In the past few years several books have been written about the “Rape of Nanking” and other atrocities committed by the Japanese military across Asia during World War II, as well as on the Japanese government’s refusal to apologize for or even acknowledge its crimes against civilians. According to historian Hua-ling Hu, who edited the Journal of Studies of Japanese Aggression Against China and is now a professor at the University of Colorado, during the three months after the Japanese took over the Chinese capital of Nanking in late 1937 at least 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed.
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Hu started researching the massacre in the early 90s, and to her surprise discovered an American connection–a missionary from Illinois, Minnie Vautrin, who’d saved an estimated 13,000 lives. Vautrin’s heroic efforts were cited in both Chang’s and Young’s books, but neither writer knew much about her. Hu read over Vautrin’s diaries and letters, which were in a Yale University archive, read memoirs from the time, and interviewed Vautrin’s niece, then stitched together a biography, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking, which was published two years ago.
Hu says it wasn’t unusual for unmarried women at the turn of the 20th century to pursue missionary causes. “Teaching was the only profession for women, and that was what missionaries did,” she says. “For these spinsters, there was a certain glamour in going to pagan lands to help out.”
The Japanese army seized Nanking on December 13. They slaughtered any Chinese foot soldiers they found, but they also went after civilians, gang-raping women of all ages, decapitating men and then using their severed heads for bayonet drills. They commanded an entire family to dig a mass grave, then buried the family members alive. The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Chinese newspapers all ran eyewitness accounts and photos. According to one particularly poignant story, two girls were found clinging to the corpse of their mother, who’d been raped and killed weeks before.
“The Japanese still deny the Rape of Nanking,” says Hu. “When Minnie’s biography came out a Japanese politician, who’s now the mayor of Tokyo, went on American TV and said that Nanking was a total fabrication by Chinese intellectuals who want to tarnish Japan.”
