Nanjing Requiem

11




EARLY ON THE MORNING of December 22, Miss Lou informed us that the policemen from the embassy had assaulted two girls in the Practice Hall the night before. Five of them had dragged the girls out of the building and raped them beyond an oval flowerbed encircled with serrated bricks. We were shocked and outraged, but we were caught and couldn’t see a way out. We needed the police to deter the soldiers and had to handle this matter discreetly; nevertheless, Minnie would protest to Tanaka. By now more than seventy women and girls had been raped in our camp alone, and Minnie had submitted a report on those cases to both the Japanese embassy and the Safety Zone Committee.

Around ten a.m., Minnie and Big Liu again went to the U.S. embassy to ask to be driven to the Japanese embassy, where they would present another protest. But they didn’t find Tanaka there and left word with Consul-General Katsuo Okazaki that we didn’t need so many policemen—six would be enough. Okazaki, who was also the diplomatic adviser to General Matsui, promised Minnie he’d pass both the message and the protest letter on to the vice-consul, though he was in a hurry to catch the train to Shanghai, where he’d been residing since last fall.

This time the Cadillac didn’t send Minnie and Big Liu back to our college, because the chauffeur feared that the Japanese might take away the car. Any vehicle driven by a Chinese without a foreigner in it was subject to confiscation. So Minnie and Big Liu walked back from the U.S. embassy, which was less than a mile from Jinling.

I was outside the front entrance bandaging a woman’s neck when Minnie and Big Liu returned. The woman had been stabbed seven times by two soldiers but was still breathing. I planted a Red Cross flag on the horse cart on which she was lying before it set off for the University Hospital. Minnie told me that they’d seen more destruction in town, that Chef Wang at the U.S. embassy had lost his father to a knot of soldiers who had also plundered the old man’s small collection of antique coins. Minnie went on, “Who could imagine such atrocities! I’m wondering if there’s a home in this city that hasn’t been looted.”

“We shall settle accounts with them someday,” Liu said through his teeth.

Never had I seen him so full of hatred. I didn’t know how to respond.

Minnie wondered if we should drop in to see John Rabe at the Safety Zone Committee’s headquarters and find out if there was news about Ban and the six girls taken five days before. We headed for 5 Ninghai Road, which was nearby, a grand templelike house with wide windows and glazed roof tiles, owned by the former foreign minister Chun Chang and now used as the main office of the Safety Zone Committee.

We found Rabe sobbing at his desk, his bald head in both hands. He was a cheerful man who loved jokes and wisecracks, and I had never expected to see him so distraught.

“What’s the trouble, John?” Minnie asked, and sat down.

“Oh, damn the Japs, they killed my workers. They lied to me and promised to give them good pay, so I went and found fifty-four men for them.”

“How many did they kill?”

“Forty-three.”

We were stunned, knowing that Rabe had agreed to help the Japanese restore the city’s power service and had drummed up some experienced electricians and engineers for them. Those men worked day and night, repaired the turbines, and got the facilities running again. Once the electricity was back, the Japanese tied up most of them, dragged them to the riverside, and shot them, claiming that they had served the Chinese government.

“Don’t they need the experienced hands to maintain the power supply?” Minnie asked Rabe.

“That’s what I thought too, so I promised my workers personal safety plus good pay. Now how can I face their parents, their widows and children? People will believe I sold the men for some favors from the Japanese. Damn the Japs, they’ve lost their minds and simply can’t stop killing.”

Rabe hadn’t heard anything about Ban and the six girls. On his desk lay a swastika flag beside a typewriter, on which was an unfinished letter. Whenever Rabe went out to confront the Japanese, he’d carry the flag and sometimes flutter it at the soldiers committing crimes. He would cry “Deutsch” and “Hitler,” but even that failed to serve as a deterrent. Rabe had telegraphed the Führer before the fall of our city, imploring him to intervene on behalf of the Chinese. He even bragged to the Americans, “Just one word from Hitler and the Japanese will behave.” But so far the supreme leader had not responded to his request.

“My worst fear,” Rabe told us, “is that if one Chinese man in the Safety Zone kills a Japanese soldier for violating his wife or daughter, then the entire neutral district will be bathed in blood. That would end all our relief efforts.”

“I’m worried about that too,” Minnie agreed.

Thank God no Chinese man here had been bold enough to do that. Part of the reason for this was that no Japanese soldier would rape alone but would always be covered by at least one other man. They would loot in groups as well.

On our way back to Jinling, Big Liu said to Minnie, “The Japs kill, rape, and burn just because they can.” Again his eyes glowed as if he were crazed.

I knew that his daughter Meiyan must have been harmed, but in Minnie’s presence I didn’t say anything. She still believed that our prayers had worked a miracle—six of the girls had returned unharmed.

THAT EVENING the same twenty-five policemen came to our camp again. We were unsure if the consul-general had passed our message on to Tanaka. Minnie talked with Holly and me, and we all thought it wise to accommodate the police, whose presence here would at least keep the soldiers away. Minnie managed to persuade the policemen to stay outside the campus. From now on, a potbelly stove would be fired for them in the house across the street from the front entrance, and there was also tea, sunflower seeds, and bean-jam pies made by our college’s kitchen. These things seemed to please the policemen some. Maybe they wouldn’t sneak into campus to molest women again. Minnie believed that Tanaka had rebuked them.

By December 23 the camp had ten thousand refugees. In fact, we’d lost count, unable to keep track of the traffic anymore, so the number could have been larger. The Arts Building alone housed more than a thousand now. When Rulian said that the attic of that building held about three hundred people, Minnie got apprehensive but didn’t insist on calculating the numbers, since there were also people who would leave without notifying us. When it rained or snowed all the refugees crowded indoors, and many had no place to lie down at night, so they just sat on the stairs and in the corridors. During the daytime a lot of them lounged outside, content to take a spot somewhere. Minnie used to live in a three-room apartment, but now she had only one room and let the other two rooms be used by tens of women with small children. She told me that sometimes in the middle of the night she was awakened by crying babies and got annoyed, but as far as I could see, she would always greet the mothers pleasantly the next morning.

Our greatest difficulty was feeding so many refugees. There was never enough rice. To make matters worse, some people would get two helpings while others had nothing to eat for a whole day. When the porridge stands opened, many women would swarm over—pushing and elbowing others, they wouldn’t bother to stand in line. For days Holly, Miss Lou, and I, together with some young staffers, had tried teaching the refugees to form lines at mealtimes. We had made some progress in this, having assigned many young refugee women to take charge of lining up others outside the porridge plant.

Tickets for free food were issued to those who had no money, and more than sixty percent of the refugees received free meals. Still, some didn’t have the strength to reach the porridge cauldrons. Our staff sewed red tags on their sleeves so they could go to the heads of the lines when the afternoon meal was served. In this way they could at least have one meal a day.