SDHF Newsletter No.338 Primary Historical Sources Reveal The Truth About The Nanjing Incident (Revised Version) Series No.4: Chapter 3 “The Nanjing Incident”

Primary Historical Sources Reveal The Truth About
The Nanjing Incident (Revised Version)
Ikeda Haruka
(translated by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact)
Series No.4: Chapter 3 “The Nanjing Incident”
needed by American missionary group

The location fixing of the Safety Zone had been decided by the missionary group as British Shields stated; “When he asked if the zone to be proposed might not be drawn to include the Chinese poor section he was told simply that the matter of location had already been investigated and determined.”
Moreover, he also stated “The Chinese had a large anti-aircraft gun in it even before it was defined; they continued to use it.” Thus he resigned the Committee member.
Rabe also said “We discover a row of antiaircraft batteries within the southwest border of our Zone.” “The Zone is a long way from being safe; there are still armed soldiers inside, and all our efforts to get them out have thus far been to no avail.”
However, the American missionaries told an apparent counterfeit story. Fitch, YMCA China chief wrote in What War Means ”Gen. Tang, recently executed we have been told, charged with the defense of the city, cooperated splendidly on the whole in the very difficult task of clearing the Zone of the military and anti-aircraft.”
It is written in Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone that Chinese soldiers entered and hided in the safety zone. At that time [December 13] several hundred soldiers approached or entered the Zone through the northern boundary,” “In the confusion and haste of that evening, the Committee was unable to keep the disarmed soldiers separate from civilians, particularly because some of the soldiers had abandoned their military clothing.”
Furthermore, New Yok Times January 4, 1938 reported “American professors remaining at Ginling College in Nanking … were seriously embarrassed to discover that they had been harboring a deserted Chinese Army colonel and six of his subordinate officers. The professors had, in fact, made the colonel second in authority at the refugee camp. The officers, who had doffed their uniforms during the Chinese retreat from Nanking, were discovered living in one of the college buildings. They confessed their identity after Japanese Army searchers found they had hidden six rifles, five revolvers, a dismounted machine gun and ammunition in the building.”
The American missionaries said the Safety Zone was needed to protect the civilian population against the reign of terror imposed by the Japanese army. But Japanese army dissolved the Zone on February 4, and thereafter no looting or murder occurred. The American missionary needed the Nanking incident as a pretext to create the Safety Zone and protect the Chinese soldiers.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/1844/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Primary4E.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact