John Gillespie Magee (1884 – 1953) was an American Episcopal priest.
Contents |
Magee was born in 1884 in Virginia of the United States. Magee came from a wealthy Pittsburgh family. His brother was aviator and Congressman James McDevitt Magee. Magee went to school at Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones,[1]:205 and then on to divinity school in Massachusetts. A missionary in China, he was the minister at an Episcopal mission in Nanking from 1912 to 1940.
While in China, Magee married another missionary, Faith Emmeline Backhouse. They had four sons: John, Hugh, David and Christopher. Their first son was named after his father: John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who went on to write the famous poem, "High Flight."
During the Nanking Massacre Magee was performing missionary work in Nanking and was at the same time the chairman of Nanking Committee of the International Red Cross Organization. During the dark period when hundreds of thousands of defenseless Chinese were slaughtered by the Japanese army, Magee was appalled by the atrocity of the Japanese invaders.
Disregarding his own safety, Magee ran out of the Nanking Safety Zone, going through streets and lanes, and took part in rescuing more than 200,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians who were facing being slaughtered. Magee shot several hundred minutes of film with what was then the most advanced 16mm movie camera, which filmed at 6 shots per second. These films recorded men being beheaded by the Japanese army, women raped, and babies who lost parents with corpses lying all over in villages. They are the earliest and the most complete photo evidence of the massacre.
In 1938 when Magee published 10 of the photos in Life magazine the whole world was shocked. Some people wanted to buy Magee's original film for large sums of money for political purposes, yet he was not budged. He said he wanted to give the historical materials to the right person without charge at the right moment.
Magee managed to film abuses of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937. Magee's films were smuggled out of Nanking; copies were shown to members of the United States government, and sent to the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade them to institute sanctions against the Japanese government. On 10 February 1938, Legation Secretary of the German Embassy, Rosen, wrote to his Foreign Ministry about a film made in December by Reverend John Magee to recommend its purchase. Here is an excerpt from his letter and a description of some of its shots, kept in the Political Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.
«During the Japanese reign of terror in Nanking - which, by the way, continues to this day to a considerable degree - the Reverend John Magee, a member of the American Episcopal Church Mission who has been here for almost a quarter of a century, took motion pictures that eloquently bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Japanese. (....) One will have to wait and see whether the highest officers in the Japanese army succeed, as they have indicated, in stopping the activities of their troops, which continue even today (...)» [2]
Magee's role in documenting the Nanking Massacre is featured in the movie Don't Cry, Nanking. In the documentary film Nanking, Magee was portrayed by actor Hugo Armstrong.
In 1953 Magee left the 16mm camera and the film to his son David who had accompanied him in Nanking. In 2002 when David heard of the news that China was going to build a museum in memory of the people who were killed during the Nanking Massacre, he came to Nanking. According to his father's last wish he offered the historical materials without charge. To remember the special contribution that Magee had made to the Nanking people a library was built in the name of Magee.
After Magee left Nanking, Magee served as curate at Church of the Presidents St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square (Washington, D.C.) in Washington, D.C. While there he was one of the Episcopal priests who officiated at the funeral of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945. Magee also served as chaplain to President Harry S. Truman.
Before his death in 1953 he also served as the Episcopal chaplain at Yale University.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||