The International Committee was established in 1937 to establish and manage the Nanking Safety Zone.
Many Westerners were living in the city at that time, conducting trade or on missionary trips. As the Imperial Japanese Army began to approach Nanjing (also known as Nanking), most of them fled the city. A small number of Western businessmen, journalists and missionaries, however, chose to remain behind. The missionaries were primarily Americans from the Episcopal, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches. To coordinate their efforts, the Westerners formed a committee: the 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. Rabe and other refugees from foreign countries tried to protect the civilians from being killed by the Japanese. 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. There were also kidnappings of women from the Zone. Such people taken into custody would often either be summarily executed or taken away for rape. Due to Rabe's efforts some 250,000 people were protected during the Nanjing Massacre.
In February 1938, as violence by the Japanese Army abated, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone was reorganized as the Nanking International Relief Committee, which did humanitarian work in Nanjing until at least 1941. There are no records of any activity by the committee after 1941 and it is believed that it was likely forced to discontinue its operations after the United States entered World War II.
Establishment of the Nanking Safety Zone
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 . This is approximately 1.5 times the size of Central Park in New York.
Members
The fifteen members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone were as follows:
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. Most lists do not mention him as a formal member. Perhaps this is because he was elected director while he had been travelling and before he returned to Nanjing. These individuals are not to be confused with the members of the International Red Cross Committee of Nanking, which did similar work. Its 17 members included Robert O. Wilson, an American doctor at Drum Tower Hospital of Nanking University Hospital, James McCallum, an American missionary at the same institution, and Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary at Ginling Girls' College.
Activities
When Nanjing fell, the Nanking Safety Zone housed over 250,000 refugees. The committee members of the Zone found ways to provide these refugees with the basic needs of food, shelter, and medical care.
Whenever Japanese soldiers entered the Zone, they were closely shadowed by one of the Westerners. The Westerners repeatedly refused to comply with demands made of them by Japanese Army soldiers, placing themselves between Japanese soldiers and Chinese civilians.
Committee members frequently contacted Consul-General Okazaki Katsuo, Second Secretary (later Acting Consul-General) Fukui Kiyoshi and Attaché Fukuda Tokuyasu to deal with the anarchic situation.
M. Searle Bates
Miner Searle Bates was one of the leaders of the committee and worked to secure the safety of the population of Nanjing. This task was dangerous and his life was put at risk on many occasions, most notably when he was shoved down a flight of stairs by Japanese military police after inquiring about the fate of a student who had been abducted by Japanese soldiers.
According to the testimony of Bates before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, he visited the Japanese embassy daily for the next three weeks after first protesting there against Japanese atrocities. He testified that the Japanese authorities appeared to him to be "honestly trying to do what little they could in a bad situation". However, as Bates testified, the embassy officials were themselves terrified by the military and could do nothing except forward these communications through Shanghai to Tokyo.