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Leo.

For God’s sake, Steele. Come on!

Leo.

It’s open.

You can finish this on the boat.

Right.

That is if the Japs don’t boob us first like they did the Panay.

Well, I can swim. Can’t you?

Get a move on, Will you?

We can file our stories in Shanghai.

Japan launches a full-scale invasion of China in July 1937

As a part of its plan to rule all of Asia.

To take its place into the global power.

After 5 months of hard fight,

They take what was then the capital of China, Nanking.

Mr, Simth.

Mr. Steele.

Dr.Wilson.

I was afraid I wouldn’t catch you in time.

Thought you left days ago.

Bob.

The embassy tried to convince most of us to leave on the Panay.

Good thing…we didn’t, or we might be on the bottom of the Yangtze River alongside it.

Besides Fitch here, how many of you are crazy enough to stay?

Last count, it was 22 foreigners.

14 of us Americans.

Well, you have another chance to leave.

We have a boat waiting to take us to the Oahu.

Smooth sailing to Shanghai courtesy of the Us navy.

It seems I’m the last surgeon left in Nanking. I can’t leave.

But I do have a favor to ask of you.

Anything.

But make it quick.

Take this letter along with you. It is to my family.

Good luck.

And to you.

Thanks for the lift, Mr. Fitch.

Oh God…

We can’t drive through that.

{Scars of Nanking}

End of the safety zone.

When they first broke through, I met a

Japanese officer who had it marked on his map.

Doesn’t look like those two have a map.

Come on, we are on foot.

Journalists Archibald Steele and Leslie C Smith are trying to escape a nightmare.

For two days,

Japanese troops have been rampaging through Nanking.

[No marks from a gun or helmet]

[Not army]

[I don’t care]

[Don’t kill me]

After the city fell to the Japanese Army,

The first few days were probably the worst.

In terms of the mass execution,

Random killing of civilians.

The kind of violence that has happened in Nanchang occurs,

Which is often Personal,

Which is sadistic, In-close quatres,

Involves humiliation, rape, and degradation.

The really interesting thing about Nanchang is how much evidence we have,

And the evidence we have comes from the foreigners who chose to stay.

As a foreigner, Journalists are allowed to pass unharmed.

Japan does not want to revoke the Western powers.

Steele and Smith make their way to the Yangtze River.

Steele.

I didn’t know if you were going to make it.

Our ride to the Oahu is waiting.

A moment later,

Journalists Archibald Steele and Tillman Durdin

witness what happened to the Chinese prisoners.

The Japanese may call this war.

It looks like murder to me.

And the scene on the riverfront as I wait for the launch to the Oahu,

Was of a group of smoking chatting Japanese officers overseeing

the massacre of the Battalion Chinese captive troops.

They marched them out in groups of about 15. Machinegunning them.

Japan always felt there was a superior race than any other races.

All the Asians.

The superiority complex as nation made them kill people they felt were inferior.

The responsibilities of the Emperor system were

certainly the important factor in wartime atrocities.

People did in name of the Emperor.

Let me spell it out for you.

American. American. American. We are all Americans.

You’ve got to help us.

We’ve got to get our stories out.

Like I told you before,

You can get your stories out when we get back to Shanghai.

But that won’t be for another day.

We can still make today’s deadline if you just help us.

Listen, we might not ever make it to Shanghai.

The Jap may make another mistake and boob us too.

Do you know what’s going on back there?

Murder.

By the thousands. Women, children, civilians.

The world has got to know what the Japs are doing to Nanking.

I am sorry, fellas.

But it’s against the US Navy regulations to let civilians use the radio.

Come on. We’re never going to get this guy to budge.

Yeah, right behind you.

Steele is still determined to get his story out.

Where are you from?

Davenport, Iowa.

What do you know? I am from Chicago.

It’s practically the same thing.

You and me, we’ve got to stick together.

Nanking, China. December 15, 1937.

“Four days in hell” would be the most fitting way

to describe the siege and capture of Nanking.

The last thing we saw as we left the city was a

band of 300 Chinese being methodically executed.

before the wall, near the Waterfront, where already corpses were piled knee deep.

Archibald Steele is one of the last foreign journalists to leave Nanking.

It was a characteristic picture of the mad of Nanking scene.

But the story of the fall of Nanking and its brutal aftermath begins weeks earlier.

After a bloody battle to take the financial Hub of Shanghai,

Japanese troops begin a forced March along the Yangtze River to Nanking.

The goal,

Break the backbone of Chinese resistance.

Nanking was capital.

Once you occupy the capital,

That means you are declaring your victory.

One could say that the march towards Nanking from Shanghai

was the series of massacres. In many different locations.

It could be somewhere compared to the army that faces guerrilla warfare in other wars.

Nanking is now under siege.

The Japanese commanders allowed their soldiers to

rape, kill, loot, torture and act with impunity.

So, when they got to Nanking,

It was already understood by the soldiers that

they would be allowed to do whatever they want.

Dr. Wilson.

[Should we stop?]

Is anyone hurt?

No. Sir.

Then stopping is not an option.

This will be the fastest eye surgery in history.

Ah, there you are.

Robert Wilson is one of the younger members of The Foreigner Community.

Given born in China.

His parents sent him back to the United States Princeton Harvard Medical School,

So, you can almost think about him as a doctor without Borders.

[Come on in]

Dr. Zhang.

What is it?

Dr. Wilson.

We feel we must leave Nanking.

With the capital of China, Nanking, nearly surrounded by Japanese troops,

Doctor Robert Wilson learns that many of the Chinese

doctors and staff at his Hospital are leaving the city.

I am staying.

Dr. Liu.

Aren’t you afraid of your personal safety?

Naturally.

But it is my duty to stay and help.

By staying behind in the Fallen City.

It's risk itself.

So, I think those Chinese individuals, doctors, nurses

who stayed behind were certainly very courageous.

Dr. Wilson is now the only surgent left in Nanking.

My little shrapnel and bullets collection are increasing daily.

I’ll be able to open a respectable museum by the end of the war.

The letter of diary in the American missionary like Dr. Wilson

provided real-time eyewitness accounts of what takes place in Nanking.

The situation is far worse than I thought.

From what I’ve heard, the Japanese are mad as Hornets

after the fight the Chinese put up in Shanghai.

They’re looting and burning their way here.

I think we can all agree that it is inevitable, the Japanese will take Nanking.

Perhaps, after they do, things will calm down a bit.

We may hope so, Dr. Wilson.

But the wounded Chinese soldiers at the train station

don’t hold out much hope for Japanese mercy.

The point is…

If I may say so…

The point is we must limit any violence and protect the Chinese population.

I think we can all agree with that.

We’ll need everyone pulling together.

Let’s take a look here.

15 of the remaining foreigners form an international

committee to establish the safety zone.

They will protect Chinese civilians from the invading Japanese.

It will be an area less than 2 square miles in

compassing college campuses, embassies and hospitals.

And eventually housing more than 20 refugee camps.

The missionary, educators, the doctors who stayed behind chose

to stay and not to bear witness to history but to help.

It is essential that no Chinese Army troops are to enter the safety zone.

If they do, it just gives the Japanese an excuse to violate it.

But we're going to have to make the Japanese keep the same promise.

No military personnel in the safety area.

The committee selects George Fitch, Head of the YMCA, as its administrative director.

And the German businessman John Rabe as chairman.

Germany was already a friend of Japan.

And they thought that having a German who happened to be a Nazi party

member would carry more clout with the Japanese military authorities.

Mr. Rabe is proving himself to be quite the humanitarian.

Although I will never understand his affection for Der Fuhrer.

When the international committee set up the refugees Zone,

The agreement was that there would be no Chinese soldiers allowed in it,

And that was the only chance there was that the Japanese would respect that area.

The international Committee is doing a splendid piece of work.

But the outcome is a matter of grave concern.

The Japanese have definitely stated they will not recognize the safety zone.

[Please come in]

[Welcome]

Minnie Vautrin was born in Illinois in 1886, and she found herself in

the head of one of the best women's colleges in Nanjing Jalen College.

I told the committee we could only take 3,000.

It looks like we may have to double that.

We will use the hallway.

Even outside.

We will put them somewhere, Miss Hua.

She felt a responsibility for the women and girls I had already heard of

the reports of Japanese troops Behavior as they were approaching Nanjing.

The ambassy people have now asked us to leave

very politely on two different occasions.

I personally feel that I can’t leave.

Men are not asked to desert their ships when in danger.

And women are not asked to leave their children.

The missionaries consider themselves part of the community.

They felt such a responsibility to the people whom

they have relationships, and they wanted to stay.

[What’s wrong, Mr. Chen?]

[It is happening!]

[The Chinese army is leaving the city]

[Everyone is running]

[Soldiers are throwing away their guns]

[Some drown trying to cross the river]

[Fires everywhere!]

[They say the Japanese]

[Will enter Nanking tomorrow]

Nanking falls on December 13, 1937.

Japanese troops immediately began their rampaging of terror.

American Missionary John Magee starts to film what he sees.

He uses his 16mm Bell & Howell camera the church

sent to him to record charitable activities.

John Magee was an Episcopal Minister, who had been born in Pittsburg.

He had gone to Yale Divinity School.

The Board of Foreign Missions sent him to China.

The film footage of John Magee is indispensable.

Not only did he film inside the refugee camps.

He filmed outside at great peril.

If John Magee were caught filming by a Japanese Officer,

the chances are he would have been beheaded.

And he would have been left there and the Japanese would have taken his camera.

In the chaos when the city fell,

Some Chinese soldiers put down their uniform and mingled

into the civilian population in the safety zone.

The Japanese military used this pretext to cast a very wide net.

Something is happening.

[Where are the Chinese soldiers?]

[We know you are here!]

Wait!

Who is in command here? Who is in charge?

I am in command.

You speak English. Terrific.

This is an American University. American property.

You saw the flag?

This is also inside the international safety zone.

I know Chinese Soldiers are here.

I can assure you that any men here are completely harmless.

Civilians.

We will see.

[I know Chinese soldiers are hiding here.]

[I will give you one minute.]

[If you stand up and surrender,]

[I will not kill you.]

[If you don’t,]

[I will kill you all!]

[One minute!]

[Hurry, take them all.]

Wait!

Wait!!

These are not soldiers. They work here.

This one is 60 years old. No Soldier.

We will decide. Get back!

Based on eyewitness accounts,

We know that many of the civilians were taken away,

Were later executed by the Japanese military.

Young men were tied up with wire and led to the river.

Lined up and shot

And the river would be full of corpses

It was quite widespread to use POW’s as bayonet practice for new solders.

To kill a human being is a big psychological threshold to cross.

And we see that Japanese Officers did use such practice to “stiffen” their soldiers,

so to speak.

Soon after the Japanese enter the city

an eight-year-old girl leads Magee to her home.

[Is this where it happened?]

[At 9 or 10 in the morning]

[Japanese soldiers broke into our house]

[My dad opened the gate]

[He took a few steps]

[The Japanese caught him and shot him to death]

Good lord.

The neighbors have taken the bodies of Xia Shuqin’s family and other victims outside.

Shuqin’s mother and sister are raped before being murder.

In all, 7 of her family members are killed in front of her.

She, herself, is bayonetted.

But survives.

[You tell me to remember but not cry]

[How can I not cry?]

[7 of my family died]

[Not just 1 person]

The horror of the last week is beyond anything I have ever experienced.

I never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were such savages.

It has been a week of murder and rape.

They not only killed every prisoner they could find,

But also, a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages.

Many of them were shot down like the hunting of rabbits in the streets.

There are dead bodies all over the city.

But the most horrible thing now is the raping of the women.

Which has been going on in the most shameless way that I have ever known.

The streets are full of men searching for women.

Within days of the occupation.

Thousands of Nanking surviving citizens seek

refuge in the international safety zone.

I am sorry, only women under 50 years old and girls.

I am so sorry. Please tell them, Mrs. Tsen.

[We have no choice.]

[I am so sorry]

Never shall I forget the faces of the younger girls as they streamed in.

Most of them were parting from their fathers or husbands at the gate.

The had disguised themselves in every way possible.

Many had cut their hair

most of them had blackened their faces.

[Don’t worry]

[We will take care of them]

We will protect them.

[I promise]

The night of December 17

none of us shall ever forget for it is burned in our memories by suffering.

This is an American school.

American school!

They refused to believe me when I said there were no soldiers.

Only women and children.

[Help me]

[Help me]

They made us feel like they were searching for soldiers.

But as a matter of fact

they were searching for young women and girls.

Never shall I forget that scene.

The people kneeing

Mrs. Tsen and I standing.

The rattling of the leaves

the moaning if the wind.

The cry of the women being led out.

The rape of Nanking is known by the name rape because of the

astonishing numbers of public rapes the Japanese Soldiers perpetuated.

It’s in the missionary diaries.

The Japanese soldiers are climbing into the refugee camps to rape

in front of the missionaries that are trying to protect them.

The rapes of sisters, mothers, children….

Repeated rapes until the child and mother was dead.

Is why this massacre bears the name.

I think now that I may have saved those girls.

But at the time, it did not seem possible.

[Help me]

[Help me]

These foreigners by standing between the Japanese and the

potential Chinese victims did put themselves into harm’s way.

This is the situation when people like Minnie

Vautrin were threatened by the Japanese soldiers.

This girl, she decided to resist her rapist.

You can see what it got her.

More than 20 bayonet wounds.

She is luckier than most.

She will survive.

The Japanese Troops would just slice open people and leave them to die,

And so, Robert Wilson for example did a lot of surgery and he did a lot of sewing up.

And these events can be corroborated by the film footage that John Magee took.

When did you last get some sleep, Bob?

Maybe 20 hours ago.

I try to catch a nap here and there.

When the Japanese don’t come looking for women or something to steal.

I used to try to be polite when I threw them out.

But now I just give them the same cold fishy stare that they give me.

What good does it do the filming that if no one ever sees it?

I think there were at least one hundred Chinese on staff there.

Nurses and technicians and so forth,

But he was the only qualified surgeon left in the city

and so he was just absolutely overwhelmed by work.

[Japanese soldiers are here!]

[Where?]

[Nurse dormitory.]

Stop it!

What do you think you are doing? Stop it!

[Mind your own business or I will kill you, American.]

[I am an imperial soldier.]

This is a hospital. You have no business here. Get out now.

[Chinese soldier here; we search Chinese soldier.]

That is not going to work with me, friend.

There are no Chinese soldiers here. You must leave now. Go.

[I said do not interfere.]

[I will kill you now.]

You may want to ask your friend.

How smart he thinks it is for you to kill an American.

You may ask him. What punishment he thinks you might receive.

[If you kill a foreigner, we will be in trouble.]

[We’ll find girls somewhere else.]

The used the women as sort of a “comfort.” You know?

And then they killed the women.

They were imperial power. young! These guys were young!

They no intellectual training.

There were like animals. They were trained as animalistic.

So, when commander says: “Kill all of them!” They don’t care.

Men. Women. Children. Burn!

Over half the city is burned.

Huge fires are set in every business section.

Yesterday before going home for supply, I counted 12 fires.

If it weren’t for the way the international Committee had gathered rice beforehand,

And done what it could to protect the population,

There would already be a first-class famine.

And the slaughter would have been considerably greater than it has been.

In total, within the perimeter of the safety zone.

There were about 250,000 people.

So, it was very packed.

And they increasingly had trouble getting in enough food or sanitary

conditions for all of these people within such a small space.

George Fitch, in charge of logistics

struggles to make it all work.

George Fitch was an established member of the YMCA.

He was an established Missionary.

He had been born in China in the 1880s.

He like other missionary kids had been sent to the

United States for College and Divinity School.

He was right smack in the middle of it all,

And I think they never knew when one of the soldiers when turn on them more violently.

Complete anarchy has reigned for 10 days.

It has been hell on earth.

To have to stand by and watch while even the very poor

are having their last possession taken from them.

While thousands of disarmed soldiers who had sought sanctuary with you,

Together with many hundreds of innocent civilians are taken out before your eyes.

And shot or used for bayonet practice.

And to stand by and do nothing while your flag is taken down and insulted.

Not once but a dozen times.

And then to watch the city that you’ve come to love.

Deliberately and systematically burned by fires.

This is a hell I could never before have envisaged.

Every day we call at the Japanese embassy and present our protests.

Our appeals, our authenticated reports of violence and crime.

Mr. Fukuda, you can’t honestly pretend that you don’t know what’s going on.

We have written to you virtually every day documenting the

crime and mayhem perpetrated by your imperial troops.

You have in your hand a letter of pretest signed

by all 22 remaining foreigners in Nanking.

We are met with suave Japanese courtesy

but actually the officials there are powerless.

This is a military matter.

The army is in charge of this.

So, you have no influence over your military.

They just do what they want.

You had the opportunity to show the world the honor of the imperial Japanese army.

Yet, you’ve just demonstrated the exact opposite.

We’ve been branded as a load of liars.

The Japanese embassy people tell people that everything we say is imagination.

That might be a lot truer if I were not a surgeon.

And have to patch up the results of their excesses.

By the end of December 1937,

The Japanese order all civilians to register for “good citizens papers.”

By late January 1938,

they force all Chinese to leave the safety zone and return to their homes.

The zone is officially closed.

But the killing continues.

We need to find a better way to get the word out.

The world needs to know what Japan has done here.

People will only believe it if they see it with their own eyes.

Many International Committee members circulate letters

in the United States to bring attention to Nanking.

But so far, nothing is being done to stop the Japanese.

We need to get Father Magee’s film out of here and back to the West.

How? None of us can get permission to leave.

And the risk of carrying the films alone is just…

I can’t even get the films developed. It’s too dangerous.

These Missionaries primarily were not allowed out of the

city at this point because they really knew too much.

The Japanese would not be keen on letting them

go out and talk about what they had witnessed.

Bring the negatives to my place next week.

I might have a way.

You really think they won’t search you?

They may check my luggage, but not me.

I’ve got a special permit now.

George Fitch finds a way to smuggle the evidence of the massacre out of Nanking.

By sewing Father Magee’s films into the lining of his overcoat.

In order to be allowed to leave Nanking,

Fitch arranges to receive a telegram from a colleague

in Shanghai saying he is urgently needed there.

It works!

No one could protect the Missionaries.

These people are aware of the risks they are personally facing.

What kind of train are you getting?

It’s a Japanese troop train, actually.

I’ll pray for you.

I’ll need it.

On January 18, 1938 at 06:40 am,

George Fitch, Director of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone.

Attempts to board a Japanese Troop Train bound for Shanghai.

[You]

[Your papers]

I was crowded in with about as unsavory a crowd of

soldiers as one could imagine in a third-class coach.

A bit nervous because sewed into lining of my coat were eight

reels of 16-millimeter negatives move film of atrocity cases.

My baggage would undoubtedly be carefully

examined by the military when we got to Shanghai.

[Stop]

[Open your bag]

What might happen if they discovered these films?

Fortunately, they weren’t discovered.

And as soon as I could after my arrival

I took them to the Kodak office for processing.

They were so terrible that they had to be seen to be believed.

George Fitch is aware that the world Community needed to hear this story

and he swirled out of China with Magee’s film footage

and went on the lecture tour in the United States throughout 1938.

He showed the films to the senators, to army officials, and churches and so forth.

and tried to publicize what was happening there.

I think it probably did have an effect on public opinion in the United States.

The Japanese were seen as “The Wicked Enemy” before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In Nanking, the violence begins to subside.

It stopped because there really wasn't anybody else to kill.

There wasn't anything else to steal.

There wasn't anything else to burn down.

Many of the missionaries stayed in Nanking through the worst of the atrocity.

But the paid the price.

The events are growing dim.

But there are a certain of them that a lifetime will not erase from my memory.

Minnie Vautrin is not the only one hunted.

I have visited Japan a number of times. It is a beautiful country.

How to reconcile the Japan that I have seen and the savagery that I have seen here.

Is a problem that I have not solved yet.

George Fitch would sometimes had amnesia or blank

out when he was trying to give his speech.

Some people have attributed this to the trauma that he experienced there.

Dr. Robert Wilson exhausted and suffering from seizures return to the US in 1940.

But there is no time to rest.

He joins an Army Medical unit and ships out again.

After World War II, Dr. Wilson, George Fitch, and Father John Magee all play

key roles in bringing the perpetrators of the Nanking massacre to Justice,

By providing testimony to war crimes tribunals.

The international Military Tribunal for the Far East

puts the number of deaths to the hand of the Japanese.

It’s over 200,000.

The Nanking war crimes tribunal puts the number of 300,000 or more.

In the first month of Japan's occupation of Nanking,

The number of rapes is officially estimated it 20,000.

Ultimately, 5 Japanese Military Officers and 1 civilian official are put to death.

In 2014, China confirmed December 13th as the National

Memorial Day for victims of the Nanking massacre.

In 1940 after standing in Nanking through the worst days of the occupation,

Minnie Vautrin suffers from depression.

Her church sends her to Indianapolis Indiana.

Several times, the Japanese soldier threatened her life, threatened to rape her

And she stood up to them; especially, when the soldiers came into the compound,

And were attacking people under her care.

She made an extra effort to protect women and girls.

Dear friends,

This process of mental deterioration has evidently

been going on for years without my realizing it.

[Help me]

[Help me]

On May 14, 1941, one year to the day after she left Nanking,

Minnie Vautrin commits suicide.

Minnie vautrin mentioned more than once in the diary that

She was writing that she felt guilty or at fault because she couldn't help everyone.

She felt as though if only if only I've been there for them

If only if only I've been able to hele this person.

Then that person would have been ok.

In China; especially in Nanking,

The names and deeds of these foreigners who stayed behind live on.

If there were no westerners in the fallen capital,

The situation would have been much morse for the Chinese population.

What is knowable is the hundreds of thousands of lives saved

By the efforts of those who established the zones,

And tried to keep as many as civilians safe as possible.

Equally important is that they recorded the facts of Nanking massacre.

Today, Minnie Vautrin revered as a living Buddha.

She is called “Kuan Yin” Buddha, Goddess of Mercy.

6 weeks before the fall of Nanking,

Minnie writes it in her diary:

Think of the lovely coloring of the autumn leaves,

The glimpses of purple mountain through our trees.

All these we have.

Nanking is a place of peace, relaxation and beauty.

Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to simply come back.

It is not uncommon for people to live quite happily and

peacefully in a place where terrible things happen.