The International Committee For The Nanking Safety Zone - Historiography

Historiography

During the Korean War (1950–53), the government of the People's Republic of China used records of the International Committee to portray its members as part of a propaganda campaign to arouse patriotic anti-American fervor. As part of this propaganda campaign, the Westerners who remained in Nanking were characterized as foreigners who sacrificed Chinese lives in order to protect their property, guided the Japanese troops into the city and collaborated with them to round up prisoners of war in the refugee camps.

As a result of this anti-American propaganda, a detailed study carried out by the researchers at the University of Nanking in 1962 went so far as to assert that Westerners had assisted the Japanese in executing Chinese in Nanking. The study harshly criticized those foreigners for not having made any effort to prevent the ongoing atrocities.

This erroneous perception of the International Committee was eventually corrected in the 1980s as more historical documents became accessible and more thorough studies were published. Today many of the missionaries' private diaries and letters that meticulously documented the scale and character of the Nanking Massacre are archived at the Yale Divinity School Library.