A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U. S. Naval Intelligence Reports

A Dark Page in History

The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports

New, Updated Edition

Edited and with an Introduction by

SUPING LU

Hamilton Books

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

First edition copyright © 2012 by University Press of America, Inc.

New material copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Publication of this book was supported by the B&R Book Program.

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Maps

1 The Fall of Nanjing

2 Reign of Terror

3 Conditions in the Fallen Capital

4 Violation of British Property and Interests

5 Royal Navy Reports of Proceedings

6 U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports

Appendices

USS Oahu Log Book, December 1937

Photographs of Executions by Japanese Armed Forces Frank P. Lockhart, U.S. Consul General at Shanghai, Sent to Secretary of State Cordell Hull

Notes

Preface

On January 6, 1938 about three weeks after Japanese troops captured Nanjing when the worst of the atrocities was over, American diplomats were allowed to return to the city to re-open their embassy. Three days later, British and German diplomats arrived by HMS Cricket on January 9. Since their arrival, the diplomats of the three countries continuously dispatched cables, reports, and documents reporting conditions in the city, including Japanese atrocities, reign of terror, economic situation, living conditions, and other aspects of social life. These diplomatic records prove to be a treasure trove of invaluable primary source material for research and study on the Nanjing Massacre from unique perspectives.

I paid numerous visits to the U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C., and College Park, MD, the Public Record Office (British National Archives) in London, and Auswärtiges Amt Archiv (Foreign Ministry Archives) and Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives) in Berlin to retrieve these diplomatic documents.

I first visited the Public Record Office in the spring of 2002. Every day I commuted by tube from Victoria Station to Kew Gardens, searching for British diplomatic documents in connection with the Nanjing Massacre for my book project, They Were in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals, which eventually appeared in print in 2004.

I discovered that, unlike the U.S. National Archives, which provides access to declassified diplomatic documents mainly in their original loose-leaf form, the Public Record Office offers only limited numbers of diplomatic dispatches, selected and arranged in bound volumes.

The British diplomatic reporting system is different from that of the United States as well. John Moore Allison, American consul in Nanjing, primarily reported directly to Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State. If he cabled out dispatches to other posts in China, he would copy them to the Department of State. Consequently, a complete set of Allison’s telegrams were archived in Washington D.C. Whereas, Humphrey Ingelram Prideaux-Brune, Allison’s British counterpart, reported mainly to Robert George Howe, chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Shanghai. Howe would then decide what should be transmitted to the Foreign Office in London. As a result, London did not have everything Prideaux-Brune, and his successor, Ernest William Jeffery, sent out from Nanjing. Due to the fact that most of the diplomatic dispatches are numbered, I realized that I had obtained only a fraction of Nanjing’s dispatches from the British Foreign Office archives.

The next logical place to track down the Nanjing cables would be the Nanjing and Shanghai British embassy archives. I consulted an archivist in the Public Record Office for clues to access those embassy files. After several unsuccessful attempts, he concluded that the embassy archives in that time frame were probably destroyed or lost after the Pearl Harbor Bombing when British diplomats in Nanjing and Shanghai were detained by the Japanese.

Since we had exhausted the Foreign Office files, I pointed out that, because the British Embassy in Nanjing did not have radio facilities of its own in early 1938, the diplomats relied on Royal Navy’s radios to send out dispatches. Therefore, the Royal Navy’s archives might have the related records. Eventually, the archivist was able to locate some of the 1937-38 Royal Navy Yangtze patrol records in Admiralty archives. By combing through these files, I managed to retrieve some of the Nanjing’s telegrams, along with the proceedings recorded by the captains of British gunboats that anchored off Nanjing or patrolled nearby. I revisited the Public Record Office in 2008 and 2016, but did not find significantly more documents.

Unlike the collection of Allison’s telegrams obtained from the U.S. National Archives II at College Park, MD, and published in A Mission under Duress: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Documented by American Diplomats, what I retrieved from the Public Record Office is far from a complete set of British Nanjing diplomatic dispatches. However, these British documents prove to be another important source material that not only enabled me to draft the British chapter for They Were in Nanjing, but also help us understand the different facets of the Nanjing Massacre from British perspectives. Hence, this collection of British diplomatic dispatches and admiralty documents are too valuable to remain unpublished.

A Dark Page in History, a collection of British diplomatic dispatches, admiralty documents, and U.S. naval intelligence weekly reports, was first published in 2012. Its Chinese translation appeared in print in 2017 in Nanjing. With more information available to be utilized for the Chinese translation, it is necessary to update the English version. In addition to updated and newly added annotations, included in the new edition are six maps, along with appendices consisting of USS Oahu December 1937 Log Book and a report by Frank Pruit Lockhart, US Consul-General at Shanghai, transmitting 13 photos of Japanese atrocities on September 16, 1938.

Suping Lu

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

January 2019

Introduction

Suping Lu

I

After the Sino-Japanese hostilities broke out in North China as the result of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, tension quickly built up down south in the Shanghai area. On July 24, a Japanese sailor was found missing. As the Japanese alleged that he had been kidnapped in a Chinese plot, it was feared that the incident would escalate. Crisis, however, was prevented, for the time being, when the missing sailor was found in Jingjiang (靖江), a city about 150 miles west of Shanghai. He had simply deserted with no plot involved.¹

A few weeks later on August 9, a shooting incident, in which two Japanese marines and one Chinese soldier were killed near the entrance of the Hongqiao Airfield in a Shanghai suburb, eventually led to the outbreak of hostilities in Shanghai. Street fighting started on August 13. As both sides rushed in reinforcements, the conflict escalated to ferocious battles.

The war continued for three months. The beginning stage witnessed Chinese troops on the offensive with four Chinese divisions battling several thousand Japanese marines in urban warfare. The situation dramatically altered on August 23, when two Japanese divisions landed north of Shanghai, and a large number of Chinese troops rushed northward to establish new defense lines. As a result, the focus of war shifted to rural areas with the Chinese on the defensive.

In spite of Japanese naval and air attacks and bombardments which inflicted heavy casualties, Chinese soldiers fought persistently, defending their shrinking positions village by village, street by street, and house by house until early November, when Japanese reinforcements of the 10th Army under the command of General Heisuke Yanagawa landed at Hangzhou Bay south of Shanghai on November 5 and the 16th Division under General Kesago Nagajima landed near the mouth of Yangtze in the north a few days later. Chinese troops were forced to give up their positions and Shanghai fell on November 12, 1937.

Due to miscommunication and poor organization that resulted in a chaotic and hasty retreat, Chinese troops failed to put up any effective defense west of Shanghai, while the Japanese Central China Expeditionary Forces under General Iwane Matsui swept the Yangtze valley in chase of the fleeing Chinese troops. As the Japanese advanced westward along three routes towards Nanjing, atrocities were reported to have taken place in Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, and many other towns and villages Japanese soldiers had traveled through.

After Japanese troops reached the Nanjing city gates on December 9, General Matsui delivered an ultimatum to the Chinese Nanjing garrison commander, General Tang Shengzhi, demanding an unconditional surrender by noon the following day. General Tang issued no response. The Japanese launched final assaults by 2 p.m., December 10. Fierce bombardments, shelling, and bitter fighting continued for two days until city walls were breached at several points. Japanese soldiers swarmed into the city from the south later December 12. Nanjing, the Chinese capital, was brought under Japanese control on December 13, 1937.

As they had done on their way to Nanjing through the lower Yangtze valley, Japanese soldiers committed atrocities in Nanjing and its vicinity. Mass executions were carried out at locations along the river outside the city walls and eastern and southern suburbs, as well as inside the city, while small-scale killings took place all over the city. Many of the victims were civilians, old and young, male and female. James Espy, an American vice consul who arrived in Nanjing on January 6, 1938, reported:

the Japanese soldiers swarmed over the city in thousands and committed untold depredations and atrocities. It would seem according to stories told us by foreign witnesses that the soldiers were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city. Men, women and children were killed in uncounted numbers throughout the city. Stories are heard of civilians being shot or bayoneted for no apparent reason.²

Charles Yates McDaniel, an American journalist who stayed to report the battle and fall of Nanjing, recorded in his news dispatch what he witnessed on December 16, 1937:

Before departing for Shanghai Japanese consul brought no-entry notices, which posted on embassy property. En route to the river, saw many more bodies in the streets. Passed a long line of Chinese, hands tied. One broke away, ran and dropped on his knees in front of me, beseeching me to save him from death. I could do nothing. My last remembrance of Nanking: Dead Chinese, dead Chinese, dead Chinese.³

According to the judgment reached in 1948 by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the estimated total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000, and that these estimates are not exaggerated is borne out by that fact that burial societies and other organizations counted more than 155,000 bodies which they buried, though these figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning or by throwing them into the Yangtze River or otherwise disposed of by the Japanese.⁴

While killings were in progress, Japanese soldiers committed other atrocities such as raping, wholesale looting, and rampant burning. Japanese soldiers searched for women to violate them wherever they could be found.

Death was frequent penalty for the slightest resistance on the part of a victim or the members of her family who sought to protect her. Even girls of tender years and old women were raped in large numbers throughout the city, and many cases of abnormal and sadistic behavior in connection with these rapings occurred. Many women were killed after the act and their bodies mutilated. Approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred within the city during the first month of the occupation.⁵

Wilson Plumer Mills, an American Presbyterian missionary in the city, described the horrors women in Nanjing had to endure: your hearts would have been wrung as were ours had you seen some of the early morning crowds of women fleeing from one place to some other where they thought they would be a little safer than they had been from the terror that was theirs the night before. Literally thousands of cases of rape have occurred.⁶

Japanese soldiers were turned loose to maraud the city, breaking into any property at will to ransack and loot. It was reported that scarcely a single piece of property in the city had escaped entry and looting by soldiers. It made no difference whether the building or store was foreign property, or owned by a Chinese national, all had been entered and looted without discrimination. The American, British, French, German, and Italian embassy compounds were entered and articles ransacked and carried away.⁷ According to Miner Searle Bates, an American missionary professor in Nanjing, there was not a store that remained undamaged, and many stores were thoroughly plundered by Japanese soldiers with trucks.⁸

While killing, raping and looting intensified the reign of terror, widespread burning, along with littering bodies, presented the most visible and terrifying physical evidence of the carnage. Burning was committed at random throughout the city. Houses and buildings were burnt down on many streets. The southern part of the city, the business and commercial section, suffered the worst of the ravages by fire, with block after block of buildings and houses burnt down. Many blocks were left with only a dozen or fewer buildings still standing.⁹ Hubert Lafayette Sone, another American missionary who remained in Nanjing, described the burning he had witnessed:

The homes of many people have been burned, and shops and stores are still burning. Every day and night fires can be seen in the city. Nearly all of Taiping and Chung Hwa Roads have been burned. Nearly all the important business and shopping districts have been burned. The Chiang Tang Chieh Church and the Y.M.C.A. have been burned to the ground. So the people cannot all go home even when they might be able to. Many of the villages outside the city have been burned.¹⁰

II

Two weeks after the hostilities broke out in Shanghai, on August 26, 1937, British ambassador, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen, was travelling by automobile from Nanjing to Shanghai for a discussion with the Japanese ambassador, Shigeru Kawagoe, about the possibility of a diplomatic solution to end the conflict in Shanghai. When his car, with Union Jack visibly displayed, reached the point about 50 miles west of Shanghai, two Japanese war planes attacked and sprayed the car with machine-gun bullets, severely wounding the ambassador. The shooting incident instantly aroused Anglo-Japanese tension, and a diplomatic waggling ensued. With the ambassador hospitalized, the British Foreign Office dispatched Roger George Howe, former counselor of the British Embassy at Nanjing, to China to take charge of the embassy as chargé d’affaires.¹¹ Howe immediately flew out of London and assumed his responsibility in early September as the top British diplomat in China until March 1938, when the new British ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, arrived.

After Shanghai fell to the Japanese, the Chinese Government announced on November 20, 1937, to move the national capital from Nanjing to Chongqing in West China. Some of the government agencies were on the move directly towards Chongqing. Others, however, including Communications, Finance, and Foreign Ministries, first relocated to Hankou in Central China. United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and a few other countries, while urging their citizens to evacuate Nanjing, advised their embassies to follow the Chinese Foreign Ministry to Hankou, where they would remain until further westward evacuation became necessary.¹²

Howe, however, indicated in mid-November that, since Great Britain had consulates-general in both Chongqing and Hankou, Shanghai would be the best location for the British Embassy.¹³ After the British relocated their embassy to Hankou for less than two weeks, on December 3, the embassy planned the move to Shanghai.¹⁴ Following a week long journey via Hong Kong, where Howe met with Ambassador Knatchbull-Hugessen who was recuperating there, Howe and his embassy staff arrived in Shanghai on December 9, 1937.¹⁵

While the bulk of the embassy personnel evacuated the Chinese capital, the British Embassy, as American and German Embassies had done, left a skeleton consular group in Nanjing. British Consul Humphrey Ingelram Prideaux-Brune, Military Attaché William Alexander Lovat-Fraser, and staff members Serjeant Parsons and Walter Henry Williams did not leave Nanjing until December 8, 1937, when they boarded British gunboat, HMS Scarab, and other British commercial vessels, which were anchored in the Yangtze near Nanjing.

As the hostilities closed in, on December 8, the Japanese consul general in Shanghai informed the Western diplomatic community in Shanghai that it was the earnest wish of the Japanese forces that all foreign nationals now remaining in Nanking should stay away from the actual zone of the fighting by evacuating that city without delay.¹⁶ On the evening of December 8, Prideaux-Brune, who was in charge of the British Embassy, decided that all the remaining British nationals in Nanjing should evacuate to the ships on the river near Xiaguan. (p. 11)

Subsequently, Prideaux-Brune, Lovat-Fraser, Parsons, and Colin Malcolm MacDonald, London Times correspondent, boarded HMS Scarab; Herbert Duthy Hilliard, customs commissioner, Philip Robert Shields of the International Export Company, and, Ivor E. L. Mackey of Butterfield and Swires Company embarked HMS Cricket; Paul Hector Munro-Faure and D. J. Lean of Asiatic Petroleum Company, and Norman Harry Price of the International Export Company went aboard Asiatic Petroleum Company’s SS Tienkwang; William Walter Ritchie, postal commissioner for Jiangsu Province, chartered Butterfield and Swires Company’s SS Wantung, with Harold Harry Molland, deputy postal commissioner, and some Chinese employees of the postal service on board; and Walter Henry Williams of the British Embassy, together with German diplomats, Dutch and Russian nationals, boarded Jardine Matheson & Company’s hulk Chinwo. (ibid) Thus, except Leslie C. Smith of Reuters, all the British subjects in Nanjing evacuated before the Japanese launched final assaults. Smith covered the siege and fall of the Chinese capital, as well as the initial stage of the massacre before he departed for Shanghai on December 15, 1937, by HMS Ladybird.

It was quiet on December 9. Lovat-Fraser, accompanied by George Eric Maxia O’Donnell, the flag captain of HMS Scarab, landed at Xiaguan for a visit. The area was burning fiercely. In the evening, the British shipping concentration moved to a safe anchorage, about four and a half miles upstream from Nanjing at Sanchahe, in compliance with the Japanese demand of staying away from actual zone of fighting.

On the evening of December 10, Lovat-Fraser, Prideaux-Brune and Hilliard, made another trip to Xiaguan, attempting to enter the city gate. The Japanese launched their final assaults around 2 o’clock that afternoon, and the shelling was so severe that it was impossible for them to get through. (p. 12)

At about 2 p.m. on December 11, the British shipping concentration at the above-mentioned safe anchorage was shelled by Japanese batteries from the southern bank. As a result, the concentration hurriedly moved ten miles upstream for safety. (ibid)

In addition to the shelling of the concentration, the Japanese, after capturing Wuhu on December 10, required all foreigners obtain passes before they were permitted to land at Wuhu. These concurrent incidents provoked Rear Admiral Reginald Vesey Holt, senior naval officer, Yangtze, to request a meeting with Captain O’Donnell, who was in charge of the British shipping concentration, in Wuhu and discuss the situation the following morning.

At 4:30 a.m. on December 12, O’Donnell, Prideaux-Brune, and Lovat-Fraser departed for Wuhu on China Import and Export Lumber Company’s SS Tseangteh, leaving HMS Cricket in charge of the concentration.¹⁷ As they got to Wuhu at about 7:30 a.m., and were transferred aboard HMS Ladybird, Japanese machine guns on the southern bank opened fire on SS Tseangtah, SS Suiwo and SS Shukwang which were nearby. Ladybird, while sailing for the shore in an effort to dissuade the machine gunners, came under fire from field artilleries. The Japanese fired over one hundred 6-inch howitzer shells at her, causing extensive damage to the ship, killing Terrance N. Lonergan, sick berth attendant, and seriously wounding Petty Officer Smallwood and Quartermaster Mathews. In the midst of chaos, O’Donnell took the wheel, and had one of his fingers shot off by a splinter.¹⁸

Subsequently, Lovat-Fraser and O’Donnell went ashore to protest to the Japanese local commander, Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, to restrain the artillerymen from further firing. At this moment, while the remonstration and argument were in progress, HMS Bee, flying the flag of Rear Admiral Holt, came under artillery fire while approaching Wuhu harbor. Lovat-Fraser literally pulled artillerymen away to keep them from firing, and enable Bee to berth safely alongside Ladybird. (p. 59)

Holt went ashore to join the remonstrating conference. Before a solution to the Wuhu incident could be reached, there came news of another bombing downstream. At about 1:30 p.m., Japanese planes attacked the British convoy, dropping bombs around SS Whangpu, SS Wantung, and Chinwo. Though there was no direct hit, the blast of bombs and shrapnel did a lot of damage to the superstructure of Chinwo. As a result, foreign passengers on SS Whangpu and Chinwo were transferred to HMS Cricket. Japanese planes conducted further raids on the convoy at 2:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. HMS Cricket and HMS Scarab fired shots to keep the planes from diving to drop bombs at a low altitude. Thus, there was no direct hit, with no further damage inflicted.¹⁹

USS Panay, however, was not as fortunate. At 8:30 a.m. on December 12, Panay, escorting Standard-Vacuum Oil Company’s convoy, which consisted of SS Mei An, SS Mei Hsia, and SS Mei Ping, to sail upriver from its previous anchorage about eleven miles above Nanjing, stopped alongside Cricket to transfer a wounded Chinese from SS Wokwang. James Joseph Hughes, the captain of Panay, informed the Cricket’s commanding officer, James Ian Murray Ashby, that having observed shells bursting in the river some 600 yards astern of him, he was moving to an anchorage some 23 miles above Nanking.²⁰ Panay eventually dropped the anchor at 11 a.m., about 28 miles above Nanjing near Hexian, unaware of any immediate danger. At about 1:40 p.m., three large Japanese twin-engined planes flew overhead and dropped several bombs, two of which struck Panay, while another bomb hit Mei Ping, causing considerable damage to both ships. Immediately after the first attack, six single-engined planes dropped a total of twenty bombs on Panay. The casualties of the attacks on Panay were three deaths: Charles Lee Ensminger, storekeeper, 1st class, USN, Italian journalist Sandro Sandri, both of whom died on December 13 in Hexian, and Edgar William George Hulsebus, coxswain, USN, who died from his wounds on December 19 in Shanghai. Dozens were wounded, including Lieutenant Commander Hughes and Second Secretary John Hall Paxton of the U.S. Nanjing Embassy. At 3:54 p.m. USS Panay sank into the Yangtze River.

The commander of U.S. Yangtze Patrol, Edward John Marquart, and the commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, Harry Ervin Yarnell, both cabled Rear Admiral Holt on the evening of December 12, requesting him to make contact with Panay because the gunboat ceased transmitting in the middle of a message at 13:35 p.m. that day. The following morning, Holt, Prideaux-Brune, Lovat-Fraser, HMS Ladybird’s commanding officer, Harry Douglass Barlow, and others attended the funeral for Lonergan in Wuhu. A message was received then, stating that Panay had been sunk by the Japanese the previous day, and that fifty-four survivors, many of whom were wounded, had reached Hexian on the northern bank.²¹

HMS Bee sailed for Hexian at noon on December 13, and called at the British concentration four miles below Wuhu to transfer Lovat-Fraser to SS Tseangtah, while Prideaux-Brune stayed on Ladybird to maintain contact with Japanese authorities. As soon as Bee arrived at the sinking site, Holt sent out search squads to make contact with survivors and initiate rescue operations. (ibid)

Meanwhile, USS Oahu hurried downriver at full speed and arrived at the Hexian waters at 10:16 a.m. on December 14, with instructions to assist the rescue efforts and take survivors to Shanghai. At 5:50 p.m. the same day, HMS Ladybird reached the sinking site as well, to join the rescue operation.²²

The painstaking effort by Bee, Ladybird and Oahu crews, assisted by local Chinese, rescued all Panay survivors and brought them aboard Ladybird and Oahu. Ten seriously wounded cases on stretchers, including commanding and executive officers of Panay, were accommodated on Oahu, and the remainder of the survivors were divided up between Ladybird and Oahu. Oahu also received the bodies of Ensminger, Sandri, Carl Harry Carlton, master of SS Mei An, and an unknown Chinese quartermaster, in coffins draped with the Stars and Stripes.²³

A convoy was formed with an escorting Japanese destroyer, HIJMS Kasasagi, leading the procession, Oahu second, followed by Ladybird, and directly astern of her the escorting Japanese torpedo boat, HIJMS Otori. The convoy started the downriver journey for Shanghai at about 1 p.m. on December 15. Oahu and Ladybird reached a location just above Nanjing near the southern bank around 4:30 p.m. Upon Japanese directions, the gunboats anchored there for the night.²⁴ During their stay at Nanjing, three American and one British correspondents came on board: Frank Tillman Durdin of the New York Times, Arthur von Briesen Menken of Paramount Newsreels, and Archibald Trojan Steele of the Chicago Daily News were accommodated on Oahu, and Leslie C. Smith of Reuters on Ladybird. Previously on December 14, Lovat-Fraser boarded Ladybird in Wuhu, while Prideaux-Brune stayed on Bee.

At about 7 a.m. on December 16, both Ladybird and Oahu left Nanjing, and after two days’ journey, the two gunboats arrived in Shanghai at 4:45 p.m. on December 17, 1937. (ibid)

Together with the German consul, Georg Rosen, Prideaux-Brune stayed on board HMS Bee from December 18 to 20, at anchorage off Nanjing hoping that after war actions were over they could soon return to the city and resume their business in the embassies. But the chief of staff of HMS Bee was informed on December 18 by a Japanese consular representative "that at present neither the British or German Consular representatives who are on board Bee could be permitted to land as the Naval and Army authorities had decided that at present no foreigners would be allowed in Nanking."²⁵ Consequently, Prideaux-Brune and Rosen made arrangements to go to Shanghai.

In spite of repeated requests and attempts, until December 31, the information obtained by the commanding officer of Bee was that no foreigners had been allowed to land at Nanking and that according to the representative of the Japanese military commander none would be allowed to land before January 5.²⁶ British diplomats, however, were not allowed to land at Nanjing until January 9, 1938.

III

On January 9, 1938, HMS Cricket arrived at Xiaguan port facilities around noon. She had onboard Consul Prideaux-Brune, Military Attaché Lovat-Fraser, and Wing Commander J. S. Walser, the temporary air attaché, along with the German Embassy staff. The British consul, military attaché and German officials landed in the afternoon, but the air attaché was not allowed ashore for the reason that the Japanese had not been notified by their authorities in Shanghai of his arrival. He was accommodated onboard HMS Bee, pending permission to land.²⁷ Eventually, after rounds of negotiation, an arrangement was made for Walser to enter Nanjing on January 12.

Two days after returning to Nanjing, Prideaux-Brune sent out his first dispatch on January 11 to Howe in Shanghai to inform him of their safe arrival and settling down in the embassy.²⁸ On January 13, Prideaux-Brune reported in a long message more detailed information concerning the conditions inside the fallen Nanjing:

Situation here is far more difficult and abnormal than we had anticipated. Atrocities committed during first two weeks after occupation of city were of a nature and on a scale which are almost incredible. Condition as regards military unruliness are slowly improving but isolated cases of murder and other barbarities continue. Within last three days houses occupied by Germans and Americans and flying respective national flags have been forcible entered by military and from one American house a Chinese was summarily removed without consulting U.S. Embassy.²⁹

He indicated that the city was entirely dominated by the Japanese military, who were in a sinister mood and bitterly hostile to the British officials. According to Prideaux-Brune, Western residents in the city deserved high praise, especially their efforts to protect refugees in the Safety Zone, and there can be no doubt their presence alone has secured comparative safety zone and many attacks on individuals were averted by their continued gallant intervention. Meanwhile, Japanese military were firmly opposed to the return of any foreigners except officials and it is obvious that in any case in circumstances above described it would be inadvisable and quite futile for any British subjects to return. Any revival of business activities must depend similarly on some measure of modification among Chinese and it is impossible to say when that may come. (ibid)

Lovat-Fraser expressed similar remarks on January 14 that Nanjing was a dead city and possibility of trade for some time to come is negligible. Japanese military are in full control and their attitude to foreigners, particularly British, is definitely hostile. Military Attaché has been unable to gain any contact with Military.³⁰

Due to the fact that military attaché and air attaché made inspection trips to check on British property around the city, Prideaux-Brune was afraid that their aggressive behaviors would irritate the Japanese. Consequently, he was anxious that Military and Air Attaché now on shore at Nanking should leave as they are only an irritant to the Japanese.³¹ He felt that success in all our local dealing with Japanese seems to depend first and foremost on avoidance of friction with military and gradual establishment of more amicable relations with them.³² Eventually, arrangement was made for Lovat-Fraser and Wasler to leave by HMS Aphis on January 16, 1938, only a week after their arrival.

Prideaux-Brune worked sing-handedly in Nanjing for the following two weeks, sending out one dispatch after another to report the conditions in the city:

There has been no perceptible improvement in the local situation during the last week. City remains completely dead except as a centre of military activity. Troops are constantly coming and going and appear subject to no unified situation inside city. American Embassy has been much occupied during the past week by cases of soldiers forcing their way into American properties for purpose of abduction or looting. A strong protest has been made in Tokyo and I understand instructions have been sent for better protection to be afforded foreign properties.

There have been no signs of any attempt to develop civil administration or to provide security for Chinese life and property. Half hearted attempts were made to persuade some of refugees in safety zone to return to their homes elsewhere in the city. Only a very few individuals risked experiment and they promptly met with disaster.³³

While the general conditions did not seem to improve, the Japanese military were still resolutely opposed to the return of any foreigners to Nanjing other than diplomatic officials. (ibid) The revival of any ordinary business activities tended to be pessimistically slim.

In addition to monitoring the situation in Nanjing, Prideaux-Brune collected information concerning the conditions of British property and interests in the city. Apart from Yangtze Hotel, which was a British property, and railway station, practically every house in Xiaguan was in ruins.³⁴ In the lumber yard of the British China Import & Export Lumber Company, buildings remained intact, but offices were ransacked. Lumber stocks seemed to be unharmed, but the Japanese helped themselves to small quantities of timber. He made presentations to the Japanese consulate general over the matter.³⁵ In the International Export Company, he discovered that little damage has been done but inhabitants have been frightened and ill-treated. Abduction of girls from compound continues as in the rest of the city.³⁶

Prideaux-Brune’s Nanjing mission was cut short when he departed for Shanghai by HMS Bee on January 29, 1938. Right before his departure on January 28, he briefly reported the Allison Incident, in which John Moore Allison, American consul, was slapped by a Japanese soldier while investigating a rape case taking place on the American property. On January 29, he gave a summary of the conditions in Nanjing as he observed when he left the city:

Military lawlessness continues due to lack of any centralized control. Major instances are rape. Ronins (civil hangers on of army, adventurers and bravoes) have appeared on scene and are likely to prove a source of further trouble.

Problem of 250,000 Chinese civilian refugees is serious. Japanese have informed Zone Committee that refugees must be dispensed with before February 4th. Most of them have nowhere to go and no means of subsistence and any hasty action by Japanese authorities may lead to rioting and more atrocities.

Japanese continue to resent violently any observation of their activities by foreigners. There is ill-feeling against United States and German Embassies. Situation in this respect is not rendered easier by ineptitude of Mr. Fukui in charge of Embassy Offices.³⁷

After he returned to Shanghai, Prideaux-Brune, apart from drafting a full account about the Allison Incident, submitted a report describing the conditions of Chinese refugees under British protection. The British sheltered nearly 300 men, women and children on Jardine’s hulk Chinwo, which was bombed and damaged when Japanese war planes attacked the British shipping convoy on December 12, 1937. At