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Unit 8—Handout 6
Members of the International Saftey Zone Committee
Some members of the Safety Zone Committee
Left to right: Ernest Forster, W. Plumer Mills, John Rabe,
Lewis Smythe, Eduard Sperling, George Fitch, December 15, 1937
Of a group of about twenty-two Americans and Europeans who remained in the city, fi fteen formed the
International Safety Zone Committee. (It is unclear exactly how many western nationals remained in Nanking
because different individuals and groups left the city at different times; some during the fall of Nanking, some
during the massacre and some after the massacre ended.) The group, composed of missionaries, doctors,
journalists, and businessmen, established a Safety Zone. The missionaries were primarily Americans from the
Episcopal, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches. On numerous occasions, they risked
their lives by intervening to prevent the execution of Chinese men or the rape of women and young girls.
Whenever Japanese soldiers entered the Zone, they were closely shadowed by one of the Westerners. The
Westerners repeatedly refused to comply with demands made of them by Japanese Army soldiers, placing
themselves between Japanese soldiers and Chinese civilians.
Committee members frequently contacted Consul-General Okazaki Katsuo, Second Secretary (later
Acting Consul-General) Fukui Kiyoshi and Attaché Fukuda Tokuyasu to deal with the anarchic situation. As
well as protesting to the Japanese embassy on almost daily basis, Miner Searle Bates, John Magee, and George
A. Fitch, the head of the YMCA at Nanking, actively wrote of the chaotic conditions created by the Japanese
troops, mimeographed or retyped their stories over and over and sent them to their friends, government
offi cials, and Christian organizations so as to let the world, especially the American public, know what was
going on in the terrorized city.
They hoped that the U. S. government would intervene, or at least apply the Neutrality Act of 1937 to the
“China Incident,” which would have made it illegal for any American business to sell war materials to Japan.
A letter of Bates to the American Consul in January 1938, for instance, explained how the Safety Zone had
been “tenaciously maintained” and needed help “amid dishonor by soldiers, murdering, wounding, wholesale
raping, resulting in violent terror.”
Fitch succeeded in smuggling the fi lms shot by Magee out of China when he temporarily left the country
in January 1938. That year he traveled throughout the United States, giving speeches about what he witnessed
in Nanking along with the fi lms that showed haunting images of Chinese victims.
The Committee sent 61 letters to the Japanese Consulate which reported various incidents which occurred
during the period starting Dec 13, 1937 to Feb 9, 1938. These letters are quoted in H.J. Timperley’s book What
War Means: Japanese Terror in China. (Compiled and edited by H.J.Timperley / Victor Gollancz, July 1938).
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