Mark Gagnon

I mean, it covered about four square kilometers and offered a better chance of survival than the streets beyond its boundaries.

But protection there was always precarious.

At the height of the massacre, more than 200,000 people were crammed into a zone that was...

like about the size of Central Park, maybe a little bit bigger.

And families just slept like shoulder to shoulder in classrooms, on balconies, stairwells, anywhere that a body could fit.

Hallways were bedrooms, courtyards were just public shelters, and people just laid on the sidewalks, just wrapped in blankets, trying to make it through each freezing cold night.

Food was running low, water barely held out, and disease was spreading quickly through these packed crowds.

Children were constantly crying from hunger or nightmares, and the elderly were just collapsing from exhaustion.

And just outside the flimsy borders of the zone, gunfire and screams reminded everyone exactly what was just waiting for them beyond the flags.

The Japanese army was supposed to respect the safety zone, but of course they didn't.

Soldiers slipped in at night to seize women.

They barged in during the day looking for Chinese soldiers hiding among civilians.

They entered whenever they wanted, really, and the foreigners could only stand in their way holding up documents and just pleading with them diplomatically saying, it's illegal for you to do this.

Sometimes they managed to turn a few soldiers back.

Other times they just watched helplessly as victims were dragged out of the neutral zone screaming.

Rob wrote letter after letter to Japanese officers just listing attacks in painstaking detail, pleading for protection.

And he received polite replies and empty promises.

And that was basically it.

Dr. Robert Wilson worked almost nonstop in makeshift operating rooms, improvised with, you know, what little supplies they had and staff supplies.

and at times operating without even adequate anesthetics.