’s lecture. That is probably the
first thing that strikes the reader. Could it be because Smith only speaks ofthings he personally witnessed and not of things others observed? This is not
likely the case. As the italicized text indicates, he said, “by my own
observation and that of other Europeans.” What, then, might he have seen
and heard? Let us settle that matter.
Of the numbered items in the quoted excerpt, items (1), (4), (6), (7),and (8) were concerning the situation of the Japanese army and civilians in
the Safety Zone; item 2 was combat and related deaths; item 3 was looting
by Chinese soldiers and civilians and the flight of Chinese soldiers into the
Safety Zone; item 5 was observed corpses; and item 9 was executions. Given
that there are no accounts herein that murder of civilians was a frequent
occurrence, one senses that there probably wasn’t any such atmosphere.
If one expects more accuracy, we can force an analogy with civilians
being killed. I offer item 5 from Smith’s lecture: “Occasional shots could beheard. Here and there one saw dead civilians at the side of the road, who, or
so the Japanese said, had been shot while trying to flee.”
I will touch on these gunshots on the next page, and as you will see
from that, these were probably the shots Smith heard right after Nanking
113

Ibid., pp. 72, 73.
90

capitulated. He did not himself witness the scene of these shootings, but hedid see the bodies of the fallen townsmen, so he connected in his mind thebodies and the sound of the gunfire. He wrote, “[a]ccording to the Japanesearmy, they were shot while attempting to flee.” Smith never says whether
these were Chinese soldiers who had discarded their uniforms to blend inwith the civilians, who they were, or why they were shot. He never says hesaw them shot and killed, either. He only said that he heard gunfire. This
was all he had to say about bodies.
Item 10 from the list (executions) will be discussed in Chapter Seven.
Even though Nanking had fallen, the Japanese army was on thelookout for Chinese soldiers who had not surrendered and were mixing inwith the civilian population and hiding inside the city. This was because theJapanese never knew when they might get shot at. In point of fact, theJapanese were taking sniper fire from Chinese forces. Steele writes of the
post-capitulation Nanking thus: “a mounted soldier galloping directionlessalong the street raised his pistol and for no reason fired into the air.” Thebattle had probably already ended. Durdin wrote, “Any person who ran
because of fear or excitement was likely to be killed on the spot as wasanyone caught by roving patrols in streets or alleys after dusk. Manyslayings were witnessed by foreigners.” Can one really say that this was
accurate? We don’t yet know whether we can consider Smith’s accountmore veracious than others’.
Did foreigners living in Nanking actually see what Durdin and Steele
wrote of when they said, “Many slayings were witnessed by foreigners”?
We will have to look also at their records to see.

§8 Records of foreigners living in Nanking
In investigating whether foreigners in Nanking actually witnessed
many murders, the most fundamental source of historical records is probably
the “reports of serious injuries to civilians.” These were reports of
unfortunate events which were sent to the Japanese embassy by theforeigners in Nanking making up the International Committee. These“reports of serious injuries to civilians” were compiled into a single set by
the hand of Prof. Lewis Smythe in February, 1938, and about 30 percent(123 cases out of a total of 444) were included as an appendix to What War
Means. After that, it was published in the summer of 1939 in English as
Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, edited by Xu Shuxi under theeditorial supervision of the Council of International Affairs (itself under the91

direct control of Chiang Kai-shek’s Military Affairs Committee). Therefore
today we can still see these reported incidents in Documents of the Nanking
Safety Zone. In fact, however, only 40 percent of the total number ofincidents in this book were submitted to the Japanese embassy.

A section of the “Daily Reports of Serious Injuries to Civilians” presented to theJapanese embassy by the International Committee. There is no indication of the namesof those who witnessed or recorded the incidents. (From Documents of the Nanking
Safety Zone, edited by Xu Shuxi.)92

We must go to the “Daily Reports of Serious Injuries to Civilians” tosee those problematic three days after the fall of Nanking written about by
Steele and Durdin. Let us look at two of the incident reports sent to theJapanese embassy by the International Committee.
On December 14, Japanese soldiers entered the home of Miss
Grace Bauer, an American missionary, and took a pair of fur-lined
gloves, drank up all the milk on the table, and scooped up sugar with
their hands.
…
Last Night, December 15, Japanese soldiers entered the garage
of Dr. R.F. Brady (American) at 11 Shuan Lun Hsiang, smashed awindow in his Ford V8, later came back with a mechanic and tried tostart the car. 114
What needs to be noted here, as can be understood by reading these
two accounts, is that there is no record of who witnessed the incidents, who
discovered them, who reported them, and who recorded them. Lewis Smythe
writes for the International Committee that, “[t]hese incidents were
investigated fully by foreign members and staff of the International
Committee. Humbly submitted, Lewis Smythe,” but there is no crucial proof
to say that Japanese soldiers committed them.
Let us look at all the incidents reported for those three days.
Dec. 13: Murders, zero incidents; rapes, one incident; looting, two
incidents; arson, zero incidents; kidnapping, one incident; injuries, one
incident; trespass, zero incidents.
Dec. 14: Murders, one incident; rapes, four incidents; looting, threeincidents; arson, zero incidents; kidnapping, one incident; injuries, zeroincidents; trespass, one incident.
Dec. 15: Murders, four incidents; rapes, five incidents; looting, fiveincidents; arson, zero incidents; kidnapping, one incident; injuries, fiveincidents; trespass, two incidents.
There were no cases of murder being witnessed. It should be clear that
there is no basis for truth in Steele and Durdin’s assertions that “Manyslayings were witnessed by foreigners.”
It would not do to leave anything out. Putting together contemporary
Chinese, Japanese, German, and English records of all the murders (inRabe’s journal, Minnie Vautrin’s diary and so on, including Nanking
114

Hsu Shu-shi, op. cit., p. 11.
93

Incident Source Material, Vol. 1, America Rferences) yields a total of three
on Dec. 13, four on Dec. 14, and eight on Dec. 15. In all of these, however,there were no actual eyewitnesses to the incidents.
When Father John Magee appeared at the Tokyo Tribunals, he gave
testimony that many murders had occurred in Nanking. When asked how
many incidents of murder he witnessed, however, he testified, “I only
personally witnessed the killing of one man.” 115 In his journal, however, hewrote, “The actual killing we did not see as it took place.” 116 We therefore
have cause to doubt even the testimony of Father Magee that he saw “one.”The result of investigating the American newspaper reports from thesethree sources — as far as incidents of murder are concerned — is that
evidence supporting claims of civilian murders at the hands of the Japanesearmy can’t be found in any contemporary records. We can only say, then,that when Steele and Durdin wrote that foreigners were witnessing frequentcivilian murders in Nanking, both were reporting falsely. Just why would
they write articles that were diametrically opposed to the truth? Were these
false reports in fact nothing but an extraordinary measure of the propaganda
warfare of the CPB? We cannot definitively say this was so just yet.

§9 Bates’ “report” to the American newspapers
Miner Searle Bates was a professor at the University of Nanking and
an influential member of the International Committee. He was also a popularand well-known missionary. This is what was believed for over 60 years, but
consider this newspaper clipping first. It is a 5 1/2" by 2" piece clipped froman American newspaper and found in the Yale University archive of
Nanking-related texts.
It says Bates was an advisor to the Chinese central government. We
don’t know who wrote this piece, or when it was published. When one
makes a newspaper clipping, one doesn’t always write down the name if thename of the newspaper is self-evident at the time, but in the case of thisclipping, there is no inclusion of date or newspaper name. Since it says “asthe Japanese battered at the gates of China’s capital,” however, we canconclude it was sometime around the time Nanking fell on Dec. 13.
An announcement from the American embassy in Nanking dated Dec.
8 and headed, “Circulation: to Americans in Nanking,” requested all the
115
116

Tokyo Tribunal’s Official Record.
Zhang Kaiyuan, ed., Eyewitnesses to Massacre (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), p.171.
94

embassy staff still in China to assemble on the USS Panay on the Yangzi
River on the evening of the eighth, and stated that “ropes to scale the walls
and escape are being kept at the home of Miner Bates.” From the “ropes …
are being kept at the home of Miner Bates,” we can date the clipping to afterDec. 8. There doesn’t seem to be any reason that the writer of this piece
would falsify Bates’ career history, so there is no reason to doubt that he wasan advisor to the government.
We have a letter sent by Bates from Shanghai dated Apr. 12, 1938,
addressed “[t]o my friends.” In it, he says, “[t]hat book uses a statement
which I prepared on the 15th of December to be utilized by the various
correspondents living Nanking on that date.” 117 [Emphasis mine.]

117

Eyewitnesses to Massacre, p.34.
95

The special correspondents mentioned by Bates are those describedherein on pages 98 and 99: Steele, Durdin, Mencken, McDaniel, and Smith.
“That book” refers to the book that we have determined to have been a
product of the CPB: What War Means, edited by Harold Timperley. The firsthalf of Chapter One of that book was written anonymously by Bates. This
was the “report” of which Bates spoke. He handed the report to journalists
leaving Nanking on Dec. 15 and asked them to make use of it.
Why would Bates have gone through the trouble to do something likethis?
Two possibilities come to mind. The first one is that Bates, notknowing anything else to do to let the world know as quickly as possible theconditions in Nanking, hurriedly wrote the report and entrusted it to thejournalists. Considering that he was an advisor to the government, however,
could the second possibility be that Bates undertook some measure of
propaganda warfare on behalf of the CPB in claiming to expose the outragesof an enemy who had conquered the capital? Just which one was it really?
We have Bates anonymous first half of Chapter One of What War
Means on hand. Let us consider it.
But in two days the whole outlook has been ruined by frequent
murder, wholesale and semi regular looting, and uncontrolled
disturbance of private homes including offences against the securityof women. Foreigners who have traveled over the city report many
civilian bodies lying in the streets.… A considerable percentage of thedead civilians were the victims of shooting or bayoneting in theafternoon and evening of the 13th, which was the time of the Japanese
entry into the city.… Squads of men picked out by Japanese troops as
former Chinese soldiers have been tied together and shot. Thesesoldiers had discarded their arms, and in some cases their military
clothing.… Surely this horrible exhibition in Nanking.… 118
It was on Dec. 15 that Bates handed this to the journalists. The thingthat is therefore problematic with this report (like that already laid out with
the American newspapers’ accounts) is the events of the three days between
Nanking’s fall (on Dec. 13) and Dec. 15. When we look at what is written,
we see murder, looting, outrages against women, corpses, and even the
exposure, arrest, and shooting of Chinese soldiers. As we have already seenfrom comparing this to the records of foreigners living in Nanking over118

Timperley, op. cit., pp. 19, 20.
96

those three days after its fall, we can see that it is very different from theactual conditions in Nanking during that time. What’s more, Bates was an
influential member of the International Committee. In the daily reports ofcivilian injuries that Bates delivered to the Japanese embassy in Nanking, hedidn’t write even one criticism of “the spread of killings over the two days
since Nanking’s fall” that he wrote of in that report on the 15th, or that hetestified to in the Tokyo Tribunal. There is no way we can see that he wrote
the report to let the world know the truth. That being the case, there is alarge probability that his reason for writing it was number two: backing the
propaganda war.
Of course, just because he was an “advisor” to the government doesn’tnecessarily mean we can say he was connected to the CPB.
As I wrote in an article in the April, 2002, issue of the magazine
Shôkun!, Bates had known Timperley (himself an advisor to the CPB) since1936. Moreover, during the production of the CPB’s propaganda book What
War Means, Bates played an important role as a contributor to the book.
Finally, we know from a letter Timperley sent on Feb. 14 about the
production of What War Means that Bates was also a friend of the deputy
director of the CPB, Dong Xianguang.
In this letter, Timperley wrote, “Dear Bates; I received the following
message from Hollington Tong in Hankou. Would you be so kind as to put
the situation in Nanking into a memo? Sincerely…” The name Hollington
Tong, as shown in the 1938 edition of the China Yearbook, was the “English
name” that Dong liked to use — the “Tong” being the old Wade-Giles
Romanization of his surname “Dong.”
If we take such facts into account, we put aside whether Bates did sodeliberately or unconsciously, and given the following point one can’t help
but come to think that it was done to support the propaganda operations of
the CPB.
For the CPB’s plan to “[expose] outrages committed by the enemy
after the fall of the capital” to bear fruit, they would have to have gotten
these five journalists to write about the same things. If the Americans Steele
and Durdin had, like the Briton Smith, not mentioned any civilian killings,
the CPB’s plans would likely have come to naught. Bates’ report, therefore,
served as a sort of “guideline” for the journalists to write their articles. To
put it another way, if there had been no report from Bates, Steele and Durdin
probably would not have been able to write the newspaper articles that havebeen presented here.
Since the articles were by American journalists, there was absolutely
no reason to question the veracity of their writing. For reassurance, all they97

had to say when they wrote their articles was that the accounts were basedon “eye-witnessed incidents” and “reports” from foreigners in Nanking.
The CPB determined that getting journalists to write articles for themwould be an effective way to propagandize, so the CPB didn’t show itself.
Standing in their place was Bates’ “report” that he handed to journalists justbefore they left Nanking, requesting that they make use of his account of“frequent murders of civilians” in their articles. We can’t be certain whether
all five journalists got copies of the report, but as shown from the chart as
bellow, comparing corresponding points in the articles by Durdin and Steele
and the report, it appears that they, at least, used the report.
That two of the five journalists — Steele and Durdin — wrote articles
for them marked a success for the CPB’s plan to “[expose] outrages
committed by the enemy after the fall of the capital.” Just as Steele andDurdin had Bates in the background behind them, so did Bates, a contributor
to What War Means, have the CPB in the background behind him. It is forthat reason that even though Steele and Durdin were the first to report to theworld the “Nanking massacre,” they did not appear at the Tokyo Tribunal toassert the truth of “frequent murders of civilians.” In point of fact, they could
not have done so.

Comparison of Descriptions: Prof. Bates, A. Steel and T. Durdin
Prof. Bates

Archibald Steel

Tillman Durdin

At Nanking the Japanesearmy has lost much of its
reputation, and has thrownaway
aremarkable
opportunity to gain therespect of the Chinese
inhabitants and of foreign
residents.

JapanesebrutalityatNanking is costing them agolden opportunity to win
the sympathy of theChinese population, whose
friendship they claim to be
seeking.

… the Japanese Army has
thrown away a rareopportunity to gain therespect and confidence of
the Chinese inhabitants andof foreign opinions there.

Many local people freely
expressed their relief whenthe entry of Japanese troops…

Nanking experienced a
distant sense of release
when the Japanese entered---

A tremendous sense ofrelief … pervaded theChinese population when
the Japanese took overcontrol within the walls.

… the wholesale outlook Theywere
has been ruined …
disillusioned.

98

quickly Two days of Japanese
occupation changed thewhole outlook

Any persons who ran infear or excitement, and any
one who was caught instreets or alleys after dusk
by roving patrols was likely
to be killed on the spot.

Any person who ran
becauseoffearor
excitement was likely to be
killed on the spot as was
any one caught by roving
patrols in streets or alley
after dusk.

Foreigners
who
have
traveled over the city reportmany civilian bodies lying
in the street.

Streets throughout the citywere littered with bodies ofcivilians and abandoned
Chinese equipments anduniforms. --- This accountis based on observations ofmyself and other foreigners

Foreigners who traveled
widely through the city
Wednesday found civilians
dead on every street.

… scores of refugees incamps and shelters had
money
and
valuables
removed from their slightpossessions …

They even invaded foreign
the camps of refugees,
stripping many poor of the
few dollars they owned.

… who conducted mass
searches in the refugee
centers and took money
and valuables, often theentire possessions of theunfortunates.

… the staff of the
University Hospital were
stripped of cash andwatches from their persons,and of other possessions
from the nurses’ dormitory…

In
American-operated
University Hospital theyrelieved the nurses ofwatches and money.

The staff of the American
Mission
University
Hospital was stripped of
cash and watches. Other
possessions were takenfrom the nurses’ dormitory.

… the seizure of motorcars They stole at least two
and other property after American-owned
cars,tearing down the flag upon ripping off the flags.
them …

Foreign flags were tornfrom buildings and at least
three motor cars were takenfrom foreigners.

… four hundred men wereselected by the local police
under compulsion from theJapanese soldiers, and weremarched off tied in batchesof fifty between lines ofriflemen and machinegunners.

In one building in refugeezone 400 men were seized.
They were marched off,tied in batches of fifty,
between lines if riflemen
and machine gunners, tothe execution ground.

99§10 Those concerned with What War Means get started
There were also other articles in addition to those by Steele andDurdin. For example, 12 days after the fall of Nanking, on Dec. 25, theSouth China Morning Post reported, “[i]n a Dec. 15 letter, the most trusted
foreigner in Nanking wrote to friends in Shanghai about the Japanese
occupation of Nanking. According to the letter, frequent incidents of murder
and large-scale, semi-overt looting…” 119
Just who was this “most trusted foreigner in Nanking”? In other words,
if we ask who wrote a letter dated Dec. 15, it would seem to point to Bates.
Just from looking at the contents of the article, it appears to be nearly
identical to the report that Bates wrote on Dec. 15.
A month after Nanking fell, on Jan. 13, 1938, the Washington Post
reported, “[w]e have only been able to get partial reports from the small
number of reporters remaining in Nanking since the city’s occupation by theJapanese beginning on Dec. 14. 120 In addition, reports have leaked out of
increasingly frequent killings over a period of two weeks thereafter from theabandoned capital.” [Emphasis mine.]
It would seem from these that reports of large-scale killings that go
beyond Steele and Durdin’s reported three-day “Nanking massacre” hadleaked out. Who was it in Nanking who could have been reporting on aneven larger-scale Nanking massacre? The Washington Post continues:“Every day, Chinese soldiers and even civilians are bound together withwire and are taken out in groups of 30 to 50 to Xiakwan on the Changjiang
shore 121 where they are machinegunned.”
This was a report that would appear to indicate that someone(regardless that they were in Nanking without authorization until the last partof February, 1938) witnessed people being killed by machineguns at
Xiakwan outside the city “every day.”
When searching for descriptions of “Chinese soldiers and evencivilians … bound together with wire,” I found this: “The men in theimmediate vicinity of my informant … were bound with wire, wrist to wrist,in pairs. Thirty or more were taken to Han Chung Men [sic. —HanzhongGate].” This appears in Chapter Three of What War Means. 122 in this119

South China Morning Post, 12/25/1937.
This was Dec. 15 in Nanking, owing to the International Dateline.
121
On the banks of the Yangzi.
122
Timperley, op. cit., p. 49.
120

100

instance, Bates said that he wrote down what he was told by a Chinese man
who had fled for his life when he was to have been executed; but we have no
way now of verifying who the news source for the Washington Post article
was.
One month later, on Feb. 11, the Manchester Guardian Weekly
reported, “[f]or some time the Manchester Guardian’s special correspondentin Shanghai has been prohibited from writing articles concerning theJapanese massacre in Nanking due to army censorship, … but now that wehave been able to get a first-hand report from Nanking, we are able toexpose in detail the terrorism of the Japanese army.”
The special correspondent in Shanghai mentioned in the article was
the editor of What War Means — Harold Timperley. As will be detailed
later, Timperley wrote in the foreword of What War Means of an instancethat telegrams were prohibited (either by the Japanese embassy or theJapanese army). But from whom in Nanking might Timperley have gotten
this first-hand report? Correspondence between Timperley and Bates
concerning the publication of What War Means began as early as Jan. 29,
1938. It is likely that the first-hand report came to him via Bates during thistime.
A further month later, on Mar. 16, the South China Morning Post
reported,
At the beginning of March, provincial governor Wu Tiechengsponsored a cozy tea party in Guandong where an American recently
returned from Nanking spoke on the conditions of the Japanese
occupation.… Horrifying acts of brutality such as the mass killings ofcivilians and unarmed soldiers, looting, arson, and rape witnessed in
Nanking were vividly recounted. 123
The American mentioned in this article was one of the contributors to
What War Means — George Fitch. On Jan. 29 he went from Nanking to
Shanghai carrying film shot by Magee to show to Timperley. On Feb. 23, heagain went to Shanghai. While en route from Hong Kong on Mar. 8 toAmerica to launch a lecture tour, he received an invitation from theprovincial governor of Guanzhou in Guandong. Of this event, Fitch
recounted,

123

South China Morning Post, 3/16/38.
101

My old friend Jim Henry radioed that he would meet me, andon arrival we immediately took a train to Canton (Guandong). There
the Governor of the province of Kwangtung, Gen. Wu-The-Chen,
another old friend, had arranged a reception for me at Civic Hall
where I was asked speak on the Nanking siege and occupation. 124[Emphasis mine, parenthetical in the original.]
All this means that articles with Bates and Fitch as news sources andarticles that it is believed Timperley furnished were published in addition to
the articles by Steele and Durdin. I am repeating myself, but these three —Bates, Fitch, and Timperley — were the editor of and contributors to What
War Means, which I will examine in the next chapter. Can it be mere
conjecture that these three were involved in these articles?

§11 There was no response to the American articles
The “Nanking Massacre Story” articles written by Steele and Durdin
were based on reports of the three days’ events from people who were at
actually there. As I have already laid out, later Nanking articles were also
based on reports from foreigners in Nanking. These articles described how
the indiscriminate killing of civilians was spreading. China’s representative
to the League of Nations, Gu Weijin, immediately addressed the League on
Feb. 2, 1938, stating that 20,000 people had been killed, basing his addresson the articles.
If this had been true, the governments of every nation would instantly
have had to control the situation, and confirmation of the articles would bequick.
Let us look at the case of the American government. Since thesearticles were reported in America, there can be no doubt of what theAmerican government sensed in them. We can’t be certain of whether thegovernment interviewed the American journalists who wrote the articles, but
in April, 1938 — four months after Nanking fell — Cabot Colville, themilitary attaché at the American embassy in Tokyo, arrived in Nanking toinvestigate. Consul John Allison and Vice-consul James Espy from theAmerican embassy, Consul E.W. Jeffrey of England, Secretary Georg Rosenof Germany, Bates, Smythe, and many other foreigners got together with
Colville to apprise him of the situation in Nanking.
124

George Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p.123.
102

In Colville’s report, he said that, “[l]ooting and rapes by the Japanesesoldiers continued for some weeks, and when Allison arrived at 11 a.m. on
Jan. 6 to reopen the embassy, it was still going on.”What should be noted is that his report made no mention of killings or
massacres. What the American government did protest to the Japanese
government about, therefore, was the accidental bombing by Japanese navy
planes of the USS Panay when it had stopped for the night near Nanking, theincident when Consul Allison was struck by a Japanese soldier as he tried tobreak free when the Japanese had grabbed him, and incidents of offense to
the American flag and other foreign properties. The American government
made no reference to any massacre in Nanking.
Considering the international situation at the time, had they madeeven the slightest acknowledgement of a civilian massacre, surely none of
the governments of the world — to say nothing of the American government
itself — would have disregarded it. The League of Nations would have
immediately sent an investigative committee to Nanking just as it had sent
the Lytton Commission at the time of the Manchukuo uprising to quickly
verify all the facts of the case, and then concluding that it was true, theywould have called for a resolution to censure the Japanese and voices raisedin outrage would not be silenced. No international investigative committee
went to Nanking, however. Neither the Americans nor any other government
made a move to complain to the Japanese.
What should not be forgotten at this point is that when the “Nanking
Massacre Story” appeared in American newspapers, it was the Guomindang
who needed to continue to express outrage and complain about the Japanese.
In truth, however, Gu Weijin, a prominent figure in Chinese diplomatic
circles, made only one address to the League of Nations. That was the onlytime.
After the war, in his Autobiography, Dong Xianguang wrote,
After the national army withdrew, the enemy forces crowded
into Nanking, devoting themselves entirely to slaughter, acts ofviolence, and looting — creating havoc and a hell on earth. People
saw their brutality with their own eyes and we continued to complain
about it to the world. The most striking was my old friend Durdin,
who from the midst of danger, published about the brutal conditions in
the New York Times. The American government didn’t respondquickly to these outrages, but the world’s sympathies tilted in China’sfavor. They became critical of the barbaric actions they called103

inhuman Japanese aggression, and an opportunity opened for our
propaganda. 125
Dong Xianguang, deputy director of the CPB, knew that his old friend
Durdin had reported “slaughter, acts of violence, and looting.” He wasgreatly concerned over how the American government might respond to thearticles in the American newspapers. The reader was probably surprised bythis excerpt from Dong’s Autobiography. It is only natural that as deputy
director of the CPB he would contact the media regarding Japan’s actions inNanking and publicize the Nanking massacre to journalists both within andoutside China to engender hostility toward Japan.
The American government never responded to the 18 Americans (andhis old friend Durdin) who stayed amidst the dangers in Nanking, reportingto the world, or to those newspaper articles — but Dong was still able towrite that the articles had the effect of turning the world’s sympathies
toward China. It seems his heart was warmed by the effectiveness of theAmerican newspaper articles, and he offered thanks to the foreigners who
sent out false reports of a Nanking massacre.

§12 The CPB recognized that the “Nanking Massacre Story” was a false
reportAs I have already cited in Chapter Three, within the “Summary ofForeign Section Operations” portion of the top-secret Summary of
Propaganda Operations is a chart listing journalists and occasions where the
CPB “collaborate[d] with journalists in collecting data.” The CPB has anentry “by year, journalists from major news agencies [to whom the CPB has]issued credentials and people accommodating data collection [on ourbehalf]” for the years 1938 to 1941, and on that list Steele’s name appears
twice and Durdin’s three times. The name of Smith, the Englishman who
worked for Reuters and left Nanking with Steele and Durdin, appears twice.
As I cited previously, the section referencing “inviting a group ofjournalists to inspect the military victory in north Hunan,” Durdin’s namecan be seen. It says, “winter of 1939.… This Division 126 took journalists
from various countries to Guilin by charter flight, … so they could inspect
the military gains that had been made. Journalists invited by this Division
125
126

Dong, op.cit., p. 79.
That is, the International Propaganda Division.
104

included Durdin of the New York Times, Stewart of the Associated Press,
Yeshamin of Tass, Morris of the United Press, and Selby Walker ofReuters.”
The CPB thus had had repeated contact with Steele and Durdin, so
they had to have been able to confirm all the facts with them. Somewhere inthis top-secret document there had to be a record that they had them verify
the facts of the Nanking massacre and that the CPB as usual held an “urgent
press conference” with the massacre as the major problem, inviting these
foreign journalists to come as eyewitnesses and had them speak, andproduced statements for the Chinese government for world-wide distribution.
Please consider a more full version of the excerpt appearing in
Chapter 3:
Item: Press conferences. Since this Division 127 was ordered toopen an office in Hankou on Nov. 1, 1937, press conferences were
held in accordance with our agenda with resident foreign
correspondents of all newspapers and foreign military officials andnews specialists from official residences in China. We invited theleaders and officials of our party, government, and army, as well as
scholars renowned at home and abroad, and asked them to take turns
as the people responsible for giving the talks, with the Foreign Officebeing responsible for translating. The speakers’ commentary andexposition, as well as the questions and explanations of the journalists,
were all translated and explained in detail. If there was important or
urgent news and necessity arose to publicize it abroad, we either held
an ad-hoc urgent press conference or reported to the journalists bytelephone. Even if it was late at night, we allowed not a moment’s
delay. [Emphasis mine.]
After the fall of Nanking, American newspapers published articles
with headlines like “Japanese Army Kills Thousands,” “Eye-witnesses
Recount ‘Four Days in Hell,’” “Five-Foot-Deep Pile of Corpses in theStreet,” and “Large Numbers of Civilians Slain.” Journalists from othercountries who saw these headlines probably waited for the CPB to hold anurgent press conference to get more detailed information.
In the top-secret documents, however, there is no mention anywhereof the CPB holding an “urgent press conference” for the Nanking massacre.

127

That is, the International Propaganda Division.
105

To give an example of an urgent press conference they did hold, note theitalicized text in the following excerpt, which marks its solitary appearance:
Extraordinary military affairs report were convened by this
Division 128 and held in the official residence of the director. When a
responsive report was necessary from the director responsible
concerning other urgent problems or international changes, this
Division immediately convened an extraordinary [press] conferencewith a government official as spokesman. To give examples, Director
Kong Xiangxi held a reception for journalists at the Central Bank,
Deputy Director Zhang Qun had a talk with journalists at the Salt
Industry Building, etc.
Let us take a look at one more thing. The following is a part of the“English-language monthly” sub-section from the “Summary of Editorial
Operations” section.
In the spring of 1938, before the battle of Xuzhou, when this
Division was still in Hankou, many of the texts published in Englishlanguage dailies were works expressing our country’s spirit ofresistance and nation building. Thinking that these matters had to be
widely propagandized, we decided to start an English-language
monthly. We called it China at War, and volume one issue one waspublished in April this year [1938]. It contained 29 articles over 80
pages, and 1,000 copies were printed. Over half of the print run was
mailed overseas, and they were well received.
If the articles in American newspapers were even only a little bit true,
the CPB would have made use of them as propaganda sources for
publicizing the Nanking massacre. Although the inauguration of the monthly
magazine China at War occurred only four months after the American
newspapers reported the Nanking massacre, there was no reference in the
periodical to any Nanking massacre such as Durdin and Steele had reported.
The truth is, if one reads the inaugural issue of China at War, which
followed a policy of describing only “the facts” based on official
announcements, one finds that all it has to say about Nanking is this:“Nanking － after December 12, 1937 － became a hunting ground for the128

That is, the International Propaganda Division.
106

Japanese soldiers who combed the city looking for money, loot andwomen.” 129 The word “massacre” never appears.
There were five sections in the International Propaganda Division. I
looked at the other sections’ “Operations Summaries,” but I could not evenfind any traces that they took up the issue that American newspapers hadreported a Nanking massacre. In his post-war Autobiography, CPB deputy
director Dong wrote, “American journalists stayed the midst of danger inNanking and continued to complain about the situation,” 130 praising thejournalists highly. It is quite a striking contrast that these journalists had
gained such approval from Dong, yet the American newspaper articles are
ignored in the top-secret document drawn up at the time.
If one wishes to maintain that the American newspaper articles weretrue, would not the Guomindang government, the CPB, and the Republic ofChina’s Foreign Service, boldly have repeated it over and over in the publicforum, complaining about the Nanking massacre to the whole world? Using
the diplomatic route, surely they would have protested repeatedly to theJapanese government. In point of fact, there is not one such instance.
Gu Weijin’s address (based on the American newspaper articles) tothe League of Nations was the first and last declaration to the world by the
Guomindang government of the “Nanking massacre.” We can but say thatthe “Nanking Massacre Story” as published in American newspapers wasfalse reportage because the CPB recognized that it was.

129
130

China at War, Vol. 1, No 1 (April 1938), p. 70.
Dong, op. cit., p. 79.
107

108

CHAPTER SIX:
RE-EXAMINING THE PROPAGANDA BOOK WHAT WAR MEANS

As discussed in the previous chapter, the American newspaper
articles reporting on the three days after the fall of Nanking did notpresent the truth. There can be no denying the possibility that thereports were extraordinary works put forth as part of the propaganda
war by the CPB. Deputy director Dong Xianguang, writing of thesearticles, said “the world’s sympathies tilted in China’s favor … and an
opportunity opened for our propaganda” — and part of the
propaganda to which he referred was What War Means, which came out
seven months after the fall of Nanking. The book depicts events in themonth following the city’s fall. As touched on in Chapter One, however,this was a propaganda book produced by the CPB. Of course, justbecause we say What War Means was a work of propaganda doesn’tmean we can jump to the conclusion that everything presented in it is
fiction. We will now therefore investigate in detail the contents of thiswork of propaganda.

§1 The role served by Timperley’s foreword
Harold Timperley composed the book in three sections: the foreword,
the body (eight chapters), and the appendices (A through F). Nanking iscovered in the book through Chapter Four. We shall look at the book startingwith the role served by the book’s foreword.
In his foreword, Timperley wrote of the course of events in the editingof What War Means:
Perhaps this book would not have come to be written had it notbeen for the fact that telegrams reporting outrages committed against
Chinese civilians by the Japanese troops which occupied Nanking in
December of last year were suppressed by the censors installed by theJapanese authorities in the foreign cable offices at Shanghai. 131

131

Timperley, op. cit., p. 9.
109

How would this seem to the reader? Might the reader not be struck
first by the description of telegrams that were seized by the Japanesecensors? Would not the reader then seize upon the word “truth”?
To be sure, this was the truth. Timperley sent a telegram from
Shanghai to the Manchester Guardian bearing text mentioning “themassacre of 300,000 in the Yangzi delta.” It was seized by the Japanese
authorities in Shanghai. The text of this telegram was reported in the Dec. 22,
2002, edition of the Tokyo Shinbun, among other sources.
Considering what we have so far, we can say that it is due toTimperly’s skillful writing that What War Means does not look like a workof propaganda.
Timperley deliberately does not present the contents of his crucial
telegram with the reference to “the massacre of 300,000 in the Yangzi delta”
here, but it should be. What is important to Timperley, then, is somethingelse. Isn’t this “massacre of 300,000” simply a “fact” of convenience really
only intended to be used to level accusations against the Japanese army? At
any rate, Timperley didn’t present the contents of the telegram in his
foreword. Why?
He only required the truth about his telegram having been seized. To
that end, he did all he could when writing the telegram to assure that it
would be seized by the Japanese authorities — thus his use of the words “themassacre of 300,000 in the Yangzi delta.” Timperley knew better thananyone else that the charge was baseless.
Bates wrote a letter to Timperley on Mar. 3 concerning the editorial
direction of What War Means. He suggested, “For purpose of impressing a
distant public with the brutality of warfare, … it seems much more effective
to have a base wider than that of one city.” 132 On Mar. 21, he again made thesame suggestion. In other words, Bates wanted to raise the issue of theJapanese army’s action in Shanghai and other places, not just Nanking.
Timperley replied, “In your letter You ask why I have done nothing
about Shanghai, Sungking and Kashing. I think you will find that Chapter
VII fills the gap. When we looked into the matter we found that there wasvery little authentic evidence of Japanese outrages against the civilian
population around Shanghai.” 133 [Emphasis and parenthetical mine.]
As shown by the italics, Timperley himself knew that there was no
positive proof of anything like “the massacre of 300,000” by Japanese army
132

Eyewitness to Massacre, p.31.
Timperley’s letter to Bates, March 28, 1938, in Miner Searle Bates Papers, Record
group No. 10, Box 4, Folder 65..

133

110

actions in the Yangzi delta area of Shanghai, Songjiang (Sungking), andJiaxing (Kashing).
In addition, in Chapter Six of What War Means, we read “at least
300,000 Chinese civilians have lost their lives as a result of the SinoJapanese hostilities in the Yangtze Delta.” 134 Setting aside for now thenumber of the slain and their status as common townsfolk, Timperley admits
that the dead were the result of “Sino-Japanese hostilities” — thus not the
product of a “massacre.”The seizure of the telegram by the Japanese becomes an inevitable
result if one changes “the result of hostilities” to “a Japanese army
massacre” like this and attempts to send it off. If he had truly intended tosend the telegram reliably and claim “the massacre of 300,000 in the Yangzidelta,” he should have sent it from the French concession or the joint Anglo–
American concession in Shanghai. Instead, he deliberately chose to send it
from a Japanese-managed telegraph office. Just as one would expect, theJapanese seized the telegram due to “excessive exaggeration.” We can only
say that Timperley expected that the telegram would be seized, and that is
why he deliberately went to the Japanese telegraphy office to send it.
Readers of What War Means probably have no interest in whether the
telegram was true. They are struck by the fact that the telegram was seized,
and likely think that the Japanese army had something to hide. They
doubtless accepted that the text of What War Means, beginning after that
foreword, exposed a truth that had been concealed. Timperley’s foreword
had the purpose of lending credibility to the raw voices in Chapters One
through Four.

§2 The raw voices of Chapters One through Four of What War Means
The voices of Chapters One through Four are all anonymous.
Generally, reliability vanishes when material is anonymous; but with
Timperley’s skilled explanations, credibility rose instead.
For example, concerning the raw voice making up the first half ofChapter One, at the outset Timperley wrote, “[t]his brief but illuminating
description of events immediately after the Japanese entry of Nanking istaken from a letter dated December 15, written to friends in Shanghai by one

134

Timperley, op. cit., p. 71.
111

of the most respected members of Nanking’s foreign community who is noted
for his fairmindedness.” 135 [Emphasis mine.]
On the chapter’s second half, he said, “[f]urther details are given in
the following vivid account by a foreign resident of Nanking who has spentalmost the whole of his life in China. His letter has been left exactly as it
was received by his friends in Shanghai except that references of a largely
personal nature have been deleted.” 136 [Emphasis mine.] For Chapter Two,he offers this: “Continuing his narrative in diary form the writer says.…” 137
As can be understood from the italics above, since he explains thatthese reports, although anonymous, were by “a foreign resident of Nanking,”
readers are reassured and probably no longer feel any concern that they areanonymous accounts.
As also indicated by the italics, Timperley explains that everything
but Chapter Three consists of personal letters sent to friends by “a foreign
resident of Nanking.” (Chapter Two is a continuation of the second half ofChapter One, so it is probably fair to consider it, too, as “a letter received byfriends in Shanghai.”)
It seems to be an innocent enough explanation; but given that they are
explained as “letters” from foreign individuals in Nanking, readers probably
understood that the editor put the book together by making use of letters that
had been sent from time to time by foreigners in Nanking to friends inShanghai. That is, readers would probably think that the Nanking-based
foreigners did not write these manuscripts for deliberate use in What War
Means.
Moreover, with the explanation that they are “letters,” a “ripple
effect” comes into play. Readers would probably assume that the writers
sending private messages to friends would not conceal the truth. If by any
chance anonymous authors were identified and lies and exaggerated
descriptions were pointed out, it was still a private letter so there was no one
who could be held to account for it.
The explanation that the text is made up of “letters” by “individual
foreigners in Nanking” is an extremely important note for completely
erasing any traces that What War Means is a work of propaganda.
Were these really private letters, though? At the very least, the “letter”
published as the first half of Chapter One, as I have already discussed, wasthe report Bates wrote and passed on to journalists who were leaving
135

Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., p. 20.
137
Ibid., p. 33.
136

112

Nanking on Dec. 15, asking them to make use of it. Strictly speaking, thiswas not a letter written by someone (Bates) to a friend in Shanghai.
As laid out herein in Chapter One, two of the anonymous “foreign
residents of Nanking” have been identified as Miner Searle Bates andGeorge Fitch. Only the writer contributing the last half of Chapter Four has
remained unidentified. In Bates’ personal history (in the Yale archives), herecords that, “In Timperley’s volume, Chapter I & II came from George
Fitch; except pp. 18-20 from me, also III, IVa and Appendix F." 138 Bates did
not clarify who was responsible for “(b),” the second half of Chapter Four.
What War Means can be divided into the first and second halves of
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, and the first and second halvesof Chapter Four. That is, one can believe that six people contributed to it. It
appears as if they are the raw voices of six “foreigners living in Nanking,”
but the truth is that most of the writing was that of only Bates and Fitch. It
would have been better, would it not, if Timperley had sought out more raw
voices of foreigners in Nanking?
Speaking of foreign residents of Nanking — by Jan. 27, 1938, there
were only 33 Americans and Europeans left in the city. During that time,
Rabe, Magee, Robert Wilson, and Vautrin, all kept diaries. There were 15
members on the International Committee. Bates had been living in Nanking
as a missionary since 1920, and as a member of the International Committee
he had had a long association with the others. If 40,000 had truly been killed
inside the small confines of Nanking as Bates had said, one can’t help but
think that most of the others would have had the same experiences andwitnessed the same things.
It would have been good if Timperley had added Steele (who had
promptly written “The Nanking Massacre Story” for the American
newspapers) and Durdin to the list of contributors to What War Means, butultimately there were only three voices — those of Bates, Fitch, and theanonymous third contributor. Was it because they were unable to ask others
to describe the events of the Nanking Massacre? That is to say, was it
because What War Means was a work of propaganda that there were nosources he could get to contribute material for him?
Consider those involved with the production of What War Means. The
editor Timperley was an “advisor” to the CPB. Bates was an “advisor” to the
Nationalist government. We don’t know that much about Fitch, but we doknow that his wife was a “close friend” of the wife of Chiang Kai-shek.
138

Professional Record, M.S. Bates, in Miner Searle Bates Papers, Record group No. 10,
Box 126, Folder 1132.
113After the war, many photographs purported to be of the Nanking Massacre
surfaced, and the person who provided the photographs was identified as
Fitch’s daughter, Marion.

§3 Investigation 1 — the first chapter of What War Means
The first chapter of What War Means, “Nanking’s Ordeal,” is divided
into two halves. The first half describes the conditions in Nanking up to Dec.
15, and the author was Miner Searle Bates. As I discussed in Chapter Five,this was the report that Bates handed to American journalists on Dec. 15,
after Nanking had fallen. The second half describes Nanking up to Dec. 16
in diary form, and the author was George Fitch. The first chapter thus
presents the events in Nanking covering the four days of Dec. 13 – Dec. 16.
When we combine contemporary Chinese, Japanese, English, andGerman records to investigate incidents of murder during those four days,
we find three murders took place on Dec. 13, four on Dec. 14, eight on Dec.
15, and seven on Dec. 16. These are all hearsay accounts of uncertain
provenance, however, and there are zero instances of murder that was
witnessed.
We therefore surely have to say that Bates’ account in Chapter One of“[i]n two days the whole outlook has been ruined by frequent murder.…
Foreigners who have traveled over the city report many civilian bodies lying
in the street,” and Fitch’s commentary that “[t]he victorious army must haveits rewards — and those rewards are to plunder, murder, rape, at will,” arefiction. But we still have to examine it closely once more.
The reason is a statement Miner Bates made in Nanking on Feb. 6,
1947, half a year after his testimony asserting the existence of a Nanking
Massacre at the Tokyo Tribunal in July, 1946. This statement was made one
year before the closing arguments of the prosecutor, which took place on
Feb. 18, 1948. Bates said this:[A] low and incomplete figure for civilian deaths … inflictedby the Japanese in the first few weeks of their occupation of Nanking,was 12,000; and for deaths of unarmed men in military clothing,
35,000. Of these murders, over 90 per cent occurred in the first ten
days, most of all in the first three days. 139 [Emphasis mine.]
139

Statement of M.S. Bates, dated February 6, 1947, in : Miner Searle Bates Papers,
Record Group No. 10, Box 126, 4, Folder 1132.
114

That is to say, at the Tokyo Tribunal, Bates asserted a massacre of
40,000 people, including 12,000 civilians, and that most of all “ in the first
three days.” This statement, however, is at considerable variance from“incidents of witnessed murder were zero,” which is the result of combing
contemporary records. We can’t move forward as long as we have not yet
been able to ascertain Bates’ grounds to say what he said. Let us go back andre-examine the records made by foreigners remaining in Nanking with Bates
and Fitch of conditions in Nanking over those three post-fall days.

§4 Population distribution up to the fall of Nanking
First, let us verify the population distribution in Nanking before thecity fell. When the fighting broke out at Shanghai four months before thebattle for Nanking, townsmen almost immediately began to flee from
Nanking. On Aug. 31, 1937, a large number of merchants closed their shops,
and on Sept. 28, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary that “[m]ost of the shops
on the business streets were locked, and somehow the city had a forlorn anddeserted look.”
Vautrin recorded in her diary that wounded soldiers were brought toNanking from the Shanghai area — 1,500 seriously wounded ones on Oct.
25, and 8,000 more injured soldiers on Nov. 14. They were taken to the aid
station at Xiaguan, but on Nov. 20, she says, 20 or 30 percent of the soldiers
had died. Wounded soldiers were left in great numbers at Nanking Stationand ignored, and the stench of decomposing corpses hung in the air. Ernest
Forster, with Nanking’s St. Paul’s Anglican Mission, wrote that all thegovernment offices and workers had relocated to Hankou or Chongqing in
mid-November so the townsmen were in a panic, while refugees continued
to flow into the city and waves of residents continued fleeing from it.
Under these conditions, most people who were able to leave Nanking
did so. Wang Gupan, head of the metropolitan police agency, repeated on
Nov. 28 that there were only 200,000 people still in the city.
As for the “the poorest of the poor” (as Rabe termed them) remaining
in Nanking, the Chinese army had burned down everything surrounding thecity walls following Operation Clean Fields, 140 so many of the townsfolk
who had been burnt out and were unable to leave sought refuge in the Safety
Zone so as not to be mistaken for spies. Steele wrote, “I saw Chinese troops
140

The Chinese plan to burn houses and goods in a scorched earth campaign.
115

needlessly applying the torch to whole blocks of houses and shops aroundthe city walls, disposing thousands in futile attempt to impede the Japanese
attack. 141
On Dec. 8, the commandant of Nanking’s defenses, Gen. Tang
Shengzhi, ordered everyone remaining in Nanking to take refuge in the
Safety Zone. In a Dec. 2 letter, Vautrin wrote, “Nanking is a deserted anddefeated city already.” and on the 9th she wrote, “[t]he houses in this area
are fast filling but the rest of the city is deserted.” 142
On Dec. 9, Rabe wrote in his journal “[t]he old Communications
Ministry (arsenal) is opened to refugees and in no time fills to the rafters.” 143
Townsmen found refuge living in tents on the grounds of Chinese armybuildings, European and British buildings including Ginling Women’sCollege, and even in Rabe’s garden.
The Chinese army, on the other hand, was near the walls where theywould meet the Japanese army in combat. What must not be overlooked,
however, as you can see from page 62, was that during the battle whichbegan on Dec. 10, the Chinese army was also still in the “demilitarized”
neutral territory that was the Safety Zone. The Chinese army discussed with
Rabe moving their seriously wounded soldiers from the field hospitaloutside the Safety Zone to inside the Safety Zone on Dec. 10. Though Raberecognized that this was a violation of the agreement that it was to be neutral
territory, he “refer Dr. King to Dr. Trimmer, the chairman [our] medical
Division at Kulou Hospital.” 144 In other words, there were both Chinese
soldiers who were wounded and those who were engaged in combat inside
the Safety Zone.
At noon on Dec. 9, Japanese planes dropped leaflets advising the
Chinese army to surrender. The Japanese waited for a reply from the
Chinese side until the expiration of their offer (noon on Dec. 10), but theyreceived no reply. About 2 p.m., therefore, the Japanese launched a fullscale attack with the Sixth, Ninth, and Sixteenth Divisions, and other units.
Fierce attacks began on Zhongshan Gate (the east gate), Zhonghua Gate (thesouth gate), Guanghua Gate (between Zhongshan and Zhonghua Gates), andat other locations.
Of the fierce attack that began on Dec. 10, Vautrin wrote in her diaryon Dec. 11 that “[a]ll night and all day there has been heavy artillery fire
141

Chicago Daily News, December 9, 1937.
Ibid.
143
Rabe, Diary, p.57.
144
Ibid. Gulou Hospital was attached to the University of Nanking.
142

116

into the city,” 145 and W. Plumer Mills recorded that, “[b]ut the roar of theguns could be heard all over the city.” 146
At this time, did the Japanese bomb the Safety Zone where almost all
the townsfolk were assembled or not? That also is an issue that has to belooked at.
On Dec. 11, Rabe recorded that, “[t]he first grenades land in the
refugee Zone in front of and behind the Foo Gong Hotel. A total of twelve
dead and about twelve wounded. Sperling 147 … is slightly wounded by flying
glass.” 148 In What War Means, Fitch wrote of the bombing “killing about
fourty.” 149
As I have already laid out, the International Committee to which Rabe,
Fitch, and Sperling belonged wrote to the Japanese command in the“Document No. 1” saying, “[w]e come to thank you for the fine way yourartillery spared the Safety Zone.” 150 Moreover, Durdin wrote in the New
York Times on Dec. 18 that, “The Japanese seemingly avoided wrecking
good buildings. The scarcity of air bombardments in the capture indicatedtheir intention to avoid the destruction of buildings. The Japanese evenavoided bombing Chinese troop concentrations in built-up areas, apparently
to preserve the buildings.” 151
The Japanese army thus exerted every effort not to attack the Safety
Zone or important buildings. Someone was protecting the Safety Zone fromthe danger of bombardment. ? Of course, even if they adjusted their sights
exactly, there were often times where shells would stray from the target. We
don’t know exactly where the stray artillery damage that Fitch and Rabewrote about was. In the “Document No. 9, the International Committee
wrote only that, “there had been very little destruction by stray shells,” 152and they did not criticize the Japanese.
According to Vautrin’s diary, south Nanking and Xiaguan were stillburning on Dec. 12, and at night she could see the huge muzzle flash fromthe Japanese artillery on Mt. Zijin. There was fierce bombardment inside thecity’s southwest quarter, so all the windows in the Safety Zone were covered
145

Vautrin, Diary, p.103.
Ibid.
147
Eduard Sperling was a German employed by Shanghai Insurance Co., and a memberof the International Committee.
148
Rabe, Diary, p.60.
149
Timperley, op. cit., p. 24.
150
Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, p.1.
151
New York Times, Dec. 18, 1937.
152
Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone, p.15.
146

117

up to prevent flying glass. Even through all this, Vautrin records that,“refugees continue to come in.” 153
At 8 p.m. on Dec. 12, Gen. Tang Shengzhi, who had declared that hewould defend Nanking to the death, slipped out of the city. Durdin wrote in
the New York Times on Dec. 18 that Tang and his associated divisioncommanders “deserted their troops and fled, not even attempting to make themost of the desperate situation following the entry of the first Japanese
troops inside the city’s walls.” 154 Following Chiang Kai-shek’s order to “notlet even one Chinese person, even one mound of land fall into enemy hands— reduce them to ashes!”, the Chinese army fired the splendid
transportation department building and slipped off. There are many recordsof the conflagration of the transportation department building, and with this,panic and chaos spread even more.
At this point, we should mention the outrages of the Chinese army,
which have not been considered much of an issue where Nanking isconcerned. For example, in his unpublished book Enemy Planes Over
Nanking, Rabe quotes a handwritten letter from “a European lady” addressedto the “International Refugee Committee” and dated Dec. 11 (two days
before Nanking’s fall). The letter says:
The Chinese soldiers, numbered about hundred, many armed,
who are living, since few days, (about two weeks) in the Woo-TaiSan-Tsung, began , this morning to threat to kill foreign people anddestroy their properties, bamboo fences and other things have alreadybeen destroyed. Tha danger is imminent.
Please interfere immediately to protect the foreign and Chinese
lives in your control by sending these soldiers away.
P.S. These soldiers bear, since yesterday, the yellow brassard of
Nanking Guard. 155
Mt. Wutai was inside the Safety Zone. It was a letter asking for help
against the outrages committed against townsmen, Europeans, andAmericans by Chinese soldiers who had trespassed on Mt. Wutai inviolation of the agreement with the International Committee.
Now our story returns to the flight of Gen. Tang Shengzhi. The
behavior of Chinese soldiers who had been abandoned by their commanders
153

Vautrin, Diary, p.105.
New York Times, Dec. 18, 1937.
155
Rabe, Enemy Planes Over Nanking, p. 106.
154

118

is covered herein on pages 72 and 73, so there is no need to repeat it here.
Vautrin says, that “refugees continue to come in,” but among these werevery many Chinese soldiers who had thrown away their uniforms andentered the Safety Zone.
This panic and chaos continued through the night of Dec. 12 and into
Dec. 13. On the 13th, the city fell. As indicated by the “Document No. 9”
from the International Committee to the Japanese embassy, which says,“when your troops entered the city, we had nearly all the civilian population
gathered in a Zone,” most of the townsfolk were assembled in the Safety
Zone. Vautrin and German embassy secretary Paul Scharffenberg wrote thesame thing.
A rough map of the distribution of the population of Nanking justbefore the city fell is shown in the following illustration. In this map, (A)marks the Safety Zone, (B) marks the city of Nanking beyond the Safety
Zone, and (C) marks the territory outside Nanking.

§5 The four-day period after the fall of Nanking
Nanking fell on Dec. 13. What we should all note here is the situation
inside the city, and in particular, in the Safety Zone. That is, as can beunderstood from the afore-mentioned distribution of population, the people
who were the object of the massacre were all taking refuge in the Safety
Zone (A). The city proper other than the Safety Zone (B) was virtuallydeserted. Beyond the city’s walls (C) was a battlefield until Dec. 16, so if
anyone was out there, he was a Chinese soldier. There were no civilians
there.
Where were Bates and Fitch (who described the three or four days
after Nanking’s fall) during this time? They were in the Safety Zone. For
one day only — on Dec. 15 — Fitch went outside the Safety Zone on around trip to Xiaguan to see off journalists leaving Nanking. When he madereference to that day, he mentioned only a large pile of corpses near Yijiang
Gate. (These were the bodies of Chinese soldiers shot by their own army’s
supervising unit, or were crushed in the press to escape, as I discussed on
pages 72 and 73.)
As Smith’s observations (presented on pages 89 and 90) and otherrecords show, through the morning of the 13th as Nanking fell, the Japanese
troops didn’t enter the Safety Zone.
In other words, the focus of the problem is on what the actions of theJapanese army after the afternoon of the 13th.
119

Nanking and its environs after the city fell. “A” is the Safety Zone, where nearly all of
the city’s residents sought refuge. Chinese soldiers entered it as well. “B” indicates thecity outside the Safety Zone. “C” shows the land outside the city’s walls. (After “A
Map of Nanking and Its Surrounding Gates” in Ishiwari Heizô’s A Summary ofChinese Citadels [1940].)120

“Mr. Rabe, I hereby inform you that, according to orders, the army will begin a search
for [Chinese] regulars in the so-called Safety Zone starting at 9 AM today. Nanking
Special Agency, K. Kikuchi.” This notice from the Japanese army to the International
Committee after Nanking’s fall on the 14th about operations to sweep for stragglers isundated. Is this “K. Kikuchi” actually Kikuchi Ken’ichi, who was transferred from theManchukuo government? (In vol. 3, pages 144–145, of Rabe’s Enemy Planes Over
Nanking.)

Preparing for mopping-up operations to begin the next day, theJapanese army’s vanguard entered part of the Safety Zone on a preliminary
inspection for several hours on the afternoon of the 13th. With thepromulgation of the “Ninth Division Sweep Unit Order” on Dec. 14 to“make the occupation of Nanking sound by mopping up any remaining
enemy forces,” only the Seventh Infantry Regiment of the Ninth Division
entered the Safety Zone during the three days from the 14th through the 16th.
Gen. Matsui Iwane had already issued his “Nanking Conquest Points” orderconcerning the exposure of enemy soldiers, protection of civilians, andmopping-up zones for each regiment six days earlier, on Dec. 7.
On Dec. 14, the Seventh Infantry Regiment, who were responsible for
mopping up inside the Safety Zone, entered the Zone where soldiers who
had cast off their uniforms were mixing indistinguishably with civilians. Col.
Isa Kazuo, the commander of the Seventh Infantry Regiment, wrote
concisely in his journal that, “[w]e begin the sweep in the morning. There isa refugee zone in our assigned area. Refugees total an estimated 100,000 or121

so.” 156 We tend to think that the post-capitulation Japanese army’s military
discipline was disorderly and that anyone could easily go into the Safety
Zone, but those who were not authorized were forbidden from entering.
For example, at the Tokyo Tribunal, Col. Wakisaka Jirô, commanderof the Ninth Division’s Thirty-Sixth Infantry Regiment, testified that,On Dec. 15, on the occasion of an inspection tour inside Nanking, I
thought I would like to inspect the actual conditions inside the refugeezone, but military police were guarding it strictly and even though I
was a ranking officer I was refused and told that without special
authorization entry was forbidden. Ultimately, I was unable to inspect
the zone. 157
The Japanese army’s military police controlled Col. Wakisaka’s actions, andthat they were that firm with an army colonel shows that the Japanesemilitary discipline was strictly enforced throughout the army. Of course,
there were probably some soldiers there who ignored military regulations.
Once again, please look at Bates’ assertion on page 114 that there wasa massacre of 40,000 that included 12,000 civilians. From Bates’ claim that“most of all in the first three days,” in the three days that the Seventh
Infantry Regiment was in the Safety Zone, they would have had to havemassacred 12,000 “civilians” and most of some 30,000 soldiers. Might Bates
and Fitch have described this as “frequent murder” and “wanton slaughter”
in the first chapter of What War Means? But as I have already shown, as
consolidated records from contemporary Chinese, Japanese, English, andGerman sources indicate, there was not one witnessed murder of a civilian.
Exactly what were the murders described by Bates and Fitch, and inparticular Bates’ supposed slaughter of 12,000 “civilians”?
If I may be so bold as to bring up an appropriate thing for the word
“murder” in the Safety Zone during those three days, it seems that it can
only be the execution of Chinese soldiers by the Japanese forces after
mopping-up operations. Strictly speaking, however, neither Bates nor Fitch
actually saw those executions. What the two saw was the unmasking ofChinese soldiers while the Japanese army conducted mopping-up operationsin the Safety Zone.
156“Isa Kazuo Nikki” in Battle of Nanking Editorial Committee eds., Source material
relating to the Battle of Nanking, (Tokyo: Kaikosha, 1993), vol. 1, p. 334.
157
R. John Primchard and Sonia Magabanua Zaide ed., The Tokyo War Crimes Trial,
Garland Publishers, 1981, p.32605.
122Fitch said that on Dec. 15, “it was all too evident that execution wasgoing on, hundreds of poor disarmed soldiers with many innocent civilians
among them — the real reason for his not wanting me to go further.” 158 In
other words, he points to the possible executions of Chinese soldiers after
they were identified and taken from the Safety Zone, and he supposed thenthat “civilias” had been massacred.
If the executions carried out by the Japanese army during those threedays were mistaken for murders, then they would correspond to Bates’ andFitch’s references to “frequent murders” and “wanton slaughter.” This
would also fit with Bates’ assertion that “most of all in the first three days.”
No other “killings” but these can be seen in the three days after
Nanking’s fall.
We should look at the mopping-up operations. It is a common military
function always carried out after a battle regardless of locale. The Seventh
Infantry Regiment, who had the responsibility for sweeping up in the Safety
Zone, did two things.
First was the seizure of all the scattered weapons and uniforms.
Nanking yielded a veritable mountain of munitions: four tanks and 39,000
rounds of tank ammunition, ten mortars and 57,218 shells, 103 pistols and261,350 rounds of ammunition, 960 rifles and 390,000 rounds ofammunition, 55,122 hand grenades, eight 20-millimeter artillery pieces andsome 1,000 shells, etc. It was a difficult job. This operation could have been
mistaken for looting on the part of Japanese soldiers.
The second thing was to uncover enemy troops hiding in the Safety
Zone where Chinese soldiers had changed out of their uniforms and blended
seamlessly with civilians. If the enemy soldiers who had not come forward
and surrendered had been left alone, concealed as they were, there was noway to know when they might seize the opportunity to strike back against
the Japanese. If that were the case, the Safety Zone was quite capable ofbecoming the Danger Zone. In point of fact, the Japanese inside Nanking
took sporadic fire from Chinese forces in the city. These mopping-up
operations were indispensable in securing the Japanese occupation of
Nanking and preserving the peace between the Japanese and townsfolk.
Unmasking the Chinese soldiers in the Safety Zone was no easy
matter. According to the first volume of Source Material Relating to theBattle for Nanking, at 4:30 on the afternoon of Dec. 13, the “Notes for
Effecting the Sweep” order was issued to the Seventh Infantry Regiment, to
wit:
158

Eyewitness to Massacre, p. 89.
123

All young men are to be considered as defeated soldiers or as bianyidui 159 and are to be arrested and confined. As for those other than
young men — Chinese who have no hostile intent, and in particular
women, children, and the elderly — treat them with leniency, so they
will respect the dignity of the Imperial Army. 160 [Emphasis mine.]
As the italicized part of this order shows, the Japanese army wasordered to show leniency to “Chinese who have no hostile intent, and inparticular women, children, and the elderly.”

The above photograph shows a mimeographed document (9" x 2 3/4")
from the journal-like album of naval Lt. Taguchi Yasamatsu. On Dec. 10,
the day the battle for the conquest of Nanking began, in accordance with the
Shanghai naval land combat unit order, Lt. Taguchi’s First Independent
Battery set out for the Daxiao Airfield south of Guanghua Gate (outside the159

Bianyi-dui (literally “plain-clothes corps”) were a particular type of guerilla fighter in
China; they were regular troops who took on the outward appearance of students orlaborers. They concealed themselves among common townsfolk — from whom it wasdifficult to distinguish them — and would attack the Japanese forces from behind.
160
Battle of Nanking Editorial Committee eds., Source material relating to the Battle of
Nanking, (Tokyo: Kaikosha, 1993), vol. 1, p. 445.
124

city) as the “Nanking air force base construction corps.” While fighting theremnants of the defeated army, Taguchi had copies of this document printed
up. It says, “[as this individual is] a good person, those who cause injury [tohim] will be severely punished, [issued by] Yokosuka Force, First
Independent Battery Commander Taguchi (seal).” Taguchi had these
distributed to the homes of “good people” and had them affixed to theirdoors and gates. These “good people” were non-combatants. In addition, hegave armbands to them to help distinguish them from the bianyi-dui. Whenhe “gave medical attention and care” to a wounded Chinese soldier, thesoldier’s mother eventually came to him and was so grateful that Taguchi
said, “she kowtowed to me to express her thanks.” 161 We don’t know exactly
when these documents were distributed, unfortunately. The copy in
Taguchi’s album was affixed into the Dec. 13 place, so given the above
notes, they must have been distributed before this date. In either case, eventhough there were differences between “inside Nanking” and “outside
Nanking” and between the army and navy, we can probably say the samething was going on inside the city.
Having seen this, it becomes difficult to believe that any women or
children were taken, let alone executed.
Given the order requiring that, “[a]ll young men are to be considered
as defeated soldiers or as bianyi-dui and are to be arrested and confined,” wecan’t unconditionally deny the possibility that townsfolk who were not in thearmy might mistakenly have been identified as having been Chinese soldiers.
The part of the order referencing “young men” needs clarification. As
Durdin recalled, Chiang Kai-shek had “all who were capable of bearing
arms mobilized and devoted to drilling, attaching themselves to the defenseof Nanking.” This means that most of the youth in Nanking were mobilized,
so it is extremely possible that the young men were soldiers. This is why theJapanese army demanded that “[a]ll young men [were] to be considered as
defeated soldiers or as bianyi-dui.”
If by some chance a mistake was made, a relative or friend would
show up and after their petition was heard and the situation cleared up, thearrested individual would be released. In the “Reports of Injuries to
Civilians,” there are no complaints with a real name given where any
townsmen were taken off. Even if people were arrested, if they showed no“signs of resistance” they were spared the death sentence and employed ascoolies. The number of coolies employed by the end of February, 1938, (twoand a half months after Nanking fell) reached 10,000.
161

Taguchi Yasamatsu, War Journal, self-published.
125How many Chinese soldiers from the Safety Zone were executedduring those three days? We don’t have records for those three days, butthere is a record of unmasking soldiers covering an 11-day period inside thecity which includes the Safety Zone. This is the Seventh Infantry Regiment’s“List of the Nanking Sweep from Dec. 13 to Dec. 24,” which says “Number
shot or bayoneted to death (defeated soldiers): 6,670.”
It is generally considered that reports of this type typically inflate thenumbers threefold, so it is probably fair to imagine that something like 2,000
were shot. The problem is whether these executions fit the accounts of“frequent murders” and “wanton slaughter.” In other words, were these
executions mistaken for illegal killing — that is, a massacre?
Steele writes in his article in the Chicago Daily News about the threedays from Dec. 12 – Dec. 15 that, “a band of 300 Chinese being
methodically executed before the the wall near the waterfront.” He reported
the “execution of Chinese soldiers” as “the execution of Chinese.” The
world knew of the Japanese army’s executions after mopping-up operations
were complete, but no country made any complaints to Japan based on thisincident. All the more notable was that the Guomindang government, farfrom criticizing Japan, ignored the situation. This was as I have alreadydiscussed herein.
In other words, Bates and Fitch’s accounts of “frequent murders” and“wanton slaughter” in the first chapter of What War Means were based on
the unmasking and execution of Chinese soldiers during mopping-up
exercises. The “three days” referenced in the massacre of 40,000 people,
including 12,000 civilians, that “most of all [took place] in the first threedays” point to the first three days of the Japanese army’s mopping-up.

§6 Investigation 2 — the second chapter of What War Means
Fitch, continuing in the second chapter from the first, presented
accounts of “robbery, murder, and rape” in the form of a diary covering Dec.
17–Dec. 31. I would like to focus on the “murder” in this section.
Dec. 17 was the day that the official occupation of Nanking wasestablished, and was the day the Japanese army held the ceremonycommemorating their formal entrance into the city. Of this, Fitch wrote thefollowing:
Robbery, murder, rape continue unabated. A rough estimate
would be at least a thousand women raped last night and during the126

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. 162
The only mention of a murder on this day is the baby in the accountabove. Rabe wrote in his journal on Dec. 17, saying, “Last night up to 1,000
women and girls are said to have been raped.” 163 There can be nothing morewretched than the smothering of a baby, yet Rabe was silent on this subject.
If this had been true, they would have immediately complained to theJapanese embassy, but there is no record of it in the “Reports of Serious
Injuries to Civilians.” Who was this woman who said the baby wassmothered? Who met this woman, and who substantiated the Japanesesoldier’s offense? This was an unreliable rumor at any rate, as there is noevidence pointing to a crime by any Japanese soldier.
The German embassy’s chancellor, Paul Scharrfenberg, told Rabe,“[a]s for all these excesses, one hears only one side of it, after all.” 164 As thisshows, the account of 1,000 rapes seems to exist only from the Chinese sideand so lacks reliability. We can only say, then, that the story that a baby was
suffocated — like the attendant story that the Japanese committed 1,000
rapes — was only a rumor.
On Dec. 18, Fitch recorded a conversation with Dr. Wilson. He said,
Wilson reported a boy of five years of age brought to the hospital[attached University of Nanking] after having been stabbed with abayonet 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. 165
On this day he recorded no murders. We can only see outrages asmentioned above. The essential matter of whether these were outrages
committed by the Japanese army is not recorded. What needs to be noted
here is that at the time, all that one had to do was report that one hadreceived an injury from the Japanese army and one was able to go to thehospital attached to the University of Nanking and get medical treatment
free-of-charge.
162

Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p.108
Rabe, Diary, p.77.
164
Rabe, Diary, p. 190.
165
Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p. 109.
163

127

Fitch wrote this of Dec. 19:
Sunday, December 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.… Several were
killed in cold blood, for no apparent reasons whatever. Six out ofseven of our sanitation squad in one district were slaughtered; theseventh escaped, wounded, to tell the tale.… I also went to the houseof 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 cansee. 166
We are a bit puzzled by the phrase “a day of complete anarchy” at the
beginning. As for stories concerning murder, however, there is the one toldby the person who escaped and fled back home. Where did this take place?
What time, and on what day? Fitch didn’t say. Moreover, about the corpses
Fitch said he saw — might he have investigated when and why they died?
Post-combat burial details had not yet begun operation, so bodies frombefore Nanking fell were still left in place where they had lain. There is no
proof anywhere that these were the bodies of people massacred by theJapanese army as Fitch had said.
Dec. 20 marked a full week since Nanking’s fall. On this date, Fitch
recorded:Monday, December 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 [Daping] Road,
the most important shopping street in the city, was in flames. 167
Fitch is harsh with his criticism, but he records no killings. Still, wasthere any truth to his claim, “whole sections of the city are being
systematically burned”?
To be sure, Rabe wrote in his “Letter to Hitler” that, “A third of thecity has been burned by the Japanese army. Daping Road and the Temple ofConfucius on Huanle Street were gone in an instant.”
166
167

Ibid., pp. 109, 110.
Ibid., p.110.
128

Daping Road, the street they say was burned down, was designatedalmost immediately after Nanking’s fall as “Japan Road” because it was thestreet where Japanese would shop and go dining.
The Nanking Special Agency Report (1), issued on Jan. 21, 1938,
reported that “Japan Street is an important site. The area is some 220
hectares. There are some 60 shops ranging from post exchanges, dining
establishments, watchmakers, barbershops, general stores, inns, etc.” 168
Maruyama Susumu, who was transferred to the Nanking Special
Agency (as an employee of Manchuria Rail) from Shanghai, wrote me aletter postmarked on Apr. 13, 1989. In it, he recalled that he had heard that
Daping Road and Guofu Road, formerly Fanhua Road, were designated as“Japan Road” in the beginning of January. He also said that Confucius’Temple had been quickly restored, and a party for the war reporter Ishikawa
Tatsuzô had been held there.
Given such conditions, to say that the entire area of Daping Road
went up in smoke is clearly hyperbole.
Fitch records no killings on Dec. 21. He describes arson andattempted robbery, however. Fitch writes,
Rabe fears for his house, for buildings are burning across the street
from him.… The problem of feeding is becoming serious.… Soldierscame into our place today, over the wall, and try to take our cars while
we were all out.… 169 [Emphasis mine.]
He records arson continuing on the 21st from the 20th, so it would begood to look into the subject. It is true that there were incidents of arson.
The issue, however, is whether the arson was the work of the Japanese army
or someone else. The “Nanking Conquest Points” order issued by theJapanese army on Dec. 7 warns that, “[e]ven if through inattentiveness,those who are careless with fire will be strictly punished.” 170 They paid
scrupulous attention to accidental fires — even more so than arson. Since
fires were being set, though, they established a fire brigade in the middle ofJanuary, a month after Nanking’s fall.
Be that as it may, if one reads the above text closely, one is struck bysomething odd. Fitch couldn’t have been a witness when soldiers climbed
168

Nanking Special Agency, ed., Nanking Special Agency Report No. 1 in The front lineof research on the Nanking massacre, 2004(Tokyo: Tendensha, 2004), p. 73.
169
Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p. 111.
170
Battle of Nanking Editorial Committee ed., Source material relating to the Battle of
Nanking (Tokyo: Kaikosha, 1993), p.434.
129

over the trenches and stole their way in and tried to make off with theautomobile when everyone was absent. It is necessary to note from whom
the story might have been heard, and who would have witnessed the events.
Fitch recorded the following for Dec. 22:
Went with Sperling to see fifty corpses in some ponds a quarter of amile east of headquarters. All obviously civilians, hands bound behindbacks, one with the top half of his head cut completely off. Were theyused for saber practice? 171 [Emphasis mine.]
If the ponds at issue are some 400 meters (about a quarter mile) fromthe International Committee Headquarters, it is safe to assume it was inside
the Safety Zone. To be sure, as Nanking is on the shore of the Yangzi, there
are ponds both large and small inside and outside the city. Fitch said that all
50 bodies were those of “civilians,” but did he actually check each body tosee if it was someone killed in battle, a Chinese soldier who had cast off his
uniform, or a common townsman? All Fitch did was see some dead bodies;
yet in spite of this, he went so far as to speculate that they had been killed by
Japanese soldiers testing out their swords. If we take it that they were
civilians, surely at least one relative would have come running, and would
not have left their bodies lying there like that. There are no such reports of
injury in Nanking, however.
Fitch continues:
Mr. Wu, engineer in the power plant which is located in Hsiakwan[Xiaguan], brought us the amazing news that forty-three of the fiftyfour employees … had been taken out and shot.… 172 [Emphasis
mine.]
This is an incident of murder that Fitch heard from a Mr. Wu. This
also appears in Rabe’s journal on Dec. 22. According to Rabe’s journal,
however, this Wu was a laborer who was also to be executed, but when thetwo next to him were hit, “he fell unwounded into the river beneath thebodies of two victims and so was able to save himself” 173 and was fortunate
enough to be able to make his escape. He also says that this event took place“three or four days ago.” This is an important event.
171

Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p.111.
Ibid., p.112.
173
Rabe, Diary, p.87.
172

130

Still, if 43 out of 54 men had been taken away, why didn’t the 11 men
who were not taken away immediately rush off and notify the International
Committee? Why were they silent? Would it not have been requisite for
Fitch, upon hearing this account from Wu, to seek out the other 11 people
for corroboration? If this had been true, Fitch and Rabe should have filed acomplaint with the Japanese embassy — but they never wrote out one.
The “electric company” appearing here was probably the Metropolitan
Electric Works. According to Nanking Special Agency Report (2), theMetropolitan Electric Works, under the jurisdiction of the National
Government Construction Committee, managed the Xiagwan power plant.
This power plant was used as a military facility until Dec. 12, but before
Nanking’s fall the power lines were damaged by fire and the iron pipes at
the Mt. Qingliang service reservoir exploded. Because of that, the Special
Agency employed Chinese workers around the clock from around Dec. 22 to
get the facility operating again.
It is probably because of this situation that the rumor spread that“forty-three of the fifty-four employees … had been taken out and shot,” andsince, “at the outset the fear of war was extreme” the Special Agency wentso far as to offer conditions that during the construction “[workers] could
look forward to their lives being safe, the security of their homes, a ration
allowance, the distribution of rice and other supplementary food,[identification by] armbands, protection, and assignment to specific sectors
for work.” 174 Thanks to these efforts, they were able to have partial electricand water service by Jan. 1. In February, Chinese workers numbered “160plus electrical workers, and 60-plus waterworks workers,” and electrical andwater services were restored to normal. If the workers at the Xiaguan power
plant had been taken away and shot, surely the Japanese would not havebeen able to assemble this many workers.
To return to the original point: ten days after Nanking fell — on Dec.
23 — Fitch wrote the following:
Seventy were taken from our camp at the Rural Leaders’Training School and shot.… At noon a man was led to headquarters
with head burned cinder black — eyes and ears gone, nose partly, aghastly 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

174

Nanking Special Agency Report No. 2. in The front line of research on the Nanking
massacre, 2004, p.105.
131

who had been tied together, then gasoline thrown over them and set
afire. 175
By Dec. 17, 1,500 refugees were being housed in Rural Leaders’Training School. On searching Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone
(where the reports of injuries to Nanking residents are collected) for
instances of incidents connected with the school, there are only two
examples, and they are on Dec. 19. The first incident is when Japanesesoldiers stole $10 (or perhaps $2.50) and between two and five women wereraped. The second incident was an attempted rape. Again, there is no recordof who the witnesses were.
The case Fitch writes about above would have to have been
considerably more serious than the two reported cases, but no report appears
in Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone. Fitch writes that 70 people weretaken away and shot, but from whom might he have heard the tale? How
might he have behaved, hearing the tale from a man about to die, “headburned cinder black — eyes and ears gone, nose partly”? The man died threehours later at the hospital — but why was he first brought to theInternational Committee before the hospital? Finally, who brought him by in
the first place? It is truly peculiar.
Fitch writes that on Dec. 24,
Mr. Tang of the U.S. Embassy reports that the Chinese staff andtheir relatives, living in the Embassy, were all robbed last night by an
officer and his men. 176
On this day, the Japanese army began conducting a census of the total
population of the city. The Chinese soldiers who had been exposed during
the mopping-up operations of the first three days had almost all been of low
rank; this is because extremely few of the office class, who were probably
hiding, had been found out.
In other words, the ultimate goal of the Japanese army was to remove
the Chinese soldiers from the neutral territory of the Safety Zone. Anothergoal was getting an actual count of people in town so they could address the
problem of the urgent need for food in the city. To accomplish this, theJapanese army requested all the townsfolk appear at designated locations to
be registered. The Chinese were one by one personally handed individual
175
176

Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, p.113.
Ibid., p.113.
132

registry documents (see the photo bellow), and the Japanese were thereby
able to get a handle on the population in Nanking.
As shown above, Fitch’s record for this day is hearsay reports of theftwith no mention about killings. Just to be sure, I checked the Records of the
Nanking Safety Zone to see if Fitch’s account of theft appeared — and it
didn’t. It would therefore not have been reported to the Japanese embassy.
Of the registration of Nanking’s citizens, Fitch wrote this on Dec. 25:
At the University, registration commenced. The people weretold 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. 177
Fitch observed the situation with the registration, including theJapanese army taking off Chinese soldiers to segregate them. What
happened to them after they were taken away was recounted by one who wasfortunate enough to have returned alive.

177

Ibid., p.114.
133

From Fitch’s account, we might think that 240 were “machinegunned” right away or “used for bayonet practice,” but as long as they were
not being a problem, the Japanese army registered soldiers who had beentaken out of the demilitarized neutral zone as regular citizens. This was thesegregation of military from civilians. This segregation is covered in moredetail in the next section, “Investigation 3 — the third chapter of What War
Means.”The killings written about by Fitch on the 25th were executions
carried out at this time. This segregation went on until Jan. 5, and if these
executions were improper as Fitch perceived them, he surely would havewritten “this is unlawful” day after day. In point of fact, however, this was
the only day that Fitch indicated he had any problem with the segregation of
military from civilians.
On Dec. 27, however, this record of a killing appears:
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. 178
This is the only instance of a killing recorded for this day. If the youth
had been taken away “nearly two weeks ago,” it would have to have been
immediately after Nanking fell. Did this 13-year-old work for the Japaneseright after the city’s fall? We are told that in spite of this, the Japanese
ultimately visited on him a violent death by bayonet. Where might Fitch
have seen the body of this youth? Did he actually go to where the body was
to confirm it for himself? If it was true, a murder that was such a horrid,
violent act would have to have been a very noteworthy occurrence. Be thatas it may, there is no record of this incident or the 13-year-old in the “Daily
Reports of Serious Injuries to Civilians.” There is no trace of any protest atall.
To continue, there are no instances of killing recorded for Dec. 28, 29,
30, or 31.
Having looked at Fitch’s diary-style report, we find that the number ofcases of killings from the period of Dec. 17 – 31 for which there is positive
proof is zero. If we must speak of killings, they are the executions ofChinese regulars (who had cast away their uniforms) that were segregated
and taken out of the demilitarized neutral zone. But even of that story, we
have only the solitary, one-sided account of a man who escaped and told the178

Ibid., p.115.
134

tale, and his story has no verification or corroboration. As Fitch wrote at theoutset, “What I am about to relate is anything but a pleasant story … a storyof such crime and horror … the story of depredations of horde …” the targetof his criticism seems to have been plundering.
In 1974, Fitch published My Eighty Years in China. In it are unreliable
descriptions as cited above. When looking to see if he has written more on
the Nanking Massacre, we can only find the following in Chapter Ten,
“Nanking’s Doomed”:
Those that made it to the river found only a few boats there andthese they overloaded before they could push them into the stream andso most of them were drowned. In the meantime a contingent of theJapanese Army came around the wall from the south and shot down
those at the river front and others who were still trying to get downover the wall. It was a masscare. 179
Fitch, contributing anonymously to the propaganda work What War
Means, wrote “The victorious army must have its rewards — and thoserewards are to plunder, murder, rape, at will.” In My Eighty Years in China,
however, which he wrote under his own name, he only describes the natural
result of combat and pursuit by the Japanese army as a “massacre.” On thatday, Fitch was in the Safety Zone, so that account, too, is likely hearsay.

§7 Investigation 3 — the third chapter of What War Means
Miner Searle Bates appeared at the Tokyo Tribunal in June of 1946 togive testimony that 40,000 people, including 12,000 civilians, had beenmassacred in Nanking. Six months after, he issued a statement on the matter.
I would like to look at that statement again. He said,[A] low and incomplete figure for civilian deaths … inflictedby the Japanese in the first few weeks of their occupation of Nanking,was 12,000; and for deaths of unarmed men in military clothing,
35,000. Of these murders, over 90 per cent occurred in the first ten
days, most of all in the first three days. 180
179

Fitch, My Eighty Years in China, pp.95, 96.
Statement of M.S. Bates, dated February 6, 1947, in Miner Searle Bates Papers,
Record Group No. 10, Box 126, 4, Folder 1132.

180

135

The “first three days” in Bates’ statement were the first three or fourdays after Nanking’s fall, which were described by Fitch and Bates in thefirst chapter of What War Means. The basis for this, as I have described, wasthe exposure and execution of Chinese soldiers during the mopping-up
operations carried out by the Japanese army between Dec. 14 – 16.
There is another thing that needs to be made clear about Bates’
statement. That is, exactly when were those “first ten days” Bates speaks ofwhen he says, “over 90 per cent occurred in the first 10 days”? Up to now
we have been looking at Fitch’s accounts in the second chapter of What War
Means, but if we look at Nanking for ten day from its fall — up to Dec. 23— there are zero killings. Just what was Bates basing the “over 90 per centoccurred in the first 10 days” on when he presented his statement? That has
been the problem for some time.
The answer to this can be found by investigating the third chapter ofWhat War Means, to which Bates contributed. This is how the third chapter
begins:Registration was begun on December 20 in the main compound,
occupied mainly by women.… Out of the total of about three
thousand men massed together on the tennis courts below Swanzy
Hall, between two and three hundred stepped out in answer to a halfhour of haranguing to this effect: “All who have been soldiers or who
had performed compulsory labor (fu juh) pass to the rear. Your lives
will be spared, and you will be given work if you thus voluntarily
come forth. If you do not, and upon inspection you are discovered,
you will be shot.” … Toward five o’clock in the afternoon, the two or
three hundred men who had stepped out were taken away in two
groups by military police.… Next morning a man with five bayonet
wounds came to the University Hospital. On two occasions before thisman declared with fair clarity that he has been a refugee in the libraryof the University. He stated that he had been picked up by theJapanese on the street and added to a group that had come from thetennis court mentioned above. That evening, he said, somewhere to
the west, about 130 Japanese soldiers had killed most of five hundred
similar captives with bayonet thrusts. When he regained
consciousness he found that the Japanese had gone, and managed to136crawl away during the night. He was not familiar with this part ofNanking, and was vague as to places. 181 [Emphasis mine]
The date of Dec. 20 at the head of the piece has long been problematic.
That is because Bates says “registration was begun” on this date, butregistration, coinciding with segregating the civilians from the soldiers,
began on Dec. 24. Therefore, Dec. 20 was probably a mistake for Dec. 24. If
this is the case, and it refers to events taking place starting on Dec. 24, thenit simply cannot correspond to Bates’ “first ten days.”
When Bates issued this statement at the height of the Tokyo Tribunals
referencing “the first ten days,” he probably based that “first ten days” on
the text of his memorandum from that time which said “Dec. 20.” Be that as
it may, we can imagine that the second source for Bates’ claim of a massacre
was this segregation of soldiers and civilians.
As I have said, the first four chapters of What War Means were mostly
organized in the form of letters. As can be seen from Timperley’s
explanation leading into Chapter Three, however, this chapter alone wasformed from Bates’ “memorandum”:
The registration was made of all residents in the city. The
following account of what happened was written by a foreign memberof the University faculty on January 25 from a draft information
prepared on December 31 and notes made on January 3. 182
In other words, Timperley put together Chapter Three, titled “Promiseand Performance,” on Jan. 25, based on the manuscript Bates completed on
Dec. 31 and the memo he wrote on Jan. 3. When might Bates have begun
writing the manuscript he finished on Dec. 31?
On Dec. 25, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary, “[a]t Christmas
Dinner today Searle Bates said that he had been trying to write an article on‘Christmas in Hell.’” 183 At Bates’ words, Vautrin wrote, “[i]t really has notbeen that for us here at Ginling; in fact we have had some bits of heaven on
our campus.” As one can imagine from reading this, it’s unlikely that
Vautrin knew that Bates was in the process of contributing what would
become Chapter Three. At any rate, we now understand that Bates started
writing the manuscript around this time. Strictly speaking, it would probably
181

Timperley, op. cit., p. 48.
Ibid., p.46.
183
Vautrin, Diary, p.128.
182

137

be fair to say that about this time Bates started collecting stories about
executions resulting from the segregation of military and civilian populace.
In the mopping-up operations, taking place over the first three days
after Nanking fell, the Japanese army exposed Chinese soldiers hiding in the
Safety Zone and removed them. Although there were cases where executions
took place, the main point of the segregation of civilians and military thattook up roughly 20 days starting on Dec. 24 was, as shown from theregistration card previously introduced, having the townsfolk appear one by
one at a designated place and recording and registering the bearer’s name,age, and sex. As I’ve already said, there were two goals here. The first wassegregating soldiers from civilians in the demilitarized and neutral Safety
Zone to quickly restore public order. The second was to administer drawing
up the necessary certificates of residence for the distribution of food rations,etc.
Let us now return to the third chapter of What War Means and Bates’
memorandum. The memorandum began with the account of a man who had
escaped execution and told him that the Japanese army had declared that if
the Chinese surrendered the Japanese would spare their lives, but when theycame forward, the Japanese went back on that promise and took them away
and killed them.
Some doubt must remain to this man’s story, for in addition tobayonet wounds in five places, and even though he was unfamiliar with thegeography, he was able to find his way past the Japanese army who were
rigorously guarding the gates and the city to get to the hospital. Bates was
not able to confirm the existence of the bodies of the 500 prisoners said
killed by the man.
Let us continue with Bates’ tale. As a sequel to the previous story,
Bates wrote:
On the morning of the 27th another man was brought to me. He
said he was one of thirty or forty who had escaped the death met bymost of the two hundred or three hundred taken away the previous
evening. The man desired help for himself and one or morecompanions in the registration then continuing, but since I was
surrounded by military police at that time, I had to tell him that
registration was that day limited to women, and that it was best not tospeak further at the moment.…
In the course of the same day and the next (27th and 28th) I
heard and checked apparently circumstantial reports that part of themen taken away had been bound in groups of five and ten, to be138

passed successively from a first room of a large house into a second
room or court where there was a big fire. As each group went forward,
groans and cries could be heard by the remainder, but no shots. Sometwenty remaining from an original sixty broke away in desperation
through a back wall and made their escape. 184 [Emphasis mine.]
This is corroboration from a different man that “200 men were killed.”
This man, however, was probably injured. If that had been the case, though,it would have been natural to take him to the hospital, but instead he had
been brought to Bates. Bates says he spent two days listening to the man’s
account and verifying it — but when, where, and how were they to havebeen killed, and how did they open that hole in the wall? Were they
unarmed? Again, Bates didn't make a confirmation of the essential bodies.
Bates wrote about another event four days later, on New Year’s Eve:On the 31st, two men gave a request for aid, with their story, toa trusted assistant of the Library refugee camp, who offered to bringthem to me for confirmation if desired. One frankly declared that hehad been a soldier, thus creating some presumption in favor of histruthfulness. They declared that two hundred-three hundred men fromthe University were split up into various groups. They themselves
were taken first to Wu Tai Shan [Mt. Wutai], then to the bank of thecanal outside Han Hsi Men [Hanxi Gate] where a machine gun was
turned upon them. They fell, one of them wounded, among the deadmen and smeared with their blood. 185 [Emphasis mine.]
Please note the italics, where Bates essentially tells us that, “onefrankly declared that he had been a soldier, thus creating some presumption
in favor of his truthfulness.” To turn this around, none of the men up till now
had said they were soldiers. It is as if Bates is saying it doubtful to believethat their tales were true. In other words, the only ones able to give
testimony that the Japanese army took away and executed Chinese soldiers
who had hidden after discarding their uniforms were those who had actuallyadmitted they were soldiers who had surrendered. The people from whom
Bates had heard these accounts so far probably hadn’t said they were
soldiers, however. For that reason, Bates might have doubted the stories hewas told. For the first time, however, a man who said he was a soldier had
184
185

Timperley, op. cit., p. 48.
Ibid., p. p.48, 49.
139

come forth, and with that Bates stressed that this gave a sense of reliability
to their stories.
Bates continued getting information about executions. The following
is the entry for Jan. 3:
On the 3rd of January, an interview was secured with two men
among five acquaintances in the Library, who were survivors of theexperience of December 26. One of them was in the first group takenfrom the University, and confirmed circumstantially the room-findfire account at Wu Tai Shan [Mt. Wutai] as given above under thedate of the 27th and 28th. He estimated that of his group eighty were
killed and forty to fifty escaped; one of them, wounded by a bayonet
thrust, was in the Library, and could be brought to report the samefacts.
The second was an unusually intelligent man, clear and specificboth in narrative and under cross-questioning. He was taken with thesecond group to a large house at Wu Tai Shan opposite a temple. 186
As indicated by Bates’ comment that the men “reported the same
incident,” the accounts of the survivors of the group taken to Mt. Wutai were
all identical. We can’t deny that there is a possibility that they took the fivedays to work out their stories, but Bates wrote that this only increased thereliability of their accounts. Also, unlike the men Bates had spoken with
before, the second man was surprisingly intelligent and his interview wasquite clear, so Bates affirmed the dependability of his story.
Bates’ entry for Jan. 3 continues:
The men in the immediate vicinity of my informant (he did not
speak of others) were bound with wire, wrist to wrist, in pairs. Thirty
or more were taken to Han Chung Men [Hanzhong Gate] and acrossthe canal, where four or five in desperation broke from the column inthe dusk or dark, taking advantage of protecting walls, and found ahiding-place.… At day-break he went a little in that direction and saw
bodies in rows, bayoneted.… He managed to get past the gate safely
and slip back to the Safety Zone. 187 [Emphasis mine.]

186
187

Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., pp. 49, 50.
140If their condition was that they “were bound with wire, wrist to wrist,in pairs,” they would be unlikely to be able to escape from the line without
injury. Even if they had been able to escape, it was impossible to enter orexit the city’s gates freely for two and a half months after the fall of Nanking.
They should not have been able to pass through any of the gates without
incident. Even more, upon being so fortunate as to have gotten away, why
would they then have returned to the Safety Zone, which was extremely
dangerous? Wouldn’t it have been more normal, upon escaping, to havemade their way to some other place where there were no Japanese soldiers?
Working from this man’s story, however, Bates strengthens its
foundations:
To the account of this man and his testimony must be added
two items. A responsible worker in the Chinese Red Cross requested
us to go outside the Han Chung Men to inspect a large number ofbodies there. Mr. Kroeger of the International Committee told me that
he observed these bodies himself, in the course of an early venture
outside the gate; but that they could not be seen from the City Wall.
The gate is now closed. Burial gangs report three thousand bodies atthat point, left in rows or piles after mass execution. The original
informant talked so freely to me because he had a premonition oftrouble during registration, which he was about to attempt. 188[Emphasis mine.]
Up to this point, that is the story of the man who said he had escaped.
Their stories match on the point that they said the place with the bodies was
Hanzhong Gate (also called Hanxi Gate). Someone from the Chinese Red
Cross Society went to the spot and verified to Bates that there was a large
number of corpses there. This means that it was someone from the Red
Cross who made the confirmation. Finally, Bates, recorded, it was another
International Committee member — Christian Kroeger —who said that “heobserved these bodies himself.”
There is something that doesn’t make sense concerning Kroeger’s
eyewitness account, however.
The western boundary of the Safety Zone was Mt. Wutai, and beyond
that to the west was Hanzhong Gate. Kroeger might have gone out toHanzhong Gate, but all the gates were under close guard by armed soldiers.
How would Kroeger have gotten out of the city? We don’t clearly
188

Ibid., p. 50.
141

Men of the 14th Field Artillery Regiment inspect the field on the day of Nanking’s fall
(Dec. 13) near Suixi Gate, a short distance south of Hanzhong Gate. (From Kajimura
Todomu’s Album Commemorating [My] Military Campaign During the Chinese
Incident.)

understand the point about the bodies being unable to be seen from the topof the ramparts, but might Kroeger have seen 3,000 bodies beyond
Hanzhong gate lying there in rows or stacked in piles? If he did see them, hesurely would have said so. Bates would have also written that crucial point
down. All that Bates wrote, however, was that Kroeger saw bodies while on
his way there.
If he was so interested in this incident, and as he was requested tocheck the corpses, why didn’t Bates go himself to verify the bodies?
Incidentally, the Japanese army had not yet begun organizing burial details
for the dead Chinese soldiers that lay abandoned. As shown in thephotograph on the preceding page, China’s battlefield dead lay strewn about
where they fell.
Nonetheless, Bates presents the location of the critically importantbodies as evidence.
Bates continues the tale of the man who escaped:
On January 7, I believe, he was one of some ten men sorted out
by the military police from the men passing before them during theopen registration resumed on the University compound.
…
Two other men from the University Library reported indirectlythat they escaped from a large body of several hundred who were142

bayoneted along the canal wall to the north, near San Chia Ho[Sancha Hu, or Sancha River]. 189 [Emphasis mine.]
Look again at the map on page 56. The river Sancha (also called
Hucheng) runs alongside the wall beyond the city at Hanzhong Gate, andbetween the wall and the river runs a road. Here and there in this area, Bates
says, several hundred bodies were “bayoneted along the canal wall to thenorth, near San Chia Ho.” For Bates, this could only be evidence for the tale
told by the Chinese that during the segregation of civilians from the military
the Japanese promised to spare any who surrendered, but executed them all
the same. This is the reason the third chapter is titled “Promises andPerformance.”§8 Further evidence for a large number of executions
Might the Japanese army, as Bates said, have broken its word incarrying out these executions?
Maj. Gen. Sasaki Toichi’s “memo” giving the order for the
segregation of the military from civilians is included in The Battle of
Nanking:Jan. 5. Interrogations completed. As of today, we have taken some
2,000 of the enemy from the city, accommodating them in the old
Foreign Office compound. We have taken wounded Chinese soldiers
who were in the keeping of foreign missionaries and made themprisoners of war. One by one we have arrested defeated [enemy]
soldiers who continue to carry out acts of outlawry just beyond thecity, and we have dealt with several thousand of them at Xiaguan. 190
From this, we understand that the Japanese army was housing Chinese
soldiers they’d taken away in the old Foreign Office buildings. If we take“we have dealt with … them at Xiaguan” as “we have executed … them at
Xiaguan,” we can imagine that the “defeated soldiers who [continued] tocarry out acts of outlawry just beyond the city” were apprehended andexecuted. This suggests that Chinese soldiers inside the city who committed
no acts of outlawry were not executed.
189
190

Ibid., pp. 50, 51.
Source Material relating to the Battle of Nanking Vol. 1, p. 276.
143

In my Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction, I presented an article
from the Jan. 10, 1938, issue of the Yomiuri Shinbun. In it, “1,600
stragglers 191 and others” were registered as common townsfolk. That is, theregistration of Chinese soldiers as townsfolk was accepted.
As I have shown earlier, defeated soldiers were also put to work as
coolies. This seems to have been good treatment. According the “WarDiary” of a certain second lieutenant included in The Battle of Nanking, aJapanese army private’s base pay per month was five yen and 50 sen (towhich was added a further three yen and 30 sen for combat-duty pay). In
comparison, a coolie was paid five yen a month. Though it is possible toexpress some doubt about this figure, the coolies nonetheless were paid.
Of course, one probably would not be able to avoid a sentence ofdeath if one committed acts of outlawry in the city. For example, as in thearticle from the China Press I presented on page 70, on Dec. 28 (during thesegregation of civilians from the military), 23 Chinese army officers
including Chen Mi and Wang Xinlun and 54 subordinates were unmasked. It
came to light that Wang and the others had been involved in “robbery,
sedition, and rape.” I can’t verify whether they were executed, but theysurely must have been dealt with seriously.
We can see, then, that the Japanese treated Chinese soldiers as
prisoners of war as long as they committed no acts of outlawry. However,after Bates wrote down what he was told by the Chinese men, he added thefollowing two sentences (A and B):
A: Burial gangs report three thousand bodies at that point, left
in rows or piles after mass execution.
B: Evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand
unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, ofwhom some 30 per cent had never been soldiers. 192
Readers noting sentences A and B will probably have gotten theimpression of a large number of unlawful executions. It reads as if the burial
detail confirmed all of the bodies. One is given to think that the result of theburial detail’s body-by-body examination showed 12,000 civilian bodies and
30,000 bodies of Chinese soldiers who had discarded their uniforms. Bates
assumption was probably that the report of the burial detail was empirical.
At this point, then, it is necessary to examine the report of the burial detail.
191
192

That is, defeated soldiers wandering about on their own.
Timperley, op. cit., p. 51(A), 50(B).
144§9 The burial detail’s report was revised
Bates’ A and B sentences stand in contradiction to the actual
circumstances of the time.
According to Timperley’s commentary on Bates’ anonymously
contributed third chapter, “was written by a foreign member of the
University faculty on January 25 from a draft of information prepared on
December 31 and notes made on January 3.” 193 Given this, the “burial
gangs” and “evidences from burials” in the previous sentences A and B are
inconsistent with the actual conditions at the time.
Regardless of how early it was intended, the burial detail began at theend of January. On Jan. 31, Rabe wrote in his journal, “I was happy to
discover that the dead Chinese soldiers who have been lying at my door for
six weeks now has at last been buried.” 194
Consequently, if we consider the “Jan. 25” that Bates wrote, the burial
detail had not yet begun, and body count had not been established.
Nonetheless, he wrote “evidences from burials indicate,” and Bates claimed
the burials as evidence that “close to 40,000” were unlawfully slain. He also
said some 30 percent of them — 12,000 — had been civilians. How could
Bates have written these details down on Jan. 25?
We can’t help but presume that Bates added these two sentences when
the burial detail finished around Mar. 15, thinking to make it consistent.
In March, the publication date for What War Means was drawing
nearer and nearer. On Mar. 14, when the editing was nearly completed,
Timperley asked Bates to inform him if his amendments would be limited tominor changes, or if he intended major revisions.
One week later, on Mar. 21, Timperley suggested to Bates that, “Thebook must be shocking in the better sense of the word and here, I feel, thekind of balance which might be called for in more academic treatment mustbe sacrificed for the sake of dramatic effect.” 195
A further week later, on Mar. 28, he wrote back with a final letter (No.
10) saying, “I have received yours of that date [21st] returning the193

Ibid., p. 46.
Rabe, Diary, p.170.
195
Timperley’s letter to Bates in Miner Searle Bates Papers, Record Group No. 10, Box
4, Folder 65.
194

145

manuscript with detailed suggestions for revision.” 196 Concerning Bates’“suggestions for revision,” he announced his agreement, saying “[y]oursuggestions were most useful and just what I wanted.” These “changes”
were probably major revisions — the addition of sentences A and B.

§10 Examining the two revision sentences
It is important to examine whether the content of Bates’ added two
sentences was proper. The italicized section below is the added sentence A:
A responsible worker in the Chinese Red Cross requested us togo outside the Han Chung Men [Hanzhong Gate] to inspect a large
number of bodies there. Mr. Kroeger of the International Committee
told me that he observed these bodies himself, in the course of anearly venture outside the gate; but that they could not be seen from theCity Wall. The gate is now closed. Burial gangs report three thousand
bodies at that point, left in rows or piles after mass execution. The
original informant … [o]n January 7, I believe, … was one of someten men sorted out by military police from the men passing before
them during the open registration resumed on the University
compound. During that week the officers who did the actual work
seemed to be under instructions to get about that many men per day,or perhaps to feel that they could satisfy their superiors with nothingless. 197
Look again at the photograph on page 142. It is from the photo albumof an artillery second lieutenant of the 14th Field Artillery Regiment (theKokura Regiment), which departed for the front in August, 1937. It bears theinscription, “at Shuixi Gate, Dec. 13.” Suixi Gate is on the west side of
Nanking just a little south of Huazhong Gate. The photo was probably taken
during regular inspection of the target-ground of the artillery on the day
Nanking fell.
During the morning of Dec. 13, some 200 men of one unit from the45th (Kagoshima) Regiment were attacked by a frantic charge of 20,000
Chinese soldiers moving south from Xiaguan, and the death struggle on the196

Timperley’s letter to Bates in Miner Searle Bates Papers, Record Group No. 10, Box
4, Folder 65.
197
Timperley, op. cit., p. 50.
146

ground between Shuixi Gate and the Yangzi River to its west spread. Thanks
to overwhelming firepower, the 11th Company repulsed the Chinese assault,
losing company commander Ôzono and 13 others. A large number ofChinese also fell.
This action by the 11th Company is shown in a photograph in myAnalyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of Nanking Massacre. It is clear
from the photograph that these were all deaths due to battle. As these bodies
could plainly be seen over the ramparts, many other people had to have
known about them. Bates most likely added the sentence “Burial gangs
report three thousand bodies at that point, left in rows or piles after mass
execution,” so as to give the impression that these were bodies of Chinese
who had been taken away and executed. There is, nonetheless, a strong
likelihood that these were in actuality battle-related deaths.
The following is a reiteration of sentence B. The sentence in question
is italicized.
Finally, it should be remembered that this incident is only oneof a series of similar acts that had been going on for two weeks, withchanges on the main theme of mass murder of men accused rightfully
or wrongfully of being ex-soldiers. This is not the place to discuss thedictum of international law that the lives of prisoners are to bepreserved except under serious military necessity, nor the Japanesesetting aside of that law for frankly stated vengeance upon persons
accused of having killed in battle comrades of the troops now
occupying Nanking. Other incidents involved larger numbers of men
than did this one. Evidences from burials indicate that close to forty
thousand unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of
Nanking, of whom some 30 per cent had never been soldiers. 198
Since the Chinese army fled as the city fell, their battle-dead were left
where they fell. The Japanese army’s concerns were solving the problems ofrestoring public order, working out food supply, and seeing to burial details.
The organization of burial details just had to come last. The Japanese were
well aware, however, that disease could break out if the decaying bodies
were left alone. From about the middle of January, while the segregation ofcivilians from the military was ongoing, the Special Agency was at thecenter of plans to deal with the situation.

198

Ibid., p. 51.
147

The man put in charge of the burial detail by the chief of the Nanking
Special Agency was Maruyama Susumu. According to Maruyama’s
testimony in my Recollections of Mr. Maruyama Susumu of the Nanking
Special Agency (an Employee of Manchurian Rail), the preliminary
operations for the burial details were his main concern at first. That meant
going over many particulars. These included a factual investigation of thebodies left strewn about both inside and outside the city, selection of a burial
ground where the underground water table of the Yangzi River was far
enough below the surface to allow burial, coordinating operations with the
Red Swastika Society (a private charitable organization that is the Buddhist
answer to the Red Cross, Red Star, and Red Crescent societies) andassembling workers centered around the Red Swastika to conduct burials,
and procuring equipment for burials. Even though it had been said thatburials would start around “the first part of January,” the Nanking Special
Agency and their cooperative partner the Red Swastika Society had theirhands full with preparations through the month of January and didn’t startwith the actual burials until February. Maruyama said “The burials beganroughly at the beginning of February.”
We can see what the situation was by looking at the “Report of the
Nanking Special Agency (2): Nanking Group Second Report (Conditions in
February)” completed after March, 1938:
Under the supervision of the Special Agency, the Red Swastika burialgroup (c. 600 individuals) continued conducting burials every day
ranging within and without the city from the beginning of February.
Currently, as of the end of February, some 5,000 burials have takenplace. This continues to bear considerable results. 199 [Emphasis mine.]
As detailed in my Recollections of Mr. Maruyama Susumu, when thepay for Chinese policemen was on average 3 to 5 yen per month, the Special
Agency made a provision to supply for the people’s welfare by paying the
Red Swastika Society 30 sen (.3 yen) per body buried. During this time there
were few available trucks, so bodies had to be transported by manual labor.
Since there were also no steam shovels, the graves all had to be dug likewise
by manual labor.
Because of all this, on an average day they were only able to bury
about 200 people. In “The Relief Situation in Nanking,” dated on Feb. 14,
199

Nanking Special Agency Report No. 2. in The Frontline of the Study on the Nanking
Massacre 2004, p.87.
148

Bates wrote that the Red Swastika “were burying 200 bodies a day.” Still, as
the “Report of the Nanking Special Agency (2)” says, “as of the end of
February, some 5,000 burials have taken place.” As we can tell from thisnumber, actual burials started at the beginning of February.
On Mar. 22, a memorial service for Chinese civilian and military
victims of the war was held under the sponsorship of Special Agency
director Ônishi Hajime. Maruyama instructed to “finish all the burials by
Mar. 15” so that they would be completed in time for the service. With thatconsideration, they started using trucks in March to speed up the burials. So
what exactly was the workload of the burial detail? In “The Situation in
Nanking,” written on Mar. 4 by Georg Rosen of the German embassy, Rosen
reported that the Red Swastika buried 500 - 600 bodies each day. 200 From
this we understand that burials in March were at three times the rate in
February. On the other hand, bodies from the Yangzi riverside were “buriedat sea” and floated off down the river.
Maruyama went through the Self-Governing Committee 201 to
commission the Red Swastika to conduct all the burials. They were finishedin about 40 days.
Bates backed this up when, as chairman of the Nanking International
Relief Committee, he edited the “Nanking International Relief Committee
Report” in 1939. The report says:
For example, $2540 was used to complete the necessary burial
enterprises undertaken by the Red Swastika Society, which covered
over 40,000 bodies otherwise uncared for. During some 40 working
days, this employed 170 men. On this and a number of other work
relief jobs, forty cents per day of actual work was taken as a standard
wage. 202 [Emphasis mine.]
As this shows, all the burials were conducted by the Red Swastika
Society. The Red Swastika burial records, submitted at the Tokyo Tribunal,
showed 41,278 burials inside the city, and 1,793 outside. The report of theSpecial Agency was approximately the same. This number is considerably
inflated, however. According to Maruyama, the Special Agency sanctioned
200

George Rosen, “Die Lage in Nanking” in Deutsch Gesabdschaft/Botschsaft in China,
p. 107f.
201
A self-governing organization of Chinese created by the Japanese to restore publicorder and administer the city. The chairman was Tao Xishan, chairman of the Red
Swastika Society.
202
Report of the Nanking international Relief Committee, p. 19.
149the inflation of the burial count in a plan to revitalize civic life. As I showedin Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction, if we compute the number ofdays the burial detail was in operation and the average number of burials perday, the total number of burials was in reality probably 15,000 at most.
Given that there had been fierce fighting at Nanking, and that there weregravely wounded soldiers who had been just left there, it is not strange that
there were this many casualties among the Chinese army.
Be that as it may, we can understand that since burials began on Jan.
31 or Feb. 1 and were finished on Mar. 15, they were a very rushed affair.
As written in the “Report of the Nanking Special Agency (3): Nanking
Group Third Report (Conditions in March),” although they were calledburials, ultimately most of the bodies were just covered with straw mats andnot actually interred. That is why, starting in May, burials a second time —now under earthen mounds — and disinfection work became necessary.
Under such rushed conditions, even though there were examinationsof the bodies, it was probably all they could do to determine whether it was aman, woman, or a child. There had been no attempt made to determine
whether the bodies were those of civilians or soldiers who had discarded
their uniforms, or whether they had been massacred or killed in battle.
This all means that in the sentence Bates added — “Evidences fromburials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed
within and near the walls of Nanking, of whom some 30 per cent had neverbeen soldiers” — the only thing that was correct was the number 40,000.
In the end, the third chapter, with its title “Promises andPerformance,” he inserted the idea of a massacre into the publicly
announced total of 40,000 burials under the reasoning that the Japanesepromised to spare the Chinese soldiers’ lives and then broke their word.

§11 Investigation 4 — the first half of Chapter Four of What War Means
The title of the fourth chapter of What War Means is “The Nightmare
Continues.” The first half was contributed by Bates, and the actual identityof the contributor of the second half has not yet been determined.
Timperley’s comment on Bates’ contributed half reads, “A survey of thesituation as it presented itself nearly a month after the Japanese occupation is
given in the following letter written on January 10.”203 Of the second half,
he said, “Written a week later, the following letter is less factual than the203

Timperley, op. cit., p. 52.
150

preceding accounts but it is nevertheless valuable because of the atmosphere
it conveys.” 204
Why did Timperley publish this second half of the chapter eventhough he said “less factual”? Was it just because he wanted to publish areport from at least one more person? Was it perhaps that by making it clearthat it was “less factual,” it would give the readers the impression that therest was all based on truth? Still, Timperely’s comment at the start of thesecond half was such a small note it could have been overlooked by readers
anyway.
Let us consider Bates’ half of the chapter. Bates’ refers to “killing” inonly a few scant lines. Everything else is assaults, robbery, arson, thedevoted service of foreigners living in Nanking, etc. Of the killing, he wrote:
More than ten thousand unarmed persons have been killed incold blood. Most of my trusted friends would put the figure muchhigher. These were Chinese soldiers who threw down their arms or
surrendered after being trapped; and civilians recklessly shot andbayoneted, often without even the pretext that they were soldiers,
including not a few women and children. 205
This was not the situation a month after Nanking fell. It was theconclusion of Bates’ pet theories of chapters One through Three.
I would like to point out just three clearly erroneous points.
First, there were no “Chinese soldiers who surrendered” inside
Nanking.
Second, there were no instances where the murder of common
townsfolk — including women — was actually witnessed by anyone. There
are also no complaints by any witnesses on record.
Third, Bates’ mention here that “more than 10,000 unarmed people”
were killed isn’t consistent with his mention in Chapter One that “close to
40,000 unarmed persons” were killed. Now, although we now know that it
was Bates who wrote the first half of Chapter Four, at the time it was ananonymous contribution, so it’s possible that this was deliberately writtenthat way to make it appear to be the work of someone else; in other words,
so that it would look to readers as if it had been written by another person
who was making the same charges.

204
205

Ibid, p. 57.
Ibid, p. 52.
151

Toward the end of April, when Cabot Coville, the military attaché atthe American embassy in Tokyo, came to Nanking to investigate thesituation, Bates spent a considerable amount of time in conversation withhim. By this time, Bates had already passed on his contributions to themanuscript of What War Means to Timperley in Shanghai. Therefore, heshould have made the case that executions by the Japanese army — such as
the “frequent murder” taking place in Nanking after the Japanese entered thecity as mentioned in the first chapter, or the story of the Chinese soldier who
escaped execution who was mentioned in the third and fourth chapters —were unlawful. Quite the contrary, however; Bates did not mention any ofthe material in chapters One, Three, or Four to Coville.
We have now looked at the first four chapters of What War Means.
We have thoroughly investigated Bates and Fitch’s claims of “frequent
murder,” and they can be nothing but the executions of prisoners of war
during the first three days after Nanking fell.
The next problem is to determine whether the executions carried out
by the Japanese were deserving of criticism.

152

CHAPTER SEVEN:
THE CENTRAL PROPAGANDA BUREAU DIDN’T THINK THERE
WAS A NANKING MASSACREAs the saying goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” so to giverise to the smoke — the Nanking Massacre — a fire-source was needed.
American newspapers and What War Means used battle dead frombefore the fall of Nanking and the post-fall Japanese army’s moppingup operations as the source for the fire to send up the “Nanking
Massacre” smoke. Were the executions carried out by the Japanesearmy unlawful, and how did the CPB, who sent up that smoke, view theexecutions? This chapter will focus on these two points.

§1 Chinese soldiers after the city’s fall viewed in the light ofinternational wartime law
During peacetime, killing is a crime; in a war, it is lawful. In war, one
tries to annihilate the enemy, and it ends when one side or the othercapitulates first. The battlefield is a place where you either live or die — but
there are even in warfare certain fixed rules. These are rules for conducting
hostilities under international law during wartime. Under existing laws in1937 as set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention Respecting the Laws andCustoms of War on Land, the following four conditions were required for
one to meet the status of a “belligerent”:
1. To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
2. To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
3. To carry arms openly; and4. To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws andcustoms of war. 206
Those who follow the law are protected by the law, while those who
violate the law are not. When the Japanese entered Nanking, were theChinese soldiers in the Safety Zone observing the above four conditions of

206

Article 1 of Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Landsigned at The Hague in October 1907.
153

the Hague Convention? In addition, did they meet the legal requirements tobe recognized as prisoners of war?
Concerning “commanded by a person responsible” in (1) above, Gen.
Tang Shengzhi and several subordinates fled from Nanking, so there was nocommander. As for the “fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance”
requirement in (2), the Chinese soldiers cast off their uniforms. For therequirement in (3), “to carry arms openly,” when the Chinese soldiers cast
off their uniforms to blend in with the civilian population, there were those
who cast away their weapons as well, but there were also those who hid
theirs. According to the “Report of the Nanking Special Agency (2),” theamount of found weapons that had been hidden by Chinese soldiers filled
fifty trucks in February, 1938.
The Chinese army clearly violated the above three conditions. They
violated taboos even the drafters of the Hague Conventions couldn’t haveconceived.

§2 Ironclad rules that remain unchanged even today
If one looks at the Chinese soldiers who were hiding in the Safety
Zone in the light of international law, they had lost the status of“belligerents.” This means that they lost the protection of the status of being
prisoners of war if they fell into the hands of the enemy. These qualifications
for belligerent status are so important that they remain unchanged to this day.
In January, 2002, Al-Qaida and Taliban militants were interned at the
US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. At a Department of Defense
briefing on Jan. 11, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. secretary of defense, said,“[t]hey will be handled not as prisoners of wars, because they're not, but asunlawful combatants. The — as I understand it, technically unlawful
combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention.” 207
President Bush had determined that they were not prisoners of war, but
detainees.
What exactly are prisoners of war and unlawful combatants? One of
the reporters at the above briefing asked Secretary Rumsfeld, “Mr. Secretary,
can you explain why combatants who are on the enemy side and were
captured … in wartime should not be considered prisoners of war?”
Rumsfeld responded,
207

DoD Press Briefing, Jan. 11, 2002, 2:10 PM EST. Transcript on the World Wide Web
at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2031
154

It is a technical matter for lawyers, and there are a series ofthings that common usage looks for — uniforms … — how one
carries their weapons — visibly or invisibly. These kind — there's awhole series of things that are used as a template for people todetermine whether or not somebody was functioning in a visibly clear
military manner or whether they were not. And to the extent they werenot, I'm told by lawyers that they fit in another category. 208
Rumsfeld is saying that if the combatants had been in compliancewith the four conditions set down by the Conventions when they were taken
prisoner, they would have been treated as prisoners of war from the start.
This is a point of view based on the Third Geneva Convention —“Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War” — which was ratified on
Aug. 12, 1949. The four conditions that must all be met for a combatant toqualify for the status of prisoner of war are set forth in this treaty. Article 4,
Section 2, pertaining to prisoners of war, sets them down thus:(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his
subordinates;(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;(c) that of carrying arms openly;(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws andcustoms of war. 209
These are fundamentally the same as the requirements in Article 1 in
the Hague Convention of 1907, “Respecting the Laws and Customs of War
on Land.” Anthony Arend, a law professor at Georgetown University
specializing in Middle Eastern Studies, was quoted in the Jan. 18, 2002
Sankei Shinbun as saying, “even though some of the Taliban foot soldiers
have become prisoners of war, most of them are probably unlawful
combatants who will not be prisoners of war.”
On Jan. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld said, “[o]ne of the most important aspectsof the Geneva Convention is the distinction between lawful combatants andunlawful combatants.” 210 He continued,

208

Ibid.
The text of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War isonline at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva03.htm

209

155

It is a terribly dangerous thing from the standpoint of our military andthe military of other countries if we blur the distinction between
lawful combatants and unlawful combatants.
An unlawful combatant is a person who tries to look like acivilian and puts in jeopardy civilians. And a lawful combatant is one
that functions as I described, in a uniform, in an organized operation,
showing their weapons. The reason they are provided a higher
standard of care is because they are lawful combatants, and the ideathat we should blur that distinction out of some unknown idea that
that's a good thing to do is just fundamentally flawed. We want not toblur that distinction. [Emphasis mine.]
Rumsfeld stressed that everyone engaged in combat had to meet thesefour conditions. Combatants first had to wear uniforms, show their arms, andfollow systematic military operations to be lawful. As a lawful combatantfrom the beginning, if one fell into enemy hands one would receive a higher
standard of care — one’s life would be spared. Therefore, unlawful
combatants who did not meet these conditions could not count on receiving
clemency or a high standard of care.
Allow me to present an example concerning the issue of lawful andunlawful combatants.
On Mar. 24, 1945, when the cabinet information service of Prime
Minister Koiso Kuniaki announced the formation of a “Citizens’ Volunteer
Corps” to rouse the whole nation to action everywhere in case of a decisive
battle on the Japanese homeland, it became a topic of conversation all overJapan. Nanbara Shigeru, chairman of the faculty of law at Tokyo Imperial
University (present-day Tokyo University) had this to say to Tomizuka
Kiyoshi of the university’s engineering faculty:
Acting as guerillas — I guess it can’t be helped if we getslaughtered. If we’re real combatants, we would be treated as
prisoners of war and wouldn’t experience something so horrible —but if we’re guerillas, there can be no complaining if we get killed on
the spot. That’s the worst that could happen.

210

Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability en route to Camp X-Ray, Jan. 27, 2002.
Transcript on the Web at
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2338
156

When he said “real combatants,” he was referring to people
conducting warfare in accordance to the four conditions for being abelligerent — that is to say, as lawful combatants. He was expressing his
concern to Tomizuka that should the “Citizens’ Heroism Corps” on the other
hand take up arms and ignore these conditions, they would be considered as
guerillas and subject to immediate execution and would not be in any
position to complain about it.
Looking at it from today’s ironclad rules — and looking at it from theironclad rules of the time — the officers and men of the Chinese army in
Nanking didn’t observe even one of these four conditions. They were notprisoners of war. They can only be classified as “unlawful combatants.”§3 How should we regard Chinese soldiers who discarded theiruniforms?
Looking at it from the position of international law, these Chinese
soldiers didn’t meet the conditions to be prisoners of war. Nevertheless, anobjection surfaced.
The objection states that, even though regulations stated that acommanding officer was a requirement, with the sudden flight of Gen. Tang
Shengzhi, the soldiers who were left behind unfortunately had no otherrecourse. The soldiers, with their commanding officer fled and thinking theconflict at an end as the city fell, cast off their uniforms and ran off. They
became civilians who had been soldiers. It was all Tang’s fault. The Chinese
soldiers had done nothing wrong.
This, at least, was the argument.
To be sure, everything would have been fine if Tang had not fled andhe had instead issued a formal declaration of surrender, and everyone laid
down their arms under the control of the Japanese army. The entire fault lies
with the supreme commander, Gen. Tang. Consider this: given that theofficers and men of the Chinese army had cast off their uniforms and were
mixing and hiding among the civilian population, what should the Japanesearmy have done? Should they have just let things go as they were?
Nanking had fallen, but the Chinese army had not surrendered. The
only thing we can think is that the battle had not yet truly ended. The
conflict continued, only moving on to the next battlefield. The battle for
Nanking was just one part of an ongoing conflict. In fact, the Chinese
soldiers who managed to escape from Nanking did fight the Japanese armyon the next battlefield. For example, about 1,000 Chinese stragglers
157

ambushed the Japanese at the Shanghai Expeditionary Force headquarters in
Tangshuizhen (about 30 kilometers east of Nanking) on the afternoon of Dec.
13. In his war journal, Maj. Gen. Iinuma Mamoru, chief of staff of the
Expeditionary Force, wrote that “a platoon commander (a warrant officer)
was killed in battle, and one soldier was wounded.” 211 At 5 PM, however,the Japanese were attacked by a second wave. It was such a hard battle that
the Japanese had to get reinforcements from Nanking. Iinuma wrote, “[a]free-for-all ensued.” In his memoirs, My Youth as a War Correspondent on
the Continent in China, Okayama Heijirô, a correspondent from the
Shizuoka Shinbun, recalled that guerilla action from Chinese stragglers(albeit Chinese regulars) continued on Tangshuizhen and around Nanking
day and night through April of 1938.
The Japanese couldn’t just accept that the Chinese soldiers who had
arbitrarily discarded their uniforms, prevented as they had been fromescaping by the city’s gargantuan wall yet not giving up as the battle wenton, had surrendered.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines“surrender” as “[t]o relinquish possession or control of to another because of
demand or compulsion.” That is, it requires the defeated party to formallysubmit to the victor. The supreme commander of Nanking’s defensive forces
had not only not issued a proper surrender to the Japanese, but he actuallyfled in the face of the enemy. No one in the Chinese army made any
agreement with the Japanese forces at all.
On the contrary, leaving things like they were in Nanking would havebeen considered quite a dangerous situation. Exactly as Rumsfeld had said
about when combatants feign being civilians, the Japanese couldn’t denythat Nanking had become a place where a sudden counterattack by theseersatz civilians might occur. It was only natural that the Japanese army
would take this into consideration. To restate the reason for this: the Chinese
forces had not all surrendered, so they considered themselves still at war, so
therefore the Japanese were still at war.
Accordingly, even though the Chinese soldiers may have discarded
their uniforms to appear as civilians, to the Japanese who were still fighting,
the Chinese soldiers inside Nanking were neither “former soldiers” nor“civilians,” but were nothing less than soldiers at war whom they were stillfighting. As long as there were enemy soldiers inside the Safety Zone, they
could only consider that the battle was still ongoing.
211“Iinuma Mamoru nikki” in Source material relating to the Battle of Nanking, vol. 1, p.
155.
158

Now we return to the previous question. What should the Japanesearmy have done? To put an end to the conflict, the first step was todetermine who was really a civilian, and who was a soldier who had
discarded his uniform. This was their operation to expose the enemy duringmopping-up operations. After that was the execution of those enemy soldiers
who resisted. This was the normal way of things during wartime.
On Dec. 15, Steele wrote of the executions of Chinese, saying, “thesystematic execution of 300 Chinese at the city wall near the riverbank as
the last thing he saw as his party headed to Xiaguan.” 212 On Dec. 28, Durdin
wrote about the execution of some men — subtly suggesting by his use ofjust the word “men” that it was not soldiers who were killed — saying, “Justbefore boarding the ship for Shanghai, this writer watched the execution of
two hundred men on the Bund.” 213 As the International Committee wrote in“Document 4” to the Japanese embassy on Dec. 15, Chinese officers andmen had assumed the posture of “former soldiers” in a short time.
The executed “Chinese” and “men” and “former soldiers” wereactually, however, the aforementioned Chinese soldiers who had just thrownaway their uniforms and hidden inside the Safety Zone.
One does not cease to be a soldier just by removing one’s uniform.
Once in the army, one remains in the army until discharged. Something fromrecent news accounts may serve as an example to this. In January, 1965, Sgt.
Charles Jenkins of the United States army fled north across the guarded 38th
parallel from South into North Korea. In June of 2005, he finally was able toobtain discharge from the US army. During those 40 years, Jenkins had beenout of uniform, but he was still naught but an American soldier. Thus asoldier can’t just stop being a soldier on his own without obtaining adischarge.
Criticism of the actions taken by the Japanese army using thisreasoning therefore becomes perplexing. If the Chinese soldiers had comeforward in surrender, wearing their uniforms and under the command of
their officers, and had the International Committee not had some of thesoldiers disarm and get rid of their uniforms, the Chinese soldiers would
likely have been taken by the Japanese and been treated as prisoners of war.
There would have been no suspicion of the Japanese army over what mannerof treatment should have been meted out to the Chinese soldiers who
removed their uniforms and blended with the civilian population, hiding
their arms and biding their time, and the mopping-up of stragglers would
212
213

Steele; Chicago Daily News, Dec. 15, 1937.
Durdin; New York Times, Dec. 18, 1937.
159

have gone off without any particular difficulties. Consequently, however,during the exposure of enemy soldiers, the Japanese likely allowed for no
margin of doubt that some civilians might have been mistaken for soldiers.
Issues were probably not raised with later mopping-up, either.
Before the war, Tachi Sakutarô, a professor at Tokyo Imperial
University specializing in international wartime law, wrote in his book
Discourses on International Law in Wartime that it was the discernment of
combatant from non-combatant that was the “most important point of themain ideas” 214 in the Hague Convention.
That is to say, the wearing of uniforms by soldiers is an ironclad rule,and is the most basic requirement that must be observed by combatants. The
Japanese army, while taking into account the situation they were facing,developed strategies based on international law to comply with their orders
to “make the occupation of Nanking sound by mopping up any remaining
enemy forces.” The Chinese soldiers didn’t have the status of prisoners ofwar, but we have to add that even then the Japanese army treated them as if
they were prisoners of war. As mentioned on page 156, “Nanking Special
Agency Report (2)” and “Report (3),” Chinese prisoners who were
employed by the Japanese army as coolies worked a total of 10,000 mandays by the end of February, 1938, and by the end of March 30,000(including tramps). It should also not be forgotten that many Chinese
soldiers obtained registration acknowledging them as civilians.

§4 The CPB examined the legality of the Japanese army’s executions
In the Guomindang’s top-secret documents in a section titled“Investigating the Enemy Position,” the following appears:(1) Editing the Enemy News Reportage
We submitted [summaries of] the news reported daily in all thenewspapers in Tokyo (including as well material not in articles) on thesame afternoon to the leaders of our party, government, and army.
Through these, we were able to understand the enemy’s situation andtake measures to deal with it. 215

214
215

Tachi Sakutarô, Discourses on International Law in Wartime.
Overview of Propaganda Operations, p.65, 66.
160

The CPB appears to have analyzed contemporary Japanesenewspapers and so forth to get a handle on most of the Japanese situation.
Looking at Japanese newspapers of the day, in the Dec. 16 Tokyo Asahi
Shinbun, we see an article with the headline, “Search Continues for 25,000
Hiding Defeated Soldiers,” and in the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun there is anarticle with the headline, “At Least 6,000 – 7,000 Prisoners Eliminated in
Nanking.” Putting aside whether these articles are correct, the CPB clearlyknew that the Japanese army was uncovering Chinese soldiers hiding in the
Safety Zone, and that there were executions being carried out. Surely theymust have investigated whether these executions were lawful. The CBP was
also collecting publications from Japan. For example, in the “Summary of
Anti-Enemy Section Operations” in the top-secret documents, the following
entry appears:
II. The Japanese View of the Communiqué from the NineNation Association.
This book is an abridged translation of the seventh and eighth
chapters of Discourses on International Law and the Chinese Incident,
the writing of which was entrusted by the Japanese Foreign Ministry
to Prof. Tachi Sakutarô. 216
From this, we know that the CPB also gave weight to the works of
Tachi Sakutarô, a Japanese authority on the subject of international wartime
law. In his Discourses on International Law and the Chinese Incident,
published in 1938, he argued that rules for conducting warfare apply even ina real war where there is no declaration of hostilities. In his Discourses on
International Law in Wartime, he said the following:
Persons subject to the afore-mentioned legitimate militaryforces, as well as irregulars, militia, and volunteer units, must by allmeans comply with the following four conditions. One would thinkthat when one is a regular, one is naturally equipped to comply withthese conditions. When persons subject to legitimate military
authority fail to meet these conditions, they lose the privileges ofbeing a combatant. For example: if a person under authority of alegitimate military force, in conducting actions against an enemy,
dons the clothing of a common person instead of his uniform or if he

216

Ibid., p.66.
161

does not wear clothing with [the appropriate] distinguishing [military]
insignia, he cannot demand from the enemy the rights of a combatant.
It is natural that regular soldiers would satisfy the four conditions of acombatant set down in the Hague Convention. If there were times when they
didn’t satisfy the conditions, it leaves to reason that they would not be able
to expect the enemy to treat them as combatants (that is, spare their lives).
The CPB looked over all manner of specialized works like this tomake a judgment on the executions carried out by the Japanese army fromthe perspective of international law. As I explained on page 97, CPB deputy
director Dong Xianguang was able to get a report from Bates in Nanking byusing Timperley as an intermediary. Also, Fitch went to Guangzhou, and on
invitation from his old friend Gen. Wu Tiecheng, was able to directly meet
people connected with the Chinese military. When Fitch spoke on Dec. 25
on “The Fall and Occupation of Nanking,” they got the latest report on thecapital. Based on various reports of these kinds, the CPB made their ultimate
judgment on the Japanese executions. That judgment is covered in the next
section.

§5 The CPB erases Bates’ two sentences
At the same time the CPB was going forward with the editing andpublishing of What War Means in English, they were working on the
Chinese-language edition of it, called Japanese Military Atrocities
Witnessed by Foreigners. At that same time, the CPB conducted editorial
operations that can only be called strange and contradictory. On the one
hand, while they were publishing two sentences written by Bates’ in What
War Means, on the other hand the sentences were completely expunged
from the English edition of Japanese Military Atrocities Witnessed byForeigners. These are the two sentences indicated as A and B from the partof Chapter Three that Bates contributed.
Sentence A:
Burial gangs report three thousand bodies at that point, left in rows orpiles after mass execution.217
Sentence B:
217

Timperley, op cit., p.57.
162

Evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed
persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, of whomsome 30 per cent had never been soldiers. 218
As I showed in Chapter Six, given that most of What War Means ishearsay, these two sentences present proof of burials as evidence to lend
credibility to the stories of Chinese men who had escaped after being taken
off for execution, and to sum up the descriptions from Chapter One throughChapter Four. It is obvious that the term “unarmed persons” in B refers topeople who had been Chinese soldiers but who cast off their uniforms when
Nanking fell. It is also clear that the part about people who “had never beensoldiers” refers to civilians in Nanking.
The main point of B — expressed in a rather roundabout way — is tocriticize Japan for unlawful executions and offering the number 40,000. Gen.
Tang Shengzhi’s flight in the face of the enemy was the trigger, and theJapanese army’s exposure and execution of Chinese soldiers after the fall of
Nanking, criticized in sentence B above, perfectly suited the CPB’s statedoperational goal of “exposing outrages committed by the enemy after the fallof the capital.” These two sentences were therefore truly important claims in
the CPB’s war of information.
These two sentences were expunged from the Chinese translation,
however. Ordinarily, this would be difficult to believe — one can only call it
a contradictory editorial direction. Why were they removed from the
Chinese edition? Viewed in the light of the top-secret documents, an idea
emerges.
The CPB carried out various vetting operations. One thing they
heeded in conducting censorship was this, which is reported in the top-secret
Overview of Propaganda Operations of the International Propaganda
Division of the Central Propaganda Bureau:
Newspapers in every country printing articles sent by reporters
in China are considered important by people overseas who take noticeof the situation in the Far East, so rigorously thorough vetting isnecessary. Things lacking in validity are deleted or stopped. In
addition, the reasons are explained to the sender, and we make inquiry
about the mistaken viewpoint to gain his complete understanding.
219[Emphasis mine.]
218
219

Timperley, op cit., p.59.
Overview of Propaganda Operations, p.8..
163

One example of a newspaper that was the target of vetting is provided
in the document, but one can probably say the same thing occurred withother publications as well. We can understand how much the CPB paid
attention to the views of “people overseas who take notice of the situation in
the Far East.” Such people surely knew that after Nanking’s fall the Chinese
soldiers trampled underfoot the four required conditions to merit the statusof combatant as set by international law. They also must have known that
the Japanese exposed and executed them. What might have happened had
people living in the Chinese mainland who had a good knowledge of thesituation, upon seeing sentence B in What War Means, and knowing that it
wasn’t true, started to condemn it as mere propaganda? Rather than bringing
scorn on the Japanese, the CPB might have been digging their own grave.
Thus, even though it may be said to be an “information war,” there was noway they could allow for the transmission of something so clearly
understood to be a lie.
Naturally the CPB must have given the manuscript for What War
Means a thorough inspection. The two sentences are noticeable therein. We
can imagine that they became a problem as “things lacking in validity.” In
light of the CPB’s information war, they were difficult to throw away, butnevertheless the CPB couldn’t allow publication with the two sentences inplace. The distressing result the CPB made the following decision.
In What War Means, which was published in America and Englandand intended for the American and European readership who were not aswell versed in the true “situation in the Far East,” the two sentences wereallowed to stand. Since What War Means was presented to appear as if it
was published by private individuals based on the observations of third-party
foreigners in criticism of the tragic war, the CPB probably considered that
there was no way they could come in for any criticism as there were noobservable traces that they had had a hand in it.
They deemed it safer, however, to remove the sentences for the
publication of Japanese Military Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners, which
was published in China and was aimed at the large number of those who
knew the true situation in Nanking. The CPB was concerned that it was too
dangerous and they could lose everything had those in the know criticizedthese two sentences as lies — that is, if there was a formal investigation of
the pros and cons of the claims. If that happened, they would not be able touse Nanking again in the information war.
Fearing that, and that all their efforts to that point would come tonaught, the CPB decided on the safer path of removing the two sentences.
164

In answer to why their removal was necessary, can one imagine
anything other than this? At any rate, it is true that the CPB removed Bates’
roundabout insinuation that the Japanese army unlawfully executed 40,000
people.

§6 The government of Chiang Kai-shek continued to remove theinsinuation of Japan’s unlawful execution of 40,000
As you have seen thus far, the CPB published the claim in What War
Means that the Japanese army unlawfully executed 40,000 people, but in the
Chinese-language book Japanese Military Atrocities Witnessed byForeigners, they took a contrary position and removed the sentences. Whichof these two is the true intent of the CPB? Shortly, I would like to present
other contradictions such as this for examination.
On Dec. 14, 1938, a year and a day after Nanking’s fall (and fivemonths after the publication of What War Means), the Zhongyang Ribao
introduced the number 200,000, which had not appeared in American
newspaper articles or What War Means. It reported, “[w]hen Nanking fell,
the sight was a terrible spectacle that defied description. The brutal enemy
murdered, raped, and burned people to death. The spilled blood of 200,000
was a horrible sight that can never go away.” 220
In Reportage in Wartime China, Cheng Qiheng said this of theZhongyang Ribao: “[It is] the bulletin of the Chinese Guomindang under the
direct control of the Central Propaganda Bureau.” In other words, theGuomindang put out an account of the Nanking massacre under the name ofits pro-government newspaper, the Zhongyang Ribao, rather than under thename of the Guomindang government itself.
As you will shortly see, however, the CPB did not change theirrecognition as false the claim that the Japanese army unlawfully killed
40,000 people.
Bates’ memorandum, contributed as part of Chapter Three in What
War Means, continued to be printed in more publications. Arranged in theorder by the date of their forewords, they are as follows:
1. Timperley, ed. What War Means. Mar. 13, 1938.
Timperley, ed. Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners(Chinese edition of the above title). Mar. 23, 1938.
220

Zhongyang Ribao, December 14, 1938.
165

2. Xu Shuxi, 221 ed. War Conduct of the Japanese. Apr. 12, 1938.
3. Xu Shuxi, ed. A Digest of Japanese War Conduct. Jan. 28, 1939.
4. Chinese Yearbook 1938–1939. Mar. 15, 1939.
5. Xu Shuxi, ed. Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone. May 9, 1939.
Bates’ full “memorandum” appears in these six books. Comparing
these volumes, the aforementioned sentences A and B only appear in the
English edition of No. 1, however. In the Chinese edition of No. 1, like theother four English-language books all published inside China, they havebeen completely expunged.
What we have only recently understood is that government agencies
connected with the CPB were involved in the production of the above four
propaganda volumes. Each bears at the front the inscription, “Produced by
the Council of International Affairs from official documents.” Since it has
not been clearly understood up till now exactly what this “Council ofInternational Affairs” was, I just literally translated the term into its Japaneseequivalent in my Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction”(“Nankingyakusatsu” tettei kenshô), published in 1998. Through investigation ofhistorical documents, the Council of International Affairs has been identified
as the “Guoji Wenti Yanjiusuo.” Written in Chinese as 國際問題研究所,
this can reasonably be translated as “International Affairs Research Institute”
or “International Affairs Council.”
Ma Jingyuan, the head of the First Department of the Council ofInternational Affairs, wrote, “[t]he Council of International Affairs was aspecial agency under the direct supervision of the Military Affairs
Committee, and under the chairmanship of Mr. Wang Pengsheng.”
In the spring of 1938, it was instituted under the control of theMilitary Affairs Committee (which was headed by Chiang Kai-shek) as the“Military Affairs Committee International Affairs Council.” According to
the reminiscences of Shao Yulin, Lt. Gen. Wang Pengsheng was a fellow
committee member in the Anti-Enemy Propaganda Studies Committee andthe Supreme Intelligence Committee of the CPB’s deputy director Dong
Xianguang, where they were engaged in studying the enemy’s movement
and creating psychological tactics to counter the enemy.
According to Huangchen Wanzhang: A Certain Chinese Man’s
Confidential Papers Bearing Evidence to the Sino–Japanese Incident, by
Xia Wenyun (who graduated from Kyoto University in 1932 and became thesecretary of Gen. Li Zongren), the Council of International Affairs was
221

In the older orthography of the time, his name was rendered as Hsü Shuhsi.
166

Chiang Kai-shek’s second largest intelligence agency next to theBlueshirts. 222 Xia said, “The Blueshirts were a strategic organ for collecting
domestic intelligence, while the Council of International Affairs was forinternational intelligence.”
Therefore, Wang Pengsheng’s Council of International Affairs was agovernmental agency in association with Dong Xianguang’s CPB. Given
this, we cannot overlook that it was actually the Nationalist government’s
Council of International Affairs and the Guomindang’s CPB that removed
the claim of 40,000 being unlawfully killed by the Japanese from the abovementioned Chinese-language Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners
and the other four English-language volumes. We must say that thisrepresents the true views of the Nationalist government, but let us look at
this a bit more cautiously.

§7 Bates himself repudiated the claim of Japan’s unlawful execution of
40,000
Referring back to the six books I mentioned in the last section, there issomething else that should not be overlooked. The first book wasanonymous, so the contributions weren’t signed. In books 2 through 5,
however, at the end, Miner Searle Bates’ signature (as “M.S.B.”) wasappended. Although Bates deliberately added sentences A and B in the firstbook, his signature in the other four books indicates that he approved of theirremoval.
The afore-mentioned top-secret document says, as I mentioned, that,“[t]hings lacking in validity are deleted or stopped. In addition, the reasonsare explained to the sender, and we make inquiry about the mistaken
viewpoint to gain his complete understanding.” The Council of International
Affairs, under the direct control of the CPB and Chiang Kai-shek’s Military
Affairs Committee, would have had “the reasons … explained” to the author
Bates upon the instance of the removal of the text, and they likely obtained
his agreement. Bates must have consented as he signed the text.
Let us look again at sentence B, which Bates originally added to histext.
The Blueshirts, or the “Blueshirt Society” (Lanyi She 藍衣社), was a secret clique in
the Guomindang operating as a fascist, para-military secret police force. The head of theBlueshirts was Gen. Dai Li, who came to be compared to Lavrenti Beria for the fear heinstilled in people.
222

167

Evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed
persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, of whomsome 30 per cent had never been soldiers.
As I have already discussed, not a few among the “40,000 interred”
shown in the burial records were actually soldiers killed in battle. The
remainder were probably corpses of the executed. Was the execution of the“unarmed persons” as Bates describes them — that is, those who had cast
off their military gear — lawful or not? Also, were there “[people who] had
never been soldiers” — civilians — in this number? Was there any
evidence? This was investigated by the CPB and the Council of International
Affairs in consideration of international law and the actual state of affairs inNanking. We can imagine that the result was Bates’ sentence being deemed“lacking in validity,” and that they sought his assent to expunge it.
Normally, when someone else cuts out a writer’s text, the writer will
not approve the action unless the reason is explained to him. The writer
would surely protest, as well, if the removal was forced on him. We don’tknow if Bates put his assent to the removal in a letter, or if the two parties
actually met face to face over the issue, but in any case Bates was inagreement and he consented. Considering that the English and Chinese
editions were published at the same time, Bates accepted the deletions
carried out by the CPB and the Council of International Affairs with noobjections, not even complaining once.
Why was this? On reading Bates’ text, one sees him refer tointernational law in passages such as “the dictum of international war thatthe lives of prisoners are to be preserved except under serious militarynecessity,” and “the Japanese setting aside of that law.” Given this, we know
he knew exactly what international law was. He must have known that theexecutions by the Japanese were, under international wartime law, clearly
lawful. We can but think this is the reason he made no protestation when the
text was removed.
This is supported by the fact that when US embassy attaché Cabot
Coville went on a fact-finding mission from Tokyo to Nanking four months
after the city fell, Bates spent a considerable amount of time in conferencewith him. From Coville’s report at the time, all he had to say was, “Looting
and raping by the Japanese army continued for several weeks. Alison arrived
at 11 o’clock on the morning of January 6 to reopen the embassy, but it
continues unabated.” We can see no criticism of any unlawful executions by
the Japanese. Before meeting with him, Bates had sent the sentence about
168the unlawful killing of 40,000 people at the hands of the Japanese to
Timperley in Shanghai for inclusion in What War Means. Bates should
therefore have stressed his pet claim of the 40,000 murders, but when he met
with Coville he didn’t even touch on the subject of any unlawful killing by
the Japanese.

§8 Further evidence that the CPB considered the executions to be lawful
The CPB put all their energies into the production of the propaganda
work What War Means, edited by Timperley. The book described “frequent
murders” in Nanking, saying “a considerable percentage of the deadcivilians were victims of shooting or bayoneting in the afternoon andevening of the 13th, which was the time of the Japanese entry into the city,”and “[o]ne poor woman was raped thirty-seven times. Another had her fivemonth infant deliberately smothered.… Resistance means the bayonet.” 223
Citing “[e]vidence from burials,” Bates produced the number 40,000,
including 12,000 civilians, in making his charge of 40,000 unlawful killings.
Perhaps to try to back up the descriptions of a civilian massacre made by
Bates and Fitch, the CPB included many photographs of the bodies ofchildren, executed Chinese, and public executions in What War Means and
its Chinese translation, Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners. For ananalysis of these photographs, I would like to recommend readers to see tobook Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre, inthe production of which I was a collaborator.
After reading a book that described the situation in Nanking in thatfashion, and upon being asked to summarize the book, how would we do so?
Ordinarily, the first thing we would think of is to present Nanking’s“murders” and “massacres” in the summary. The Anti-Enemy Section of the
CPB’s International Propaganda Division, who produced and published
What War Means, summarized the book differently, however. In the topsecret document, in the “Summary of Anti-Enemy Section Operations”
section, this is what they had to say:
A. Japanese Atrocities Witnessed by Foreigners
This book was written by the famous English journalist
Timperley 224 . The book records detailed accounts of heinous acts —223
224

Timperley, What War Means, pp.19 and 33.
The name is rendered in hanzi: 田伯烈 (Tianbalie).
169

rape, arson, looting — and a breakdown in military discipline andcircumstances of depraved human conditions after the enemy entered
Nanking in Dec. 13, 1937. In addition to publishing this book in
Chinese and in English, it was also translated into Japanese. The
Japanese edition’s title was changed to “What is War?” The prefaceof the Japanese edition is by Japanese anti-war author Aoyama Kazuo,
and there are many photographs of brutality inside. This book was
widely sold in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and everywhere overseas aswell. Afterward, the enemy’s chief of the General Staff, Prince Kan’in,put out a book to inform the officers and men of the Japanese army,
acknowledging that this was conduct disgraceful to the nation and theImperial Army in China, to admonish them. 225 [Emphasis mine.]
As can be seen from the italics, the content of What War Means was
summarized as “heinous acts — rape, arson, [and] looting.” What shouldhave been mentioned first — “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “murder” — do
not appear at all.
We don’t know whether it was before or after Nanking fell that the
CPB paid Timperley and asked him to write extensively on the Japanese
atrocities, but this secret report was written three and a half years after
Nanking’s fall. What this actually means is that if the CPB acknowledgedthat there had been a massacre in Nanking, they surely would have stressed
quite clearly the word “massacre” in summarizing What War Means.
In point of fact, it was because Bates’ claim that 40,000 were killed
was not true that, even though What War Means says that “frequent murder”
occurred in Nanking, the Anti-Enemy Section could not use the word“massacre” in summarizing the book.
I have quoted it before, but the “Summary of Editorial Operations”
section of the top-secret Overview of Propaganda Operations, summing up
three years of activities, bears repeating:
We modified, as situational changes dictated, the material collected
for English-language dailies over the past three and a half years. For
example, during the battle for the defense of the capital, we
propagandized strategies to muster the courage of our soldiers andoperations to reinforce the rear. After the fall of the capital, we
exposed the enemy’s outrages, and in the phase for the battle for

225

Overview of Propaganda Operations, pp.58, 59.
170

Wuhan, we propagandized that our martial power was increasing day
by day. 226 [Emphasis mine.]
After three years, the Editorial Section of the CPB’s International
Propaganda Division looked back at the fall of Nanking, concluding, “[a]fter
the fall of the capital, we exposed the enemy’s outrages.” If there had in fact
been a massacre in Nanking after the city fell, it would have been unlikelythat they would have written this as they did. The Editorial Section would
have written, “[a]fter the fall of the capital, we exposed the enemy’s
massacre,” and they would surely have named each of the books in a special
report on “The Nanking Massacre.” There was no such report, however.
The pamphlets mentioned in the top-secret report and published in
English, French, and so on, total 79. They are such pamphlets as, “ThePeople of Nanking,” “Hankou Under Enemy Occupation,” “Occupied
Huabei,” etc. We are unable to view their actual contents, but if there had
been a massacre in Nanking, it would not be surprising to see a pamphlet
with the title “The Massacre in Nanking” (like some books coming out
today). There is no such pamphlet, however. I have examined the “Summaryof Operations,” which sums up three years of propaganda operations of theother sections of the CPB, but as there is no report saying “massacre” or“murder” had been propagandized, I can find no accounts touching on thesubject.
It goes without saying that the CPB was looking for any way to bring
the Japanese army down, and they were laboring over operations to achievethat end. When they found out about the executions carried out by theJapanese, they would have paid the greatest attention to whether the
executions were lawful; the very least they would have done would havebeen to investigate the matter. This was because had they been able toexpose the executions as unlawful, they would have been able to makepropaganda use of them. They recognized the executions as lawful, however.
The removal of the sentence claiming the unlawful killing of 40,000 people,
along with the top-secret internal report of the CPB (which was made up of
officials of both the Guomindang and Communist Party), make the truth
apparent. This is evidence that they did not recognize there had been a
Nanking Massacre.

226

Ibid., p.26.
171

172

CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE TOP-SECRET DOCUMENTS WERE A TREASURE TROVE —WITH AN EPILOGUE§1 Taking the viewpoint of propaganda warfareThis is the first time in my lifetime of research that I have readhistorical documents with the view that they were wartime propaganda orsome such. Now, however, since establishing that What War Means — abook that became a vital foundation to the Nanking Massacre — wasactually a work of propaganda produced by the CPB, I have resigned myself
to view it as such; and I have come to believe that if one doesn’t viewhistorical documents from that position, one can not make any progress inunderstanding what happened at Nanking.
When adding the perspective of propaganda warfare, however, it
becomes something that can be viewed in a biased way. That is what wemust be conscious of and must caution ourselves against. Something I have
imposed upon myself is that with any one given historical record, I first view
it in the light of the top-secret documents of the CBP; when I put thatalongside other historical documents, it is ultimately the only conclusion that
I can reach.
Having the top-secret documents at one side like this was the firstinvestigation. And what do you know — the paradox of black and white
existing together disappears when adding the perspective of war propaganda.
For example, Bates, the International Committee member who
claimed — under the cover of anonymity — that 30,000 prisoners of war
and 12,000 civilians had been murdered, never once openly made the sameaccusation. Moreover, a full year after Nanking’s fall, the CPB published in
the Dec. 14, 1938, issue of Zhongyang Ribao (which, it will be remembered,
was an organ of the Guomindang under the control of the CPB) that 200,000
had been massacred in Nanking. The CPB’s own top-secret documents,
however, never once touched on any massacre in Nanking. In the near-dailypress conferences they held, too, they never made any news announcementthat a Nanking Massacre took place.
It’s like the same person was saying “it’s white” at one point and “it’sblack” at another. Drawing a line in the collected historical documents
we’ve had up till now, we start to distinctly separate black from white, andultimately we establish that the one side is wartime propaganda that is far
removed from the truth.
173

Also, adding the perspective of wartime propaganda yields this: theheretofore individual, loosely scattered points of uncertainty gradually start
to take on a mutual relevance, and begin to connect into a single line.
Consider these examples. (1) The American journalists Durdin andSteele wrote articles three days after Nanking fell claiming that civilians andprisoners of war had been killed, even though there was not one eyewitness
to the murder of civilians after Nanking fell, and that those who were
executed were unlawful combatants and not prisoners of war. (2) We haveestablished that Bates’ own “Report” was passed on to these two journalists
and used by them. The next question — why Bates would do such a thing —now arises. (3) Upon investigating Bates’ “Report,” we realize that it was far
from the truth. Generally, reports are true; so why was a report so far
removed from the truth prepared? This, too, has been a great mystery.
There are more problems, but at any rate there are scattered points ofdoubt such as these three. I tried to throw some light on them using the topsecret documents. In these documents, (4) the CPB wrote of “[using]journalists from various foreign countries” for their resistance propaganda,
and “[t]he best result would be gained by getting foreign journalists topublish our propaganda texts.” (5) Frequent tea parties and press conferenceswere held. (6) In the sections “Introducing the Journalists” and “Cooperatingin Gathering Material for Journalists,” the names of Durdin and Steele
appear. (7) The CPB placed great importance on propaganda operations to“[expose] the enemy’s outrages” after the fall of Nanking.
Matters proved by historical sources other than top secret documents
include the fact that (8) Durdin was an old and intimate friend of the CPB’s
deputy director Dong Xianguang. (9) Bates was an advisor of the
Guomindang government. (10) The “Report” that Bates passed on to thejournalists became the first chapter of What War Means. From the top-secretdocuments, then, we get (11) confirmation that What War Means was a bookof propaganda produced by the CPB.
How about that? When we adjust our view with an eye toward the war
propaganda of the CPB, the first problematic points (1, 2, and 3 above) fall
into line as part of the propaganda operations of the CPB. I can see no otherway of solving the problems and contradictions. Over the first sevenchapters of this book, I have gone to great lengths to explain in detail how tosolve them.
When we look at everything in the position of war propaganda as
above, this is how it ends up.
To begin with, there was the CPB’s plan to produce an “anti-enemy
propaganda book.” To accomplish this, they set several operations into174

motion. What came out in the end was What War Means. Since this was the
CPB’s settling of accounts for all their propaganda operations, it is reported
in their top-secret documents as achieving results in its stated purpose.
Accordingly, the CPB put all their efforts into What War Means — theflower of their ingenious, large-scale propaganda in making things that were
not appear as if they were so. They turned toward the goal of creating What
War Means and controlled it in its entirety.
It is not exaggeration to say that had What War Means not been
produced (or had it not been so masterfully produced as not have beenrecognized as a propaganda book over 60 years later into the 21st century)
today there would be no talk of a “Nanking Massacre.” The process bywhich it was given form is made clear in the treasure trove that were the topsecret documents wherein important matters that the enemy was never toknow were recorded.
Here, however, should we not remember the readers’ confusion? If, as
this book maintains, the Nanking Massacre was war propaganda, should it
not have disappeared at the conclusion of the war? That is, should not theAmerican newspaper articles reporting the Nanking Massacre and What War
Means have vanished as war propaganda? Yet, the Tokyo Tribunal
determined that the Nanking Massacre was true, did it not? What should we
make of the Tokyo Tribunal’s verdict?
To be sure, these are doubts anyone would entertain. This book would
therefore be a failure if it didn’t investigate the Tokyo Tribunal’s decision.
Once again, I took a close look at the Tribunal. When I did so, something
showed up that I can only call inexplicable. I would like to point out one
fragment I investigated for this book — following the line of the CPB’s war
propaganda — that focuses on the American newspaper articles and What
War Means.

§2 The basis for the Tokyo Tribunal was “the statements of witnesses”
On Aug. 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces on theterms that they would not have to make an “unconditional surrender.” On
Dec. 8, 1945 (not even four full months after the war was lost) the Allied
Headquarters published on the second page of every newspaper in Japan “A
History of the Pacific War — The Collapse of Japan, the Untruthful Nation
at War — Sponsored by the Allied GHQ.” It said,

175

The nightmare in Nanking.… The Japanese army committed
unspeakable acts of slaughter. According to the statements of
witnesses, positive proof has established that 20,000 men, women,
and children were in fact struck dead, making this the greatest
massacre in recent history. For four weeks Nanking became a city ofblood, and hacked-up slabs of flesh were scattered everywhere. 227
After the passage of several years, given such a newspaper report as
the above, one would generally think along the following path:(1) At the time of Nanking’s fall, the Nanking Massacre was madeknown.
(2) It was investigated.
(3) The result of the investigation was that the claims were determined
to have been true, and all the countries of the world condemned
Japan.
(4) With the end of the war, it was once again on the table to be dealt
with, and those responsible were to be judged.
To be sure, (1) was correct. Immediately after the fall, the Nanking
Massacre was made known as American newspapers reported on it, andWhat War Means was published. The investigation in (2) was not a public
one — it was a private investigation by the US military attaché Coville.
There was no result as in (3) from the investigation in (2), however. Not one
country — not the Americans, the Chinese, or anyone — gave positive proofof Japan’s unlawful killing (that is, a massacre in Nanking) or criticized theJapanese government.
Given this, upon what basis did the Allied HQ make the charge that“positive proof has established that 20,000 men, women, and children werein fact struck dead” and as in (4), call for people to be brought to trial at theTokyo Tribunal?
We can only assume that the thinking here was that the Allied GHQ(1) recalled that the Nanking Massacre was made known by the American
newspaper articles and What War Means, and that (2) the investigation was
inadequate, so an investigation by an international commission produced
reliable evidence four months after the end of the war that “20,000 men,
women, and children were killed.”
In point of fact, however, this was not the case.
227

Asahi Shimbun, December 8, 1945.
176

The foundation that the Allied GHQ relied on was witness statements.
So just who were these “witnesses”? Were they Americans, Europeans, andcitizens of Nanking who were in the city at the time of its fall? As can beseen on page 91, there is the example at that time of Nanking citizens sued
for the theft of gloves and sweaters as recorded in the Daily Reports ofSerious Injuries to Civilians, written by Europeans and Americans, andsubmitted to the Japanese embassy. Even Timperley, the editor of What War
Means, wrote of the Daily Reports that “completes the story of the first twomonths of the Japanese Army’s occupation of Nanking.” 228 As this shows, it
was all the incidents that happened in Nanking. There was not a single
eyewitness, to say nothing to an actual case, of murder. In other words, there
was not one European, American, or Nanking resident who said that he had
witnessed a murder.
That was the situation when Nanking fell; but might there have been
Europeans, Americans, or Nanking residents who came forward to make a
new charge after the war ended? The “Report of the Nanking Regional Court
Prosecutor’s Inquiry into Crimes Committed by the Enemy,” which was
submitted to the Tokyo Tribunal in February, 1946, by the Nanking
Regional Court’ prosecutor, declared that those reporting massacre activities
by the Japanese army were “extremely few.” Among the citizens of Nanking
interviewed for the Massacre investigation were those whose mouths, as thesaying has it, “were sealed and would not speak, like cicadas in the winter.”
It was also reported that there were “people who refuted” the stories, saying
there had been no such thing. There is also a possibility that after the war
there were no interviews conducted with the foreigners who had been
resident in Nanking. But this makes no sense.

§3 The witnesses who should have appeared at the Tokyo Tribunal did
not do so
Given these circumstances, exactly who might the Allied powers haverelied upon as witnesses to provide proof that 20,000 men, women, andchildren had been killed? The “witnesses” of the Nanking Massacre who the
Allies had appear at the Tokyo Tribunal were Miner Searle Bates, Robert
Wilson, and John Magee. The Nanking townsfolk who appeared were Hu
Zhuanyin, Shang Deyi, Wu Changde, Chen Fubao, and Liang Tingfang.

228

Timperley, What War Means, p. 198.
177

Readers must be taken aback by this. One would likely think that
there are five other people the Allies should have brought out as witnesses
first. Top on the list should have been the reporters Steele and Durdin (whofirst reported on the Nanking Massacre); it is extremely unlikely that theirarticles escaped the notice of the Allies. Next should be Timperley, who
made allusions to his telegram charging a massacre of 300,000 in What War
Means, and next should be Bates and Fitch, the contributors to that book. Of
these five, the only one to make an appearance at the Tribunal was Bates.
Why were Durdin, Steele, Fitch, and Timperley not summoned by the
Tokyo Tribunal? For them, the Tokyo Tribunal was a once-in-a-lifetime
chance to get new international recognition for the articles and reports they
had written at the time of Nanking’s fall. If they boasted that the things they
had written at the time were legitimate, they should have taken theopportunity to appear on that historical stage and deliver testimony favorable
to their cause. They did not, however, appear.
Why was this?
The first thing that occurs to me is that they didn’t have faith in theirown accounts to be presented in the courtroom as eyewitness testimony.
That is, were they not admitting that their own accounts were false?
The next thing to occur to me is that they were probably afraid that
their articles and reports would be seen to have been part of the CPB’s
propaganda war. Steele and Durdin were recognized as the correspondents
who wrote articles for American papers about the Nanking Massacre, but
only those who needed to know knew that Durdin was an old and closefriend of the CBP’s deputy director Dong Xianguang. Fitch had connections
to Guangdong provincial chief Wu Tiecheng and others, and his going on
the lecture circuit in the United States and talking about the Nanking
Massacre was known in Japan. As recalled by Dômei Tsûshin’s Shanghai
bureau chief Matsumoto Shigeharu, Timperley was known as the editor of
What War Means.
What this looks like so far is that the Allies actually avoided
summoning as witnesses the very people who made the Nanking Massacre
public — that is, those who had connections to the CPB. Having the people
who originally made the claim for a Nanking Massacre appear at the trial
was absolutely necessary for the Allies, however. Of those five people, none
but Bates was there. Bates’ connection with Chiang Kai-shek’s government
was not known, however. Bates was a contributor to What War Means, butthat has only recently been proved. The contributors were anonymous, so at
the time this, too, was completely unknown.

178§4 The three American witnesses
Witnesses from a third country (that is, neither Japan nor China) were
extremely important at the Tokyo Tribunal. Wilson, Magee, and Bates madeappearances in court. Let us take a basic look at their testimony.
Wilson was a surgeon at Gulou Hospital, which was attached to
Nanking University. He had therefore been worked nearly to death treating
patients daily at the hospital. What he had seen mostly was patients at thehospital, and his testimony was predominantly of things he had been told by
the patients. He showed no positive proof that “20,000 men, women, andchildren were in fact struck dead.”
Magee was a missionary in Nanking. At the Tokyo Tribunal, heclaimed that the Japanese soldiers had committed acts of murders, rape, andlooting. When asked, “Now, how many of these acts of murder did you
personally witness, Mr. Magee, approximately?”, Magee responded, “I only
personally witnessed the killing of one man.” 229 (Looking at Magee’s
journal at the time, he wrote “The actual killing we did not see as it took
place.” His testimony at the Tribunal that he “personally witnessed thekilling of one man” therefore becomes extremely dubious.) In support of his
testimony, Magee said that he took a number of photographs, but thosephotographs were not presented in evidence. In the book Analyzing the“Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Incident, on which I was acollaborator, we investigated these photographs and found that they were
mostly those of patients in the hospital.
Bates testimony was the same as the material he wrote in What War
Means.
Bates said, “(concluded as a result of various investigations andobservations and checking of burials studies, that twelve thousand civilians,
men, women and children, were killed inside the walls within our own sureknowledge.” 230 Moreover, that 30,000 disarmed soldiers, “within the firstseventy-two hours, were cut down by machine gun fire.” 231 This is the samematerial as in the first “extra sentence” in What War Means (that is, in the
English edition of the book) that I investigated here in Chapters Six andSeven. Indirectly, then, he here charges that the Japanese army unlawfully
killed 40,000 people. We can imagine that this testimony must have had a229

The Tokyo war Crimes Trial, Vol. 16, p. 3929.
Op cit., Vol. 11, p. 2630.
231
Ibid., p. 2630.
230

179

definite impact on the Tribunal. This testimony became the substantiation
for the Allies’ announcement that 20,000 men, women, and children were
killed.

§5 Problems with Bates
As discussed in Chapter Seven, Bates’ testimony that the Japanese
unlawfully killed 40,000 people was repudiated and deleted both by Bates
himself and the CPB. Yet Bates brought it up again at the Tokyo Tribunal.
Had the Japanese defense known of the deletion of those claims, they surely
would have demanded of Bates the reason why he was bringing up thosecharges again. This is something we know now, however; it was not knownat the time.
Additionally, the American lawyers working on the Japanese behalf
had no knowledge that Bates was the news source of the American
newspaper articles, or that he was a contributor to What War Means. It is no
surprise, then, that they did not cross-examine him on any of this.
The most baffling thing about the Tokyo Tribunal was somethingfrom What War Means that Bates did not reference again while on the stand.
There was no longer any reason for Bates’ contribution to What War Means
to be anonymous, and although what he wrote at the time might have beenused to support his testimony, he never once mentioned the book. Of course,
the American newspaper articles weren’t mentioned, either. Naturally it
appears he wanted to avoid those topics. Could it be that, for Bates, thesewere texts that simply could not be made known?
Let us look at the same matters from the Allied side. When the Allies
put the Nanking Massacre on the table, they doubtlessly placed considerable
evidentiary importance on the American newspaper articles written byeyewitnesses to Nanking’s fall and What War Means. They should havepresented them in court as evidence for the Nanking Massacre. They should
also have presented Fitch’s lectures in the United States and the film that
Magee brought. They did not present any of these, however. The Allied
prosecutor should have presented the American newspapers that said
Europeans and Americans who remained in Nanking had witnessed murders
and the information in What War Means, and called Bates and other
witnesses to offer testimony to support them. The American prosecutor, too,however, made absolutely no references to the content of the newspaper
articles or What War Means.

180

Considering that that the American newspaper articles and What War
Means have been assessed as definitive evidence of the Nanking Massacre,
it is baffling that they were not touched on at the Tribunal. It is as if theprosecutors were afraid that the newspaper articles and What War Meansmight became the object of dispute in court and be established as parts of the
CPB’s propaganda war.
How might things have gone if the Japanese legal team knew what weknow today? That is, had they known that Bates was an advisor of the
Nationalist government, that his “Report” was the source for the American
newspaper articles, that What War Means was a propaganda book producedby the CPB and that Bates was one of the contributors to that book, that thematerial in the book was greatly removed from the truth of the matter, andthat the sentence in the book claiming Japan had murdered 40,000 had been
expunged five times with Bates’ own consent — how would things havecome out? The developments of the Tokyo Tribunal would likely have beendifferent. Unfortunately, at that point in time, they did not know any of this,and there was no challenging of the testimony.
Documents from Bates waning years are in the Bates Collection in the
Yale University Archives. One of the documents is his CV, wherein Bates
has recorded, “Twice decorated by the Chinese Government for services onbehalf of the Nanking population during the Japanese terror andoccupation.” 232 1938 was the year the What War Means was published, towhich the CPB had gotten Bates to be a contributor. 1946 was the year Bates
appeared before the Tokyo Tribunal and gave his testimony that 40,000 had
been murdered by the Japanese.

§6 Upon opening the treasure trove that was the top-secret documents
In contrast to the Tokyo Tribunal, where Bates (who had been in
Nanking) gave testimony that 40,000 had been massacred, Chiang Kaishek’s government claimed that the number of the slain was 300,000. As
you have seen from this book, even though the Nanking Massacre appearedin American newspapers, and Chiang Kai-shek’s CPB held frequent press
conferences, they never blamed Japan for a “Nanking Massacre” in front offoreign or domestic journalists. Despite this, in 1943 (the year the tide of war
started to turn against Japan), the government published in the United States
232

Miner Searle Bates Papers, Record Group No. 10, Box 102, Folder 867, Yale Divinity
School Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
181the China Handbook 1937 – 1943, in which they claimed, “After theiroccupation of the Chinese capital, Japanese soldiers started a systematic
murdering of Chinese civilians, raping of women, looting and burning ofproperties which lasted for about five months.” 233 In China Handbook 1937
– 1944, published in America the next year, and in China Handbook 1937 –1945 (which was published during the Tokyo Tribunal in 1947), they said,“After their occupation of Nanking, the invaders cut all communications
with outside world and began to sack Nanking systematically. The story ofJapanese wholesale massacre, rape, murder, plundering and generalbarbarities in Nanking could find no equal in modern history.” 234 Thus was
the charge made in the Tokyo Tribunal that 300,000 had been massacred.
The indictment from the American side at the Tribunal read that a
Nanking Massacre of “several tens of thousands” had occurred. About two
years later, however, on Nov. 11, 1948, the judgment came down that “over200,000” had been killed in Nanking. The next day, the verdict was readagainst Gen. Matsui Iwane, holding him responsible for the deaths of “over100,000” people.
The fact that overnight “over 200,000” can become “over 100,000” is,in itself, a curiosity. In the end, the “positive proof” referenced in the“History of the Pacific War — The Collapse of Japan, the Untruthful Nation
at War — Sponsored by the Allied GHQ” that was published on Dec. 8,1945, did not appear at the Tokyo Tribunal. As I showed in Chapter One,
therefore, until 1970 the verdict of the Tokyo Tribunal was merely a verdictin name only. Until then, there was nothing written about the Nanking
Massacre in either Chinese or Japanese textbooks, as well as textbooks fromother countries.
At that time, neither people from the CPB who created the origin of
the Nanking Massacre nor those connected with the propaganda war shed
any light on the truth. Everyone remained silent. Seventy years after it all
ended, however, the top-secret documents appeared. The treasure trove thatwas the top-secret documents held the true intentions and minds of the CPB,
which was made up of members of the Guomindang and the Communist
Party. I wondered if definite proof of the Nanking Massacre might be inside
this treasure chest — but it wasn’t there.

233

China Handbook 1937 – 43, compiled by Chinese Ministry of Information (NewYork: The Macmillan Company, 1943), p.851.
234
Ibid., p. 218.
182

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AUTHOR PROFILE: HIGASHINAKANO Shudo
Born in Kagoshima in 1947, Dr. HIGASHINAKANO Shudo is professorof history of political thought and Japanese intellectual history at Asia
University in Tokyo. He majored in the history of German political thought
and socialism at Kagoshima University and Osaka University. Prior to his
appointment as professor at Asia University in 1995, he served as visiting
professor ofJapanese intellectual history at Western Washington University(1985-86), and visiting scholar at the University of Hamburg (1988-89).
In 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dr. Higashinakano
started to research the situation in Nanking in 1937. And since 1995, themain focus of his research interest has been this subject. He has beenpresident of Japan Nanking Society since 2000.
He has published many books, among them Nankin gyakusatsu” notettei kensho [An exhaustive study of the “Nanking Massacre”] (Tokyo:
Tendensha, 1998), its English translation version The Nanking Massacre:
Fact versus Fiction (Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan, Inc., 2005, Nankin jiken “shoko
shashin” wo kensho suru [Analyzing the “photographic evidence” of the
Nanking Massacre] (co-authored with Kobayashi Susumu and Fukunaga
Shinjiro, Tokyo: Soshisha,2005), Nankin gyakusatsu kenkyu no saizensen,
vols.1-4 [The front line of research on the Nanking Massacre, vols. 1-4]
(Tokyo: Tendensha, 2002-2005), 1937 Nankin koryaku sen no shinjitsu[ The truth about the capture of Nanking in 1937] (Tokyo: Shogakukan
Bunko, 2003), An Overview of the Nanking Massacre (Osaka: Kokumin
Kaikan, 1999), Za reipu obu Nankin no kenkyu [A Study of the Rape of
Nanking] (coauthored with Fujioka Nobukatsu, Tokyo: Tendensha, 1999),
Higashi Doitsu shakaishugi taisei no kenkyu [A study of the socialistic
system in East Germany] (Tokyo: Nansosha, 1996), and Kokka hasan:
Higashi Doitsu shakaishugi no 45 nen [Bankruptcy of a state: 45 Years ofSocialism in East Germany] (Tokyo: Tendensha, 1992). One of his research
papers, titled “The Overall Picture of the Nanking Massacre,” is included in
Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002).

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