eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanjing and launched six weeks of carnage that would become known as the Rape of Nanjing. In addition to the deaths of Chinese POWs and civilians, tens of thousands of women were raped, tortured, and killed by Japanese soldiers. In this traumatic environment, both native and foreign-born inhabitants of Nanjing struggled to carry on with their lives. This volume collects the diaries and correspondence of Minnie Vautrin, a farmgirl from Illinois who had dedicated herself to the education of Chinese women at Ginling College in Nanjing. Faced with the impending Japanese attack, she turned the school into a sanctuary for ten thousand women and girls. Vautrin's firsthand accounts of daily life in Nanjing and the intensifying threat of Japanese invasion reveal the courage of the occupants under siege--Chinese nationals as well as Western missionaries, teachers, surgeons and business people--and the personal costs of violence in wartime. Thanks to Vautrin's painstaking effort in keeping a day-to-day account, present-day readers are able to examine this episode of history at close range through her eyes. With detailed maps, photographs, and carefully researched in-depth annotations, Terror in Minnie Vautrin's Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38 presents a comprehensive and detailed daily account of the events and of life during the horror-stricken days within the city walls and in particular on the Ginling campus. Through chronologically arranged diaries, letters, reports, documents, and telegrams, Vautrin bears witness to those terrible events and to the magnitude of trauma that the Nanjing Massacre exacted on the populace.
One of the Chinese American Librarians Association’s Ten Best Books of 2010 During the infamous “Rape of Nanking,” a brutal military occupation of Nanking, China, that began on December 13, 1937, it is estimated that Japanese soldiers killed between 200,000 and 300,000 Chinese and raped between 20,000 and 80,000 women. To shelter civilian refugees, a group of Westerners established a Nanking Safety Zone. Among these humanitarians was Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and acting president of Ginling College. She and Tsen Shui-fang, her Chinese assistant and a trained nurse, turned the college into a refugee camp, which protected more than 10,000 women and children during the height of the ordeal. The Undaunted Women of Nanking juxtaposes day-by-day the exhausted and terrified women’s wartime diaries, providing vital eyewitness accounts of the Rape of Nanking and a unique focus on the Ginling refugee camp and the sufferings of women and children. Vautrin's diary reveals the humanity and courage of a female missionary in a time of terror. Tsen Shui-fang’s diary, never before published in English and translated here for the first time, is the only known daily account by a Chinese national written during the crisis and not retrospectively. As such, it records a unique perspective: that of a woman grappling with feelings of anger, sorrow, and compassion as she witnesses the atrocities being committed in her war-torn country. Editors Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong have added many informative annotations to the diary entries from sources including the proceedings of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial of 1946, Vautrin’s correspondence, John Rabe’s diary, and other historical documents. Also included are biographical sketches of the two women, a note on the diaries, and information about the aftermath of the tragedy, as well as maps and photos—some of which appear in print in this book for the first time.
It’s 1937, and the Japanese are poised to invade Nanjing. Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College, decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on the behalf of the hapless victims. Yet even when order and civility are restored, she remains deeply embattled, always haunted by the lives she could not save. At once a searing story that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century and an indelible portrait of a singular and brave woman, Nanjing Requiem is another tour de force from the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting.
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon) In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.
The Japanese army's brutal occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as the rape of Nanking. As they slaughtered an estimated 300,000 people, the invading soldiers raped more than 20,000 women - some estimates run as high as 80,000. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected the lives of 10,000 Chinese women and children - at the eventual cost of her own - and made her a legend among the Chinese people she served.
Set in the city of Nanjing during the time of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945), this novel tells the story of four people caught up in the violence and tumult of these years: John Winthrop and his MIT classmate, the brilliant Chinese physicist Calvin Ren (Ren Kewen); Judy, Calvin's Chinese-American wife; and the beautiful and determined young woman Chen May. John and Calvin take up positions at Nanjing's National Central University and collaborate on a top-secret project to design and build warplanes to enable the Chinese to defend themselves against Japanese bombers. Meanwhile, John enjoys his new life in Nanjing. He helps the lovely May with her English, falling a little in love with her; he shops for antiques; meets with Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang; and once attends an evening's entertainment at one of Nanjing's notorious Wine Houses. But when the Japanese invade, there is no safe place in the city. The Japanese murder, torture, and rape indiscriminately. (The invasion and occupation were described by the historian Iris Chang as “the forgotten holocaust.”) May sees her own family killed; John works in a shelter for women and children; Calvin's family flees the city while Calvin, weakened by overwork, stays behind to work on the warplane project. Each tries to survive against the odds. May vows to hunt down the soldier who murders her father. When the war is over, she finds him sweeping Nanjing streets as a war prisoner. The story then ends with the force of an explosion. Vivid and disturbing, Nanjing Never Cries offers a compelling story of the horror of war and the power of love and friendship.
The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge. It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality. Until the recent emergence of John Rabe's diaries, few people knew abouth the unassuming hero who has been called the Oskar Schindler of China. In Novemgber 1937, as Japanese troops overran the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a campaign of torture, rape, and murder against its citizens, one man-a German who had lived in China for thirty years and who was a loyal follower of Adolph Hitler-put himself at risk and in order to save the lives of 200,000 poor Chinese, 600 of whom he sheltered in his own home.
The Nanjing Massacre, which took place after the Japanese attacked and captured Nanjing in December 1937, shocked the world with the magnitude of its atrocities. With newly uncovered eye-witness material left behind by American and British journalists, missionaries, and diplomats, They Were in Nanjing takes the readers back in time to revisit the event and live through those horror-filled days. The first-hand accounts range from English media reports, personal records, missionary and Christian organization documents, to American and British diplomatic and military documents. The research yields new discoveries and presents issues that have previously not been adequately dealt with, for instance, Japanese attacks on American citizens, and losses and damage to American and British properties as a result of Japanese atrocities. No other book on the Nanjing Massacre presents the first-hand foreign perspective so thoroughly or consistently.
