Robert Wilson

The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops during the Second Sino-Japanese War against the residents of Nanking (today Nanjing), then the capital of the Republic of China. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanking. 

To break the spirit of Chinese resistance, Japanese General Matsui Iwane ordered destruction of Nanking. Much of the city was burned, and Japanese troops launched a campaign of atrocities against civilians and disarmed combatants. In what became known as the “Rape of Nanking,” the Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process.

Report of the Nanking Massacre in The New York Times (December 14, 1937)

Dr. Robert O. Wilson, the sole surgeon working in the Nanking Safety Zone, wrote letters to his family about the ongoing atrocities. Below are excerpts from his letters of December 15 and 18, 1937: 

The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two bayonetted cases are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital. Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped. Two girls, about 16, were raped to death in one of the refugee camps. In the University Middle School where there are 8,000 people the Japs [sic] came in ten times last night, over the wall, stole food, clothing, and raped until they were satisfied. They bayoneted one little boy of eight who [had] five bayonet wounds including one that penetrated his stomach, a portion of omentum was outside the abdomen. I think he will live. 

In 1948, Dr. Wilson was one of several members of The International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone to testify at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East about the atrocities he had witnessed during the Nanking Massacre.

1906 Born in Nanking (today Nanjing), China

1929 Graduates from Harvard Medical Schoo

1936 Joins staff at Drum Tower Hospital of Gin Ling University (Nanking University)

1937 Beginning of the Rape of Nanking (December 1937-January 1938)

1940 Leaves China and settles in the United States

1948 Testifies at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East

1967 Robert O. Wilson Dies

Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997. 

“The Family Letters of Dr. Robert Wilson.” Vancouver: University of British Columbia. http://www.history.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/courses/documents/%5Breal…;

Zhang, Kaiyuan. Eyewitness to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing. M. E. Sharpe, 2001.