Minnie Vautrin

Minnie Vautrin as a young woman

(www.discipleshistory.org)

"IN DECEMBER 1937, Nanking was a city in flight. Its streets were jammed with the last major flood of civilians who had the means to leave the war-torn city. Half the original population was now gone. Most of the remaining 500,000 civilians were there only because they couldn’t afford transportation or had nowhere else to go.

But there was one small group of foreigners in Nanking—Americans and Europeans—who had stayed deliberately. They were the members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, which referred to an approximate three-mile area in the city designed to be a wartime refuge for civilians. Women and children were to be housed within the safety zone at Ginling Women’s College. Its president was an American woman named Minnie Vautrin."


Opening paragraphs of Minnie Vautrin: American Hero at the Nanking Massacre from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater