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major who told us that no civilians were allowed further north as they were still rounding up some Chinese Soldiers and it was unsafe. We happened to be beside the Ministry of
War at the time and it was all too evident that an execution was going on, hundreds of disarmed soldiers with many inno- cent civilians amongst them the real reason for him not
So Mr. Sekiguchi of H.I.J.S. Seta" had to walk the rest of the way. But that afternoon I stole a march on the surly major: I went to Siakwan by back roads. At the gate I was stopped but I had Smith of Reuters and Steele with me who were leaving on that destro- yer so we were finally allowed to pass. I have already de- scribed the conditions at that gate we actually had to drive over masses of bodies to get through. But the scene beggars description. I shall never forget that ride.
Wanting us to go any further.
At the jetty we found Durdin of the "Times" and Art Menken of Paramount Films with whom I had just made that trip to the North West of Shansi and Sian already there, for they were going too, and I had promised to drive Durdin's car back to the American Embassy for him. Mr. Okamura of the Ja- panese Embassy just arrived from Shanghai, was also there and gave us the names of the killed and wounded on the "panay" and the Standard Oil boats, so I offered him a lift back to the city. But at the gate we were stopped again and this time the guard positively refused to let me enter. No foreigners were allowed to enter Nanking and the fact that I had just come from there made no difference. Even Mr. Okamura's appeals were in vain the Embassy cuts no ice with the army in Ja- pan. The only thing to do was to wait while Okamura took one of the cars to the military headquarters and send back a spe- cial pass.
It took an hour and a half, but I had the Novven- ber Reader's Digest, and that was the last piece of mail to reach me from the outside, but time passed quickly. The stench at the gate was awful and here and there dogs were gnawing at the corpses.
At our staff conference that evening word came that soldiers were taking all 1,300 men in one of our camps near headcnarters to shoot them. We knew there were a number of ex-soldiers amongst them, but Rabe had been promised by an officer that very afternoon that their lives would be spared. It was now all too obvious what they were going to do.
The men were lined up and roped together in groups of about a hun- dred, by soldiers with bayonets fixed; those who had hats had them roughly torn off and thrown on the ground, and then by the light of our headlights we watched them marched away to their doom. Not a whimper came from the entire crowd. Our own hearts were lead. Were those four lads from Canton who had trudged all the way up from the South and yesterday had eluctantly given me their arms among them, I wondered, or
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