(2007; English and Chinese) This documentary honors a small group of Westerners who managed to protect the lives of 250,000 Chinese in the city of Nanking from the ravages of Japanese soldiers in late 1937 and reveals the atrocities of the occupying Nippon army. Americans - surgeon Bob Wilson, missionaries Minnie Vaurin, John Magee, and George Fitch - German businessman John Rabe, and others risked their personal safety by remaining in Nanking after most foreigners and well-to-do Chinese residents fled the former national capital, leaving behind the impoverished, as Japanese planes bombed, artillery shelled, and soldiers marched on the city.

Actors portray the principal (deceased) individuals, reciting from letters, diaries, and other sources - e.g., Woody Harrelson as Dr Wilson and Muriel Hemingway as Miss Vautrin - along with actual Chinese witnesses, who were children, teenagers, and young soldiers at the time, as well as former Japanese soldiers telling of what they endured or observed.

Inside a two-mile square - comprised of the hospital where Dr Wilson worked, a missionary college, and Mr Rabe's house - an international panel of Westerners proposed establishing a Safety Zone for Chinese civilians, though the Japanese authorities refused to formally recognize it as such. After the Japanese army defeated the Chinese defenders in December, the invaders pillaged and plundered the city, took the prettiest girls, and rounded up Chinese soldiers for execution.

The missionaries wrote of "contending with powers of evil" during which there was "little indication of God." An elderly man who was nine years old during the invasion tearfully explains how as he watched his mother with his infant brother suckling at her breast were run through by bayonet, the baby cast aside, retrieved still alive with the mother feeding it again as she bled to death.

The Japanese came into the Safety Zone and took adult males who had no relations to claim them (assuming such would be soldiers) as well as any suspected of having defended the city; some civilians to save them began claiming to be family of the men. Twenty thousand men were taken, herded together with hands bound, and machine gunned at the river; survivors were then bayoneted. Wounded and injured soldiers were removed from the hospital as well for execution.

During the first month of the occupation an estimated 20,000 Chinese girls, women, and teenage boys were raped; many were also killed. An elderly Nanking woman who was 12-years-old in 1937 told of how her grandfather futilely attempted to prevent a Japanese soldier from raping her.

Complaints written by the Westerners to Japanese authorities were ignored or denied; propaganda photographs and film showing the military as orderly and compassionate were distributed to the world media. However, reels of film John Magee secretly shot of the murdered corpses George Fitch sneaked out of Nanking finally brought international attention to the carnage.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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