Nanjing massacre: Guardian cables censored by Japanese officials – archive, January 1938

Outrages in Nanjing: Guardian cable again stopped

From our correspondent
22 January 1938

Shanghai, 21 January
A second telegram that I tried to send to the Manchester Guardian to-day dealing with outrages by the Japanese military in Nanjing was suppressed by the Japanese authorities. The message was based largely on an outspoken leading article that appeared in to-day’s North China Daily News.

As a result of this action I have written to the British Consul-General, Mr Herbert Phillips, in the following terms:

This is the second occasion upon which a telegram to my paper has been arbitrarily, and, as it seems to me, unwarrantably suppressed by the Japanese authorities. I have already expressed to you verbally the hope that you will take steps to see that I am not subjected to such interference. On behalf of myself and of my paper I must now formally request you to make representations to the Japanese authorities protesting against such interference and insisting that my telegrams be neither suppressed nor censored by the Japanese.

My message that was suppressed on Sunday also dealt with the Japanese outrages in Nanjing. Other correspondents’ messages on the same subject were allowed to pass.

Brutality in Nanjing: 10,000 people killed

From our correspondent
29 January 1938

Shanghai, 28 January
The Japanese cable censorship has led to three written protests by Mr Herbert Phillips, the British Consul General, to Mr Okamoto, the Japanese Consul General. Mr Phillips protests against the proposed censorship of commercial telegrams, the suppression of a Press Association-Reuter telegram, and the second suppression of a telegram from the Manchester Guardian correspondent in Shanghai, and the deletion of 90 words from a telegram handed to the cable office by the Manchester Guardian correspondent yesterday. The Americans are understood to be taking similar action with regard to commercial telegrams.

The suppressed cable
The cable from the Press Association-Reuter Shanghai Bureau suppressed by the Japanese military censors in that city last Friday ran as follows :–

A leading article in this morning’s North China Daily New says:

“On Christmas Day this journal had occasion to refer to the scenes of horror perpetrated in Nanjing after the occupation of the Japanese forces. It was believed then that the outrageous behaviour of the Japanese troops was the result of temporary indiscipline and of blood-lust aroused by the heat of battle, and it was hoped that order would be rapidly restored and the civilian population of Nanjing relieved from the horrors they were suffering. It was even suggested in some quarters that the Japanese were taking revenge for the outrages of 1927.

It is learned with astonishment, however, that these outrages have been continued and that ever since the occupation of Nanjing until the present moment the abduction of women, rape, and looting have been carried on with an industry which would do justice to a more praiseworthy cause.

Numbers of Chinese have been stabbed with bayonets or recklessly shot, and it is estimated that more than 10,000 people have been killed, some of whom were not even guilty of the trivial offence of having had the hardihood to fight for their country.

This journal does not believe, and never has believed, that these things occur by reason of any set purpose of the Japanese High Command, and prefers to think that these men, in the high tradition of their profession, must as deeply deplore what is happening as any right thinking man, but that does not relieve the Japanese commanders of the imperative duty of stopping these unruly soldiers from further insulting the uniform they wear.”

Nanjing was occupied by the Japanese on 13 December, nearly six weeks before the publication of this article.

[Our Shanghai correspondent also attempted to cable a message on this matter, but was stopped by the Japanese censor.]

The Nanjing massacre was a mass killing of Chinese civilians and soldiers by the Imperial Japanese Army after its capture of Nanjing, China, on 13 December 1937. Harold Timperley, the Manchester Guardian’s China correspondent, went on to write about the massacre in The Japanese terror in China.

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