The Nanjing Massacre: Primary Source Records and Secondary Interpretations—A Textual Critique of Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi’s Review

From 1999 to 2014, I published, in both English and Chinese, nine books, of which four are in English. As Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi rightly noted, They Were in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals¹ was published in 2004; Terror in Minnie Vautrin’s Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937–38² appeared in print in 2008; A Mission under Duress: The Nanjing Massacre and the Post-Massacre Social Conditions Documented by American Diplomats³ in 2010; and A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and the Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports⁴ in 2012.

I started the Nanjing Massacre research project in 1997, traveling around to search for the primary source materials in English. The substantial amount of materials left behind by nineteen American and British nationals and several American and British diplomats and navy officers was used to draft They Were in Nanjing. In order to keep my book project under a manageable size and scope, I chose to focus on English-language primary sources. I intended to write a book about the Nanjing Massacre as seen through the eyes of the American and British nationals who had been in the city during part or all of the massacre period by using English media coverage published from December 1937 to mid-1938; letters, diaries, reports, and other written material in the same period; American and British diplomatic and navy documents and reports drafted and dispatched in early 1938; as well as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East court transcripts concerning mainly those American and British nationals in connection with Nanjing Massacre–related issues. Wakabayashi was right that I “wove a historical narrative linked by quotations from English language sources such as letters, memos, and diaries composed by long-time Western residents of Nanjing, together with news reports dispatched by foreign journalists” (pp. 125–126). His observation was keen to comment that I intended to “avoid having to discount, somewhat, the objectivity and reliability of residents such as Vautrin” (p. 126). I followed the principle of letting the documents and archival materials speak for themselves, and kept my opinions, comments, and analysis at a minimum level, so as to provide readers with the opportunity to “listen directly” to those American and British nationals.

After the book appeared in 2004, I stared at the boxes of valuable source materials sitting idly in my basement, realizing that I had only used a small fraction for my book, and they were too valuable to remain unpublished. The ordeals and hardship I went through in locating and collecting them might prove even more worthy than for writing just one book. After I used them, I should share them with others in the field, as making them available in book form to benefit other scholars, researchers, and students interested in the topic, and possibly those of future generations would maximize their value and my labor. That way, other scholars would not have to repeat my ordeals and the hardship to obtain them.

I first selected and compiled Minnie Vautrin’s diaries, letters, and reports for the reason that she worked and taught from 1919 to 1940 at Nanjing’s Ginling College. This campus would become my alma mater in 1952; I spent twelve of my best youthful years there from 1978 to 1990, four years as a student and eight as a faculty member. The descriptions of the campus in her diaries reminded me fondly of that familiar and beautiful campus—in spring it looks like a huge garden full of a variety of flowers in blossom against the dark greens of pines and light greens of bushes with sweeping willows hanging over the ponds; in fall, ginkgo leaves in abundance display bright and shining golden yellows against the dark red walls of the traditionally styled office buildings with curved roofs—though her accounts of atrocities made it difficult for me to reconcile my sweet memories with the reign of terror that...