THE GREATEST MASSACRE IN MODERN HISTORY

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE GREATEST MASSACRE IN MODERN HISTORY

Although a Mate of siege had existed for four weeks, order was maintained inside the walls up to the day Japanese troops marched in. By wireless and messenger service we arranged with both Japanese and Chinese military command* to respect an international cone lor refugees roughly two and a half miles square. We met the Japanese as they entered on December 12. The sone agreement was explained to them. Promises were secured that soldiers who turned their guns over to us would be spared.

By.. An Eye-Witness

Quickly the news «pread throughout the city. By 10 o'clock that nightall of us were hard at work disarming ChineM men and boy#' who sought our promised protection. Large pilet of guna were heaped at each zone entrance. I saw the Japaneee enter the Government building district, mowing down civilians who fled at their approach. To run was to be plugged instantly. Many were shot in seeming sporting mood by the Jape. I saw them laugh at terror plainly Visible on faces of coolies, merchants and students alike. It reminded me of a picnic of .devils. The destruction of life increased hourly. , Women were hunted down in all Chinese homes. If resistance was offered the bayonet was theirs. Sixty-year-old women ana 11 and 12-yeer-old girls were not mij mune. They were thrown to the ground and attacked openly in the December sunlight. Many .were horribly mutilated. It was awful to hear the scream* of women coming from houses 'iiito barred doors. On December 16 the assault. began i* earnest. More than 100 women- —seven of them librarians from the university library—were snatched out of the zone and hauled away in army trucks. p '.; On that day, tbo, 50 of our zone police men were led away and shot. When at) Amertcan protested he was held by privates and slapped by an officer. "These are conquered people," i Japan •se major said to me. "Why should they •xpect favours I" Refugees—even those In our camps— *ere robbed of everything they pos-

seeeed, meagre as these possessions were. Bedding, fuel, clothing, all money down to tho laet copper pennies, even handfuls of dirty rice, were snatched from them by the soldiers. Death was the sure retort to any whimper at the taking. Bloated, rotting dead bodies were everywhere; on the streets, in houses, filling every lake inside the walls, piled high along the river outside. Dogs wandered from carcase to carcase. When Chinese Red Cross sanitary squads attempted to rid the streets of bodies, wooden coffins they constructed were taken from them and used for "victory" bonfires by soldiers. Scores of Red Cros« workers, clothed in regulation uniforms, were slain. Their bodies fell on those of the corpses they had been removing. On Christmas Eve all of Taiping Road, Nanking's most important shopping street, wa« in flames.

I drove through showers of sparks and over embers and charred bodies to see the Japanese, torches in their hands, setting fire to buildings after loading merchandise into army trucks. Forty-three of the 53 men employed as engineers at the city power plant were led out and killed in cold blood during the first few days of terror. On Christmas Day Japanese military officials came to ask if we knew where the engineers could be located. They wanted to reopen the plant. It was

Events that are taking place in China are among the most terrible in the history of the world. Here, told for the first time by one of the few European eye-witnesses, is the full story of what happened when the Japanese army occupied Nanking. For four Weeks there raged the greatest authenticated massacre of modern times.

small comfort to tell them their own men had murdered them. Shortly after they left there was a knock at my office door. Outside ..two coolies were supporting the blacklSed body of a man whose eyes, ears, and nose were burned beyond recognition. His whole upper body resembled a new-ground stump. He had been bound with 40 or 50 others in 'a compact bundle; tins of petrol had been emptied over them until tLeir clothing was saturated. Then torches were applied.

He had escaped death (as least for i few hours) by being on the group's ►uter edge, where only hia head and ipper body had been splashed with ictrol. When the flames died down and the aps had seen enough, he crawled 50 ■ards to a road way, where a Chinese anitary. squad found him. Two men rom other groups similarly tortured rere brought to us within the next few ays. That afternoon men were brought o the zone hospital for what assistance ye could give them after they had been ised for bayonet practice. They had been tied in pairs, back to >ack, and forced to wait as calmly as >ossible while instructors showed youngters freshly imported from the Land of he Rising Sun just where to jab their )oint« for the most efficient strike. While wholesale executions proceeded without interruption, Japanese Army planes were dropping leaflets from the iir. "All good Chinese' who return to heir homes will be fed and clothed by rapanese soldiers who are your friends" ■he messages from the sky read. leaflets from Air Tricked Thousand* "Japan wants to be a good neighbour o those Chinese not fooled by monsters vho are Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers." On the leaflet was a coloured picturc if a handsome Japanese soldier, a Chinese child held Christ-like in his arms. It his feet a Chinese mother was bowing ler thanke for bags of rice he was irivng her. Thousands returned to the ruins of heir homes the day leaflets were first dropped. The list of atrocities next morning ras appalling. Soldiers on the ground ,nd those in the air had obviously failed o synchronise the goodwill era's leginning. Mothers were attacked while their hildren screamed in terror at their ides. I saw actual instances where hree and four-year-olds were bayoneted rhen their cries annoyed the men. Families I knew were boarded up in heir homes and burned alive. Zone officials estimated that at least 000 women were assaulted before they ould return to our protection. Gradually the slaughter decreased, "he city was at last permitted to bury ts dead. Weeks later, in March, a Government adio station in Tokyo flashed this icssage to the world:— "Hoodlums responsible for so many eaths and such destruction of property In ranking have "been captured and executed, 'hey were found to be discontented soldiers rom Chiang Kai-shek's brigades. Now all 1 quiet and the Japanese Army is feeding 00.000 refugees until they can be helped ack into their homes."