Historically, the Japanese Kou did a tragic case in Nanjing that could not be said, which was an incomparably dark period in Chinese history, but in this period of time, there were also some flashes of humanity. The story we want to tell today is the historical prototype of the movie "Jinling Thirteen Chao", but the end of this prototype story is not very beautiful.
Civilians protected by foreign volunteers
After the Japanese invaded Nanjing, they committed an unspeakable crime against Nanjing!
At the time of the fall of Nanjing, dozens of foreigners were stranded here, and these people did not leave Nanjing according to the arrangement of the embassy, but instead chose to stay in Nanjing, accept and shelter the Chinese civilians affected by the war, and they established an organization called the "Nanjing Security Zone International Membership Association" and delineated a safe zone in the city of Nanjing.
The safe zone included the then U.S. Embassy in China, Jinling University, Jinling Women's College of Arts and Sciences, and other areas, where 25 refugee shelters were set up, sheltering more than 240,000 Nanjing civilians, and providing them with basic food and medical care as much as possible.
These foreign volunteers not only took in refugees, but also actively collected evidence of the crimes of the Japanese Kou and tried to publish them to the outside world and let the world know about the crimes committed by Japanese beasts in Nanjing.
Nanjing by foreign volunteers
At that time, because Nanjing was invaded by the Japanese, food was completely unable to get a normal supply, in order to get food, Professor Bedes, who was then a professor of history at Jinling University, risked his life to leave the safe zone to buy food, and this Bedes was also the prototype of John Miller in "Jinling Thirteen Chao".
In search of food, Professor Bades relied on his American identity to go deep into some scenes, collected a lot of first-hand evidence of Japanese atrocities, and personally testified at the Tokyo Trial after World War II, identifying the crimes of Japanese Kosovars in Nanjing.
According to Professor Bades' testimony at the Tokyo trial, we can get a glimpse of the beastly behavior of the Japanese Kou in those years:
"I took a Chinese from my house and shot him. Two men were taken from a neighbor's house next door, when (Japanese) soldiers grabbed and insulted their wives ... After the Japanese army entered the city, the bodies of civilians were abandoned in the streets near my house for many days. The entire slaughter was so widespread that no one could give a complete description. ”
According to Professor Beddex's testimony, more than 12,000 civilians were killed by Japanese animals around the safe zone alone, and according to his testimony, they hired workers to carry and bury more than 30,000 corpses in the suburbs, and these bodies were disarmed Chinese soldiers who were killed in a tragic way.
At the same time, there were as many as 20,000 cases of insults recorded by the International Committee of the Safe Zone, and it should be noted that the members of the committee were only a few dozen people, and the crimes committed by the Japanese Kou in Nanjing were simply appalling, and when Professor Beders made a statement, the trial court had to adjourn the court several times to calm his mood.
In addition, Professor Wei Tering, head of the Department of Education of Jinling Women's College of Arts and Sciences, wrote her own bits and pieces in Nanjing into a diary, recording in detail the crimes of Japanese beasts:
"On Friday, December 17, I arrived at the school gate at 7:30 a.m. and gave Mr. Thorne, who was with Chen, a letter that the Red Cross porridge factory must have coal and rice. Many more tired, frightened women came, saying that they had had a terrible night. Japanese soldiers constantly visited their homes. - The Diary of Wittlin
The prototype of the Jinling Thirteen Chao
The historical prototype of "Jinling Thirteen Chao" occurred in the Jinling Women's Liberal Arts College taught by Professor Wei Telin, when Professor Wei Telin, as a member of the International Committee of the Nanjing Safety Zone, took in tens of thousands of women and children who had escaped war in the Jinling Women's Liberal Arts College.
But the Japanese did not care about these agreements, Professor Wei Tering recorded in her diary that every day women were insulted by the Japanese invaders who broke into the campus, she rushed to stop her, the Japanese beasts did not take her seriously, and even some people would point guns at her, even if she showed the Japanese embassy documents to the beasts, it was useless.
In her diary dated December 24, 1937, Professor Witteline recorded her meeting with a senior Japanese officer who asked her to select 100 "wind and dust industry workers" from the tens of thousands of women admitted to the Women's Liberal Arts College and let her men "vent" so that perhaps his beasts would not continue to harass the Women's Liberal Arts College.
This diary is the prototype of the "Jinling Thirteen Chao", Professor Wei Telin had no choice but to agree to the request of the Japanese officer, because she really could not protect the academy, she allowed the Japanese to find 21 women who had been engaged in the wind and dust industry from the more than 10,000 women she took in and sent them out, hoping to protect the other women in the academy.
After that, the fate of these 21 women was unknown to Professor Weitlin, but with the animal personality of Rikou, the fate of these 21 women was obviously not too good, and Professor Weitlin's idea of protecting the more than 10,000 women in his academy was not realized.
In less than a month, the Japanese Kou forcibly banned the existence of the security zone and ordered 240,000 Chinese civilians in the security zone to return to their homes, and most of the houses in Nanjing at that time had been burned down, and many people's property had been taken away by the Japanese.
Despite the efforts of the "International Committee" to provide relief, many civilians were forced by the Japanese to live on the streets and died of freezing and starvation. Fourteen years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the scars left by the Japanese in my Land of China have not yet healed, only the occasional flash of human brilliance in the war is touching, and those who sacrificed themselves to protect other women also have the film "Jinling Thirteen Chao" as a memorial.