A new documentary, “Nanking,” depicts what is commonly known as the rape of the city using archival footage, survivor testimonies and staged readings from witnesses’ letters and journals. It is 89 minutes of harrowing cinema that attests to the brutality of war coupled with the inexplicable courage of six Americans and one German who carved out a safety zone in Nanking, saving the lives of 250,000 Chinese. Released in New York on Dec. 13 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the invasion, “Nanking” is not entertaining, it is not a feel-good film, and it is not advisable for children. But for anyone who thinks we need to learn the lessons of the 20th century so as to not repeat them in the 21st, “Nanking” is mandatory viewing.
Accounts of mass slaughter and rape were brought to the attention of the American public by Iris Chang, the Chinese-American writer of the 1997 book (previously excerpted in NEWSWEEK) “The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.” Tragically, Chang—who once worked as an intern at NEWSWEEK—committed suicide in 2005 at age 36. When Ted Leonsis, the vice chairman of AOL, happened upon her obituary, he felt compelled to produce a documentary to bring the truth of the Nanking siege to a wider audience. Leonsis hired documentarians Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman (the duo behind the 2003 Oscar-winning short “Twin Towers”), who spent months compiling archival footage and speaking with historians, scholars and witnesses.
The film is anchored by a handful of Westerners who stayed behind in Nanking to set up the Safety Zone, a makeshift refugee camp inside the city walls of old Nanking. The Safety Zone committee members appealed to the Japanese for exemption from attack, and for the most part were left unharmed. Their observations, as recorded in journal entries and letters, were the basis of the script. One notable account was from Minnie Vautrin (Mariel Hemingway), the only woman in the group. She was a Christian missionary from Illinois who helped found the Ginling College for women in Nanking. She hung a massive American flag on campus to deter attacks by the Japanese and sheltered thousands of women from roving bands of soldiers who were raping and murdering preteen girls and elderly women alike. Bob Wilson (Woody Harrelson), a Harvard-trained doctor, was the only surgeon left in Nanking when the city fell to the Japanese. He treated hundreds of patients and helped document the atrocities committed against the thousands of civilians who were unable to reach the Safety Zone before the Japanese entered the city. Missionary John Magee (Hugo Armstrong) captured the harrowing footage of injured Chinese on his 16mm camera, which was later played for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ironically, the Safety Zone was spearheaded by a German Nazi Party member named John Rabe (Jürgen Prochnow), who had been working as a businessman in China for 27 years. He sheltered 650 Chinese on his estate in the zone, and after the siege sent a copy of McGee’s film to Hitler, believing that he would put an end to the atrocities perpetrated against the Chinese. Instead he was arrested by the Gestapo and commanded to stop speaking of the Nanking massacre. Later in life Rabe became destitute, and the mayor of Nanking took up a collection, which provided Rabe with enough money to live on until his death.
John Magee says that he did not film the evidence of the Nanking massacre to stir up hatred against the Japanese but “to make all people realize how horrible war is.” Let’s hope that the movie “Nanking” has the same effect.
