American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin

by Hua-Ling Hu, Paul Simon (Foreword)

The Japanese army's brutal four-month occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as "the rape of Nanking." As they slaughtered an estimated three hundred thousand people, the invading soldiers raped more than twenty thousand women--some estimates run as high as eighty thousand. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected ten thousand Chinese women and children and made her a legend among the Chinese people she served.

Vautrin, who came to be known in China as the "Living Goddess" or the "Goddess of Mercy," joined the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and went to China during the Chinese Nationalist Revolution in 1912. As dean of studies at Ginling College in Nanking, she devoted her life to promoting Chinese women's education and to helping the poor.

At the outbreak of the war in July 1937, Vautrin defied the American embassy's order to evacuate the city. After the fall of Nanking in December, Japanese soldiers went on a rampage of killing, burning, looting, rape, and torture, rapidly reducing the city to a hell on earth. On the fourth day of the occupation, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. . . . Oh, God, control the cruel beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking."

When the Japanese soldiers ordered Vautrin to leave the campus, she replied: "This is my home. I cannot leave." Facing down the blood-stained bayonets constantly waved in her face, Vautrin shielded the desperate Chinese who sought asylum behind the gates of the college. Vautrin exhausted herself defying the Japanese army and caring for the refugees after the siege ended in March 1938. She even helped the women locate husbands and sons who had been taken away by the Japanese soldiers. She taught destitute widows the skills required to make a meager living and provided the best education her limited sources would allow to the children in desecrated Nanking.

Finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940, Vautrin returned to the United States for medical treatment. One year later, she ended her own life. She considered herself a failure.

Hu bases her biography on Vautrin's correspondence between 1919 and 1941 and on her diary, maintained during the entire siege, as well as on Chinese, Japanese, and American eyewitness accounts, government documents, and interviews with Vautrin's family.

Genres: History, China, Biography, War, World War II, Nonfiction, Asia

232 pages, Paperback

First published March 29, 2000

About the author

Hua-ling Hu (née Wang) is known for her writing about the Japanese occupation of China. She has taught Chinese language and literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder, National Chiao Tung University, National Chung Hsin University, Tunghai University, University of Denver, and was consultant to Research Center of the Nanjing Massacre, Nanjing Normal University. She served for six years as an editor of the Journal of Studies of Japanese Aggression Against China. In 1998 she received the prestigious Chinese Literary and Arts Medal of Honor in Biography in Taiwan for her Chinese language edition of her biography of Minnie Vautrin.
She married her husband Chia-Lun Hu in 1965.

She has also published under the name Hu Hualing zhu.

Reviews

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the things about the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Nanjing Incident, depending on whose book you are reading, is that there were a number of Westerners who observed what happened. If all the accounts were limited to the Chinese and the Japanese, the examination of what really happened would be limited to just the two viewpoints.

That here were Westerners present, and that they left behind various writings, and that they were basically neutral at the time (except for one who was a Nazi), adds a whole other level of information to the accounts of what happened.

Minnie Vautrin was a Christian missionary who was involved in an all-girl's school in Nanking. She is known for trying to protect the girls and other Chinese women from being raped by the Japanese soldiers.

The book starts in with her own background, where she was born, grew up, what she did, etc.

In 1919, she became the acting president of the Department of Education of Ginling College, an all-girl's school. Educating women was not something the Chinese considered very important, but for the few who did, Minnie and various other missionaries tried to set up what education they could for the girls.

It is interesting that the “Rape of Nanking†was not actually the first one at all. The book notes that, in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek's army entered Nanking and attacked the foreign consulates and schools, and threatened to rape the women.

An interesting passage: “Japan's aggression in Manchuria, North China, and Inner Mongolia provoked vigorous anti-Japanese outbreaks among the Chinese...They not only boycotted Japanese goods but also threatened Japanese lives and properties. Anti-Japanese clubs and associations mushroomed nationwide. The Japanese government repeatedly demanded that the National government suppress the people's anti-Japanese activities and outlaw all anti-Japanese organizations, and the Chinese government bowed to Japan's demands.â€

1. August 1, 1937: The Nationalist government orders all dependents of its officials evacuated from Nanking.
2. August 13: Japanese planes bomb Nanking.
3. August 16: The American embassy evacuates all American women and children from the city. Japanese bombing continues.
4. August 27: Japanese planes bomb government and military buildings, residential areas, schools and hospitals.
5. September 20: The American vice consul in Nanking spoke to Minnie, reading her a message from the admiral of the Japanese fleet at Shanghai saying they would attack Nanking the following day.
6. By the end of October, the officials of the city had left, along with the rich and the middle class. “Only the military personnel and the very poor remained.â€

The Japanese army entered Nanking on December 13. “...no sooner had they entered the city than they began to slaughter innocent civilians and the disarmed Chinese soldiers.†They even attacked the International Safety Zone. A New YorK Times reporter sees the Japanese kill 200 Chinese within ten minutes in the city.

A Japanese officer said that some 20,000 Chinese were shot to death at just one point in the city.

The atrocities went on for months. The author believes that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in the massacre. There were at least 20,000 rapes in the first month of the invasion alone.

The rest of the book goes into the various incidents of girls and women being taken from where they were staying and being raped. Many of them were killed after being raped. Women as young as 12 or so were raped, and ones even in their sixties and seventies were raped.

“Four months after the fall of Nanking, the Japanese military still prohibited foreigners from entering or leaving the city. The main reason was that the Japanese soldiers continuously committed crimes, and many bodies inside and outside Nanking were yet to be buried.â€

The book then goes into how and why Minnie eventually left the city, and how she got down on herself horribly about not being able to do more when she was there, and then goes into how she died.

These types of eyewitness accounts are very important, as they are from behind who didn't have any kind of axe to grind. They were often from very respectable and very intelligent people, such as Minnie, and they established a good general idea of what was going on in the city at the time.

No one person saw everything, of course, but such accounts help establish beyond doubt that something very severe happened in the city, and that many innocent people were murdered, and many girls and women were raped. While there may be arguments about exactly how many were murdered and how many raped, the very fact that many were establishes the event as a horrible and totally unnecessary event.

Revisionists try to downplay what happened, but accounts such as Minnie's prove beyond doubt that something very, very serious happened in Nanking, and that what happened was direct action of Japanese troops in a city they had already conquered.

[Joelle Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his introduction, Simon makes this statement:

"The world needs more 'failures' like Minnie!"

Minnie was a missionary during the Japanese Rape of Nanking, and ended up with what today we would diagnose as PTSD. Despite her 38 years of service, despite saving approximately 10,000 women and children, despite her deep and abiding love of the Chinese people, she believed she had failed. She ended up committing suicide; she did not win her battle with depression on this side of Heaven.

If she was a "failure", I can only hope that I can measure up to even a fourth of what her faith, trust, hope, and belief in God allowed her to accomplish.

As we watch what is happening in Ukraine, in contemporary history, her testimony rings even truer.

[Mel Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe *****
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II *****

"My one prayer is that I may be big enough and worthy enough to be of service in the greatest task of bringing His kingdom in."--Minnie Vautrin

Mrs. Hu has done important work in researching and reporting the details of the inspiring and tragic life of Minnie Vautrin, not only in her role in the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, which has been somewhat documented elsewhere, but more valuably what came before and after.

Miss Vautrin would have been notable for her pioneering work in the education of Chinese girls and women, even had the crisis of Japanese invasion occurred. Ginling college was the first institution in China to confer degrees of higher education on female students, and Vautrin was a leading figure in that accomplishment.

But it was Vautrin's fortitude in the overwhelmingly hopeless circumstances of the violent Japanese occupation--her organizational acumen in distributing housing and food, her sheer endurance, her compassion, and her chutzpah in opposing rapacious Japanese soldiers--for which she is remembered, and which brought her fatal mental devastation.

Vautrin's biography does not provide the easy answers or moral we tend to crave. Her boldness could not stop the killing, raping, and looting in Nanking. Her faithful self-sacrifice did not result in a peaceful conscience, but an internal trauma she carried with her. Alas, there are some wounds that are not healed in this world. I have every confidence however that she is at her rest.

A note about the foreward:
The foreward by senator Paul Simon is unfortunate, embarrassing, and inaccurate. Simon wishes mainly to breezily express his progressive and chronologically arrogant view of history in which he shows humanity becoming civilized and advanced, and predicts the end of war in his grandchildren's life. In discussing the end of slavery, he makes the claim that "the last major state to turn its back on that brutal habit [of slavery] was the United States." The claim is obviously false, as Brazil, which received 40% of all the Atlantic Slave Trade's slaves, did not ban slavery until 22 years after the United States passed the 13th Amendment. But what is really worse about this gaffe is that Simon's preface is for a book about China. China officially ended slavery in 1910. But in fact its practice was dramatically expanded by the Japanese during their occupation. Millions of Chinese, millions of Indonesians, millions of Koreans, were forced laborers, sex slaves, and conscripts for the Japanese. In each of those cases, hundreds of thousands were worked to death or raped to death, and keep in mind places such as Taiwan and the Korean peninsula were occupied by Japan for 50 years. We talk of learning the lessons of history, but it seems Senator Simon was unable to draw the most basic lessons from the book for which he furnished a forward. Or perhaps he simply did not read it?

[Ruth Hunt Mai · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking by Hua-ling Hu is a story of one American woman’s courage in the face of overwhelming tragedy.
If you don’t know about the Rape of Nanking, you are not alone. At a luncheon, I asked three well-read friends if they had ever heard of it. None had. It was an event that began in December 1937 in the city of Nanking (now Nanjing), China. As Japanese troops surrounded Nanking, officials within the city conferred on how to proceed when Japan invaded. An International Safety Zone existed within the city where American and European citizens hoped to shield some of the Chinese people.
Within the safety zone, there was the Ginling College for Women, which had been established for the advanced education of Chinese women. It was administered by an American missionary from Illinois named Minnie Vautrin. Miss Vautrin had devoted her life’s work to the education of women. Concerned for the well-being of Chinese citizens facing an invasion, she planned to house 2,750 women and children on the grounds of Ginling once Japan attacked.
Her plans flew by the wayside as the violence of the Japanese invasion became apparent. Chinese women rushed to the gates of the college begging for help as Japanese soldiers committed rape and murder of the Chinese people. By the third day of the occupation, there were four thousand women and children living at Ginling. Days later, there were ten thousand.
Vautrin was a member of the Red Cross and the only foreign woman residing on the campus. She became aware that it was her presence that protected the women and children. For weeks she raced from one end of the college to another to fend off Japanese soldiers who were intent on entering the grounds. The violence lasted well into 1938.
Hua-ling Hu’s biographical and historical account deserves to be read in its entirety. She set out on a journey to discover the identity of the American woman Chinese accounts referred to as Miss Huang and Miss Hua. She found her at a Michigan gravesite, where four Chinese characters were engraved on the tombstone: Gin Ling Yung Shen (Ginling Forever). Below in English it read: Minnie Vautrin, Goddess of Mercy, Missionary to China.

[Brian Mikołajczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Christian missionary Minnie Vautrin went to Nanking in the 1920s teaching at a local school.
During the Nanking Massacre in 1937, Vautrin used the school campus she was at as a safe haven for thousands of women saving them from the rape and murder by the Japanese invaders.
She is one of the heroines of history.
After the massacre, she had a psychiatric breakdown and ended up committing suicide in 1941 in an attempt to die lucid rather than going insane.

A great but sad read!

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Hua-ling Hu has created a powerful, definitive biography of Minnie Vautrin, one of the greatest heroes of World War II. Meticulously researched and poignantly written, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking describes how a courageous missionary defied the Japanese army to save thousands of Chinese lives—at the eventual cost of her own.”—Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking

“Vautrin, a Midwestern farm girl called to missionary service, devoted her life to the education of Chinese women at Ginling College. . . . In the cauldron of horror that Nanking became, Vautrin, a tower of moral strength, turned Ginling into a sanctuary for 10,000 women and girls, who honored her as their Goddess of Mercy. Hu tells Vautrin’s inspirational story in spare but powerful prose. This book deserves a wide audience and belongs in every public and academic library.”—Library Journal


In German

Het Japanse leger het brute vier maanden bezetting van de stad Nanking tijdens de 1937 Sino-Japanse oorlog bekend is, een goede reden, als "de verkrachting van Nanking." Terwijl ze naar schatting driehonderdduizend mensen gedood, de binnenvallende soldaten verkracht meer dan twintigduizend vrouwen sommige schattingen lopen zo hoog als tachtigduizend. Hua-leng Hu presenteert hier het verbazingwekkende verhaal van de onnoemelijke Amerikaanse missionaris Minnie Vautrin, waarvan de onwrikbare verzet tegen de Japanse beschermd tienduizend Chinese vrouwen en kinderen, en maakten haar een legende onder de Chinese mensen die ze geserveerd.

Vautrin, die bekend kwam te staan in China als de "levende godin" of de "Godin van Genade," lid geworden van de Buitenlandse Christian Missionary Society en ging naar China tijdens de Chinese nationalistische revolutie in 1912. Als decaan van studies op Ginling College in Nanking, dat ze haar leven gewijd aan het bevorderen van Chinese vrouwen het onderwijs en aan het helpen van de armen.

Bij het uitbreken van de oorlog in juli 1937, Vautrin trotseerde de Amerikaanse ambassade om de stad te evacueren. Na de val van Nanking in december, Japanse soldaten gingen op rooftocht van de moorden, branden, plunderingen, verkrachtingen en martelingen, snel verminderen van de stad tot een hel op aarde. Op de vierde dag van de bezetting, Minnie Vautrin schreef in haar dagboek: "Er is waarschijnlijk geen misdaad die niet is gepleegd in deze stad vandaag. . . . Oh, God, de controle van de wrede beestachtigheid van de soldaten in Nanking. "

Wanneer de Japanse soldaten Vautrin verwezen naar de campus te verlaten, antwoordde zij: "Dit is mijn thuis. Ik kan niet weg. "Facing vaststelling van de met bloed bevlekte bajonetten zwaaide voortdurend in haar gezicht, afgeschermd Vautrin de wanhopige Chinezen die asiel achter de poorten van het college. Vautrin uitgeput zelf tarten van het Japanse leger en de zorg voor de vluchtelingen na de belegering eindigde in maart 1938. Ze hielp zelfs de vrouwen vinden echtgenoten en zonen die waren meegenomen door de Japanse soldaten. Ze leerde behoeftige weduwen van de vaardigheden die nodig zijn om een schamele levensonderhoud te voorzien en op voorwaarde dat het beste onderwijs een beperkt aantal bronnen zou haar in staat te stellen de kinderen in ontheiligd Nanking.

Tenslotte lijdt een zenuwinzinking in 1940, Vautrin terug naar de Verenigde Staten voor een medische behandeling. Een jaar later, eindigde ze haar eigen leven. Ze vond zichzelf een mislukkeling.

Hu baseert haar biografie over de overeenstemming Vautrin's tussen 1919 en 1941 en op haar dagboek, bijgehouden tijdens de hele beleg, evenals de Chinese, Japanse en Amerikaanse ooggetuigenverslagen, de overheid documenten en gesprekken met de familie Vautrin's.

Hua Hu-ling heeft geleerd Chinese taal en letterkunde aan de Universiteit van Colorado in Boulder, waar ze promoveerde in de geschiedenis en moderne Chinese geschiedenis aan de National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. Ze diende als redacteur van het Journal of Studies van de Japanse agressie tegen China voor zes jaar. Haar publicaties omvatten drie boeken en meer dan tachtig korte verhalen, essays en historische documenten. In 1998 ontving ze de prestigieuze Chinese letterkunde en Kunst Medal of Honor in de biografie in Taiwan voor de Chinese taal uitgave van haar biografie van Minnie Vautrin.

"Hua Hu-ling heeft een krachtige, definitieve biografie van Minnie Vautrin, een van de grootste helden van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Minutieus onderzoek en ontroerend geschreven, American Godin op de Verkrachting van Nanking beschrijft hoe een moedige missionaris trotseerden het Japanse leger om duizenden levens te redden Chinees-bij de uiteindelijke kosten van haar eigen.

"Vautrin, een meisje genaamd Midwesten boerderij aan missionaris dienst, haar leven gewijd aan het onderwijs van de Chinese vrouwen op Ginling College. . . . In de heksenketel van afgrijzen dat Nanking werd, Vautrin, een toren van morele kracht, draaide Ginling in een heiligdom voor 10.000 vrouwen en meisjes, die haar eer als hun Godin van Barmhartigheid. Hu vertelt inspirerend verhaal Vautrin in reserve maar krachtig proza. Dit boek verdient een groot publiek en behoort in alle publieke en academische bibliotheek.

[Joshua Gates · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick reselling of the Rape of Nanking, and how Minnie was involved through her missionary work and the school of Gingsin. Minnie, a Michigan native grew into prominence through intellectual stimulation and hard work on the family farm all the while taking care of her siblings and father. The Chinese called her the "Goddess of Mercy," as it reads on her tombstone. She earned this title through twenty eight successful years directing and handling the all girls college of Gingsin. She demonstrated perseverance and compassion to ensure that tens of thousands of Chinese women, girls, and boys were kept safe from the Japanese soldiers. Despite the invasion some instructional classes were taught. Her efforts remain as a beacon to many who are taking up missionary work and other volunteer or work opportunities abroad.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unforgettable story of a brave woman who saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking. Minnnie Vautrin was an American missionary who dedicated her life to educating the women of China - not a popular idea in the early 1900's.

When the Japanese invaded China and began to brutalize the inhabitants of the city of Nanking - murdering over 300,000 civilians and raping thousands of women, Minnie and her women's college became a safe haven for thousands, protecting women from rape and civilian men from execution. It's a remarkable story of a heroic life that ended sadly.

[Kristina Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minnie Vautrin is one of my all time heroes. I'd encourage everyone to read this book. They quoted a poem by Ted Malone that I found particularly touching.

A thousand years from this tonight,
When Orion climbs the sky
The same swift snow will still the roofs
The same mad stars run by.
And who will know of China's War
Or poison gas in Spain
The dead...they'll be forgotten, lost,
Whether they lose or gain.
.................................
But only beauty, only truth
Will last a thousand years.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally, I Google my great-aunt and namesake, Katherine Schutze, to learn more about her, and that is what led me to this book. While the subject is tragic, the details revealed helped to fill in the tale I've heard all of my life. I am inspired to dig out the scrapbook that my Aunt Katherine made and left for me...

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story but the writing is a little humdrum, maybe because it was translated from Chinese. Minnie Vautrin was a true hero who saved many people from the depridations of the Japanese invading army.

[Seul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "failure" we could all learn from! Hua-Ling Hu wrote a beautiful book about a wonderful woman with a beautiful soul. Minnie Vautrin shows real courage, even through the words written in the book. I enjoyed learning about Minnie Vautrin and I suggest this book to everyone.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Courage ofMinnie Vautrin" was an outstanding depiction of Minnie Vautrin's life. However, I thought the beginning parts in which random people discuss Vautrin's legacy was a little unnecessary. I also thought the writing told more than it showed.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, this book will mention things that may make people uncomfortable. I would still suggest this book to everyone despite that.