Nanking Massacre Denial - Testimony of Westerners - Miner Bates

Miner Bates

Miner Searle Bates was a key witness during the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. As a leader of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, and a professor of history at the University of Nanking, Bates was present in Nanjing before, during, and after the battle for the city. Bates asserted he witnessed a number of atrocities firsthand and that a number of civilians were massacred by the Japanese. When asked about the death toll at the trial, he answered, "The question is so big, I don't know where to begin...The total spread of this killing was so extensive that no one can give a complete picture of it." (Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking)

Bates also testified in the Tokyo Trial that he had seen many civilian dead bodies lying about everywhere in his neighborhood for many days after the fall of Nanking.

Denialists however point out that, according to the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun on December 26, 1937, which reports when correspondents Wakaume and Murakami visited Bates at his official university residence on December 15, two days after the fall of Nanking, Bates welcomed them in a good humor, shook hands with them and said, "I am so happy that the orderly Japanese military entered Nanking and peace has been restored to the city." The correspondents did not see in his neighborhood the "...many civilian dead bodies lying about everywhere" which Bates testified to have seen.

Yuji Maeda, a Domei Tsushin correspondent who spent days in the Nanking Safety Zone like Bates did, denies that there were massacred bodies as follows:

Those who claim that a massacre took place in Nanking... assert that most of the victims were women and children. However, these supposed victims were, without exception, in the Safety Zone and protected by the Japanese Security Headquarters. The Nanking Bureau of my former employer, Domei Tsushin, was situated inside the Safety Zone. Four days after the occupation, all of us moved to the Bureau, which served both as our lodgings and workplace. Shops had already reopened, and life had returned to normal. We were privy to anything and everything that happened in the Safety Zone. No massacre claiming tens of thousands, or thousands, or even hundreds of victims could have taken place there without our knowing about it, so I can state with certitude that none occurred. Chinese soldiers were executed, some perhaps cruelly, but those executions were acts of war and must be judged from that perspective. There were no mass murders of non-combatants." (World and Japan magazine issued by Naigai News Agency, #413, April 5, 1984)

Bates wrote, "Evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, of whom some 30 percent had never been soldiers."

Takemoto and Ohara however point out that the "evidence of burials" of the Red Swastika Society, which Bates referred to, contains only 0.3% of women and children. The burial records include burials that were carried out not only in the period of the Japanese campaign in Nanking, but also in the period between July to October 1938. If the "evidence" is limited to only burial records during the Japanese campaign in Nanking, the number of women and children among the burials would become less than 0.3%. This shows a clear contradiction of the "massacre of civilians" and the estimation of Bates.

According to the records of the Red Swastika Society, who buried almost all of the war dead within and near the walls of Nanking, they buried about 40,000 bodies in total. Bates' description "evidence from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed" referred to this. Massacre denialists however claim that these bodies were mostly of armed soldiers killed in battle, not unarmed persons killed in massacre. They criticize Bates for replacing the victims. Denialists such as Itakura and Higashinakano also think that the figure 40,000 in the burial records is padded, and they point out that, according to Susumu Maruyama, the Japanese supervisor of the burials of the war dead in Nanking, the total number of the buried was actually around 14,000–15,000.

Ko claims that not all of the bodies were killed by the Japanese military, but also there were those killed by Chinese supervisory unit, who were soldiers waiting behind to kill their fellow Chinese soldiers who tried to run away from the battlefield.

Higashinakano points out that Japanese soldiers saw, when entered Nanking, a lot of Chinese military uniforms taken off and abandoned on the ground of all over the city and that those were the uniforms which Chinese soldiers had taken off to appear as civilians to make their way to the Safety Zone where many citizens took refuge. Bates mentions in his letters that these Chinese soldiers were fleeing Japanese brutality and killing of POWs. Kenichi Ara argues that most of those whom Bates counted as "civilian casualties" were in fact unlawful soldiers in civilian clothing.

Higashinakano asserts that this was why the Chinese Year Book 1938–1939, published in Shanghai in English, removed the reference to "close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed... some 30 percent had never been soldiers" and only recorded other accusation of Bates.

Yoshiki Okawa further claims that Bates' report on the massacre of civilians was actually not what he witnessed, but was only hearsay, perhaps from the Chinese officers whom the members of the International Committee had sheltered, because there is no name of Bates in the "witness" section of any Committee murder case reports. Bates' report on Japanese atrocities is written all in a hearsay style. In addition, he could not prove the massacre of civilians when he was required to show proof by Consul John M. Allison.

Bates was an adviser to the Kuomintang, and after the war he was decorated by Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the Party, for his contribution. The strategy of the Kuomintang was to do anything to convey the news of a miserable state of China and atrocities of the Japanese to the world for dragging the United States into the war against Japan. Higashinakano claims that Bates' report was made in accordance with this strategy.