Chapter 629: Weitling's Diary
Minnie Weitling, dean of the Jinling Women's College of Arts and Sciences and head of the Department of Education, left behind a diary detailing her personal experience of the Nanjing Massacre and the Japanese army's colonial rule in Nanjing in the years that followed.
"On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops swarmed through the gaps in the collapsed walls of Nanjing, and the Japanese army began a massacre that lasted for six weeks, raping, looting, and burning. At this time, women and children flocked to the refugee shelter of Jinling Women's University, and they were terrified. β
The day after the massacre of the city by the Japanese army (Friday, December 17, 1937): "Many more exhausted and frightened women came, saying that they had had a terrible night. It is said that the soldiers constantly visit their homes. From 12-year-old girls to 60-year-old women have been raped. The husbands were forced out of the bedroom, and the pregnant wives were disemboweled with bayonets. β
For example, a diary entry on Thursday, December 16, 1937: "I have no idea how many innocent, hard-working peasants and workers are being killed today. We let all women over the age of 40 go home with their husbands and sons, leaving only their daughters and daughters-in-law. We are looking after more than 4,000 women and children tonight. I don't know how long we can hold on under this pressure, it's an indescribable horror. β
"We will never forget the faces of the husbands and fathers who watched their wives and daughters enter the shelter at the school gate. β
"Most of the day I was like a guard at the front door or called in to deal with other issuesβββ running to other parts of the school to deal with the waves of Japanese soldiers entering the campus. β
"Today, I saw a little Chinese boy wearing an armband to deliver food to his sister who lived in Jinnuda, so he stepped forward and said to the child: "You don't have to wear the sun flag, you are Chinese, your country has not died! You have to remember the year and month you wore this thing, you should never forget!"
"Those of us who think that war is a national crime, a sin that violates the spirit of creation in the depths of the hearts and minds of all things in heaven and earth, but we can dedicate our strength to those innocent victims, and to those whose families have been burned and robbed, or those who have been injured by artillery or airplanes in times of war, to help them recover. β
"From a military point of view, the occupation of Nanking may be considered a victory for the Japanese army, but from a moral point of view, it is a defeat and a disgrace to the Japanese nation. β
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Weitling rejected the U.S. Embassy's suggestion to evacuate her several times, and finally summoned all the few U.S. citizens still stranded in Nanjing for the last time at the U.S. Embassy to warn them: "If we don't evacuate, we won't be able to guarantee your lives in the future." Weitling said firmly.
"I can't leave China behind at this time!" she then signed her name on the certificate presented by the embassy that read "I will not leave Nanjing no matter whatβββ this is the fourth time she has solemnly refused the request of the American embassy to leave Nanjing.
On December 13, 1937, when the Japanese army invaded the city of Nanjing, Weitling, who had been living in a peaceful environment and working in school, witnessed the heinous atrocities of the Japanese army for the first time, and was shocked and outraged. On December 16, she wrote in her diary: "A car carrying 8βββ10 women passed us tonight. As the car drove by, they shouted 'help, help'. The occasional sound of gunfire in the streets and down the hill made me realize that there were yet another people who had suffered the tragic fate of being shot, and that it was most likely that they were not soldiers. β
On the morning of December 13, after the first batch of Japanese troops entered the city through the Zhonghua Gate, they raped and plundered and burned everywhere. At this time, women and children flocked to the refugee shelter in the Golden Women's Hospital. There were young women dressed as old women, women dressed as men, old women, children, and men, all terrified.
Weitling guarded the gate and persuaded the men and women to come home in order to protect some of the young women and children. The refugees cried and begged if they could have a foothold on the lawn. Protecting the lives of tens of thousands of women and children was not easy to say in the special environment at that time!
Weitling was confronted by a group of Japanese invaders who were more ferocious than wild beasts, and they were unreasonable. The signs of American church schools, the notices of the International Security Zone, are not binding on them. During the first 10 days of the Japanese army's entry into the city, at least 10 to 20 groups of Japanese soldiers went to the Golden Women's Courtyard every day to arrest people, rape women, and rob money.
Not only did they force their way in through the school's main and side gates, but they also climbed over the fence to enter the school, and even climbed over the school's low fence at night, groping around in the unlit building, upstairs and downstairs, and raping any one of them.
Weitling organized faculty and staff to patrol the campus and invited foreign men who served in the "International Safety Zone" to take turns keeping vigils. She herself toiled day and night, either in the gatehouse or in the Japanese soldiers who had been called to stop the Japanese soldiers who had come to the school to rape and loot, and to recapture the Chinese women from them.
She couldn't eat a meal that she had settled in all day, and she couldn't get a good night's sleep. Many of the Japanese soldiers were enraged, threatening her with bloodied bayonets, and some brutally slapped her. Ms. Hua endured it all, she consciously took on the heavy responsibility of protecting more than 10,000 Chinese women and children, she said, Jinling Women's Home is my home, I will never leave.
However, such a friend who rescued so many Chinese was framed by some media for no reason in 1940.
One day in early April 1940 (shortly after the establishment of Wang Jingwei's puppet government in Nanjing), the Purple Mountain Evening News published an article titled "The Real Criminals," targeting Westerners who had helped Chinese refugees survive the Nanjing Massacre.
The self-proclaimed "Guardian of the Truth" author: "Let's look at the so-called Bodhisattva of Compassion! Minnie Weitling is actually a trafficker, a traitor who betrayed the Chinese. We must expose her, and we must settle the accounts on her head of the women and girls who were dedicated to the Japanese army. (In fact, the Japanese almost treated the so-called "Golden Girl" as a brothel, and on Christmas Eve in 1937, a senior military adviser to the Japanese army stated: "We selected 100 prostitutes from 10,000 refugees.") Moreover, Weitling demanded that he "promise not to take the women of good families, and to make the girls willing."
Maybe many people really can't accept such a choice, but this is really the most helpless choice at that time.
Under the rampant guns of himself, it was already the best effort that Weitling could do to save some people.
Because of this, she also suffered from the condemnation and torture of her own conscience, and just a few days after being slandered and framed by the media, Weitling submitted her resignation report. She suffered from severe mental depression.