The Good Man of Nanking The Good Man of Nanking : The Diaries of John Rabe is a collection of the personal journals of John Rabe , a German businessman who lived in Nanjing at the time of the Nanking Massacre in 1937 – 1938 . The book contains the diaries that Rabe kept during the Nanking Massacre , writing from his personal experience and observation of the events that took place . It also excerpts Rabe ' s experience in immediate post - war Berlin , then occupied by Soviet troops . Rabe ' s diaries were made known and quoted by author Iris Chang during the research for her book , " The Rape of Nanking " ; they were subsequently translated from German to English by John E . Woods and published in the United States in 1998 . Diary entries . In his diary kept during the aggression to the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army , John Rabe wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities . For example , on 13 December 1937 , he wrote : " It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction . We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards . The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs . These people had presumably fleeing and were shot from behind . The Japanese march through the city in groups of ten to twenty soldiers and loot the shops ( . . . ) I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling . Hempel ' s hotel was broken into as well , as almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road . " For 17 December : " Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house . When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall . When I show them my party badge , they return the same way . In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall , a woman was raped , and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet . I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital . ( . . . ) Last night up to 1 , 000 women and girls are said to have been raped , about 100 girls at Ginling Girls ' College alone . You hear nothing but rape . If husbands or brothers intervene , they ' re shot . What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers . " While , on the next day of the fall of Nanking , Rabe handed a letter of thanks to the Japanese army commander concerning that the people in the Safety Zone could stay without one fire and were all safe . The following is a part of his letter of thanks . " Dec . 14 , 1937 , Dear commander of the Japanese army in Nanking , We appreciate that the artillerymen of your army didn ' t attack to the Safety Zone . And we hope to contact with you to make a plan to protect general Chinese citizens who are staying in the Safety Zone . . . We will be pleased to cooperate with you in anyway to protect general citizens in this city . - - Chairman of the Nanking International Committee , John H . D . Rabe - - " On 17 December , Rabe however wrote a letter as chairman to Kiyoshi Fukui , second secretary of the Japanese Embassy , in a very different tone . The following is an excerpt : Having received no answer to his request , Rabe wrote again to Fukui the following day , this time in an even more desperate tone : For 10 February , Rabe wrote in his diary : " Fukui , whom I tried to find at the Japanese embassy to no avail all day yesterday , paid a call on me last night . He actually managed to threaten me : ' If the newspapers in Shanghai report bad things , you will have the Japanese army against you , ' he said . ( . . . ) In reply to my question as to what I then could say in Shanghai , Fukui said ' We leave that to your discretion . ' My response : ' It looks as if you expect me to say something like this to the reporters : The situation in Nanking is improving everyday . Please don ' t print any more atrocities stories about the vile behavior of Japanese soldiers , because then you ' ll only be pouring oil on fire of disagreement that already exists between the Japanese and Europeans . ' ' Yes , ' he said simply beaming , that would be splendid ! ' " John Rabe gave a series of lectures in Germany after he came back to Berlin on April 15 , 1938 , in which he said , " We Europeans put the number [ of civilian casualties ] at about 50 , 000 to 60 , 000 . "