FOREWORD
TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF MINNIE VAUTRIN
By
Iris Chang
I
first learned about the remarkable Minnie Vautrin when
researching my book, THE RAPE OF NANKING: THE FORGOTTEN
HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR II. I was writing an English-language
narrative of one of the worst atrocities in world history:
the mass rape, torture and murder of the Nanking people
by the Japanese military after its December 1937 invasion
of the city. As I assembled records of the Nanking massacre,
it came to my attention that an American woman had protected
Chinese females from further molestation. During the genocide,
Minnie Vautrin, a missionary educator at Ginling College,
had sheltered thousands of Chinese women and girls from
the Japanese army, which actively sought fresh recruits
for its military brothels and rape camps. Throughout the
city, Vautrin became known to the Chinese as "The
Living Goddess" and "The Goddess of Mercy."
Intrigued
by her story, in 1995 I paid a visit to the Divinity School
archives of Yale University, where Vautrin's papers were
kept. There I leafed through her diary -- a voluminous,
typewritten, daily chronicle of the Nanking horror. I
fought back tears when I read it, for each page pulsed
with
emotion.
"There is probably no crime that has not been committed
in this city today," Vautrin wrote. "Oh, God,
control the cruel beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking..."
It
was difficult for me, sitting in a hushed library at Yale,
to fully comprehend the wave of bloodshed and chaos that
engulfed Minnie Vautrin. Thousands of homeless women and
girls, fleeing from the orgy of Japanese violence, poured
into Ginling College, begging Vautrin for a place to stay.
They crowded into classrooms, slept on laboratory tables,
crammed themselves into staircases, camped out on the
lawn. An exhausted Vautrin tried to accomodate them all.
When the Japanese military ordered Vautrin to leave, she
refused. "This is my home," she replied. "I
cannot leave." Her fearlessness left me awestruck.
Repeatedly, Vautrin confronted Japanese troops at the
gates
of the college and ordered them to stay out, even as they
cursed her and brandished in her face bayonets dripping
with blood. Unfazed, she chased away soldiers as they
attempted kidnapping raids and even rescued young Chinese
girls from the clutches of rapists. It is a miracle that
Vautrin, who endured both threats and blows from angry
Japanese soldiers, survived the
Rape
of Nanking in one piece.
As
I dug deeper into her life, each new revelation only served
to whet my appetite for more details. To my great astonishment
(and pride) I learned that Vautrin, like myself, was a
native of central Illinois. Her birthplace was not far
from my hometown of Champaign-Urbana, where we even shared
the same alma mater: the University of Illinois. She was
a woman of humble origins but steely determination. Born
in 1886, Vautrin grew up in the rural town of Secor, where
poverty forced her to work her way through school. After
years of diligent saving, she graduated from college,
joined the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and moved
to China. By 1937, she had risen to the position of dean
of studies at Ginling College, a women's educational institute
supported by Protestant missionaries.
Long
before the massacre, Vautrin had demonstrated a deep,
unwavering commitment to help the people in the city.
Under her guidance, Ginling College had provided volunteer
services for the local Chinese in the neighborhood, even
administering a free elementary school and health clinic
for underprivileged families. After the great Rape, Vautrin
drew on her extensive experience in social work to help
rebuild the community. Despite her poor health, in the
spring of 1938 she raised funds from the Nanking Wartime
Christian Relief Committee to give survivalist classes
for the neediest refuges on campus. Her devotion to public
service helped many Nanking residents make the transition
from refugees and rape victims to women who possessed
the confidence and skills to build new homes and new lives
for themselves.
However,
in her zeal to help others, Vautrin neglected to take
care of herself. The atrocities in the city left her physically
weak and emotionally traumatized. Shortly after the massacre,
Vautrin suffered a complete nervous breakdown and returned
to the United States for psychiatic treatment. "I
am trying to recover," she wrote to a friend on October
20, 1940, "...but it still seems to me that I am
on the road to insanity no matter how hard I try to make
myself think otherwise." On May 14, 1941, Vautrin
committed suicide by opening the gas jet in the kitchen
stove of her apartment. She died both a hero and victim
of the Rape of Nanking, a woman who saved thousands of
lives at the eventual cost of her own. The United Christian
Missionary Society announced: "We feel that Miss
Vautrin was truly a casualty of the war as any soldier
who had fallen on the battlefield."
I
remember feeling both angry and perplexed after reading
Vautrin's diaries and correspondence at Yale. Why hadn't
these records been published in a book? I wondered. Why
had Vautrin been forgotten by the public for the past
half century? Why wasn't her life a legend worldwide?
I felt that if anyone deserved her place in history, that
person was Minnie Vautrin.
Today,
it gives me great pleasure to report that the world has
rediscovered Vautrin's life and legacy. What a pity this
incredible woman -- who, tragically, considered herself
a failure near the end of her life -- did not live to
see herself memorialized in books, documentaries, feature
films and museum exhibitions. In December 1999, a major
conference devoted to Vautrin was held in Nanking, attended
by several elderly survivors who had sought refuge in
her safety zone. In April 2000, historian Hua-Ling Hu
published AMERICAN GODDESS AT THE RAPE OF NANING: THE
COURAGE OF MINNIE VAUTRIN, the first full-length English-language
biography of Minnie Vautrin. Also, a play based on Vautrin's
life -- "The World According to Winnie" -- was
written by Margaret Waterstreet and performed in Chicago,
Illinois.
"The
Biography of Minnie Vautrin," edited by the Research
Center for the Nanking Massacre of Nanking Normal University,
makes an important contribution to the growing body of
literature on Minnie Vautrin. Thoughtfully written and
meticulously researched, this compilation of essays should
appeal to both general and academic readers. It also probes
beneath the legend to excavate new details about Vautrin,
drawing not only on her diaries and letters but on fresh,
never-before-published primary source materials like local
church documents, interviews with survivors,
and archival records from Ginling College and the Memorial
Hall for the Victims of the Nanking Massacre. No doubt
these facts, now unearthed, will stimulate and guide future
scholarship.
"If
only the thoughtful people of Japan knew (the) facts of
these days of horror," Vautrin had written in her
diary. Some are learning these facts now, thanks to the
strength of Vautrin's heroic legacy. This book describes
the efforts of female Japanese activists to educate themselves
about Vautrin's life, by visiting Nanking and conducting
oral histories with survivors. These efforts are a welcome
contrast to an atmosphere of denial in Japan, where ultranationalists
and revisionists refuse to acknowledge even the existence
of a Nanking massacre. Using language reminiscent of neo-Nazi
propaganda about the Jewish Holocaust, prominent Japanese
politicians, such as the current governor of Tokyo, persist
in calling the Nanking atrocity a "fabrication."
Early this year, Japanese nationalists went so far as
to hold a conference in Osaka -- on government property
and with the approval of city officials -- to denounce
the massacre as "the biggest lie of the 20th century."
Ultimately,
all attempts to deny the Rape of Nanking are futile. One
only has to go to Yale, the American national archives
or the memorial hall at Nanking to find thousands of records
on the subject, written not only by Vautrin but by numerous
other eye-witnesses. The contemporaneous diaries of Vautrin
- along with the diaries of other American missionaries,
the memoirs of Nazi party member John Rabe, and the testimonials
of countless Chinese and Japanese observers - all complement
and reinforce each other, making the sum total of evidence
impossible to dismiss. In the end, the truth is indestructible,
and -- lit by the shining strength of Vautrin's words
and deeds -- will prevail
--
Iris Chang
San
Jose, California. September 2000