International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone
German businessman John Rabe was elected as its leader, partly because of his status as a member of the Nazi party, and the existence of the German–Japanese bilateral Anti-Comintern Pact.
The Japanese army did not completely respect the immunity of the Safety Zone and soldiers would sometimes show up under dubious pretenses to take Chinese women and men into custody.
[3] The Westerners who remained behind established the Nanking Safety Zone, a score of refugee camps bordered by roads on all four sides that occupied an area of about 2 square miles (5.2 km2).
The fifteen members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone were as follows:[5] George Ashmore Fitch, was general secretary of the "Foreign YMCA" in Shanghai, advisor to OMEA, active in the humanitarian work, named by John Rabe (chairman) to be director of the ICNSZ, and served as acting mayor of Nanjing after Mayor General Ma Shao-chuan turned over to him treasury resources, some police, and food stores.
M. Searle Bates, John Magee and George Ashmore Fitch, the head of YMCA at Nanjing, 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 officials, 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.
For example, a letter of Searle Bates to the American Consul in January 1938 explained how the Safety Zone had been "tenaciously maintained" and needed help "amid dishonor by soldiers, murdering, wounding, wholesale raping, resulting in violent terror."
During the Korean War (1950–53), the government of the People's Republic of China used records of the International Committee to portray its members as part of a propaganda campaign to arouse patriotic anti-American fervor.
As part of this propaganda campaign, the Westerners who remained in Nanjing were characterized as foreigners who sacrificed Chinese lives in order to protect their property, guided the Japanese troops into the city and collaborated with them to round up prisoners of war in the refugee camps.
As a result of this anti-American propaganda, a detailed study carried out by the researchers at the University of Nanking in 1962 went so far as to assert that Westerners had assisted the Japanese in executing Chinese in Nanjing.
Today many of the missionaries' private diaries and letters that meticulously documented the scale and character of the Nanjing Massacre are archived at the Yale Divinity School Library.
