In
2005, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) marked a milestone.
Twenty-five years earlier, Superior General Pedro Arrupe, SJ,
created JRS to minister to those displaced by the Vietnam War.
Few today, however know of earlier work with refugees by a
pioneer in the field, Fr. Robert Jacquinot de Bésange, SJ
(1878-1946), a French Jesuit who set up a “safety” zone in
Shanghai, China in 1937.
During the undeclared Sino-Japanese was that began that year,
the so-called Jacquinot zone sheltered some 250,000 Chinese
refugees, inspiring the creation of a similar area in Nanking.
Much has been written on atrocities in the later city after
its seizure by Japan in December 1937 and the efforts of a
number of Westerners to care for Chinese civilians there.
Little attention, however, has been paid to Jacquinot’s
initiative, praised by others at the time and cited in the
commentary to the Geneva Conventions as an important precedent
of a neutral zone in time of war.
Japan’s expansionism in East Asia during the 1930s began with
its seizure of Manchuria in 1931 and resumed after clashes
with Chinese troops near Beijing in July 1937. The fighting
soon reached Shanghai, China’s largest city and commercial
port. After two Japanese marines were killed in the city on 9
Aug. Japan launched a major offensive at Shanghai, ostensibly
to protect its 27,000 nationals there, a move vigorously
denounced by Chinese generalissmo Chiang Ki-shek.
The metropolis of 4 million had witnessed similar clashes in
1932, but this conflict was bloodier. Chinese civilians were
again the most vulnerable but, this time, residents of
Shanghai’s International Settlement, occupied and run by
British, Americans, and civilians of other countries were not
spared. Preoccupied by troubles in Europe, Western powers did
little to oppose Japan, opting for appeasement to forestall a
global conflict.
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For the hundreds of thousands of Shanghai’s Chinese, whose
neighborhoods were pounded by Japanese bombers, the
international settlements, “concessions” under foreign
control, offered the only hope of refuge. So the population of
the foreign `concessions’ swelled from 1.5 to3 million. To
respond to the crisis, municipal authorities and aid societies
created early 200 “welcome camps”. Thousands of refugees were
housed in schools, hospitals, and temples. At the Jesuit
mission at Zikawei on the outskirts of the city, more than
11,000 refugees were fed daily and some 4000 were housed at
St. Ignatius College.
Horrified by the crisis, Jacquinot considered a more ambitious
plan. In early Nov. 1937, he approached Chinese and Japanese
authorities with a proposal for a safety zone of one square
mile in Nantao. His Fr Robert pleads with Japanese soldiers
credentials as president of an international commission for
refugees and vice president of the local Red Cross committee
bolstered his request.
After three days of negotiations, the area was given to a
Committee headed by Jacquinot. The accepted responsibility for
administering the zone, gaining tacit agreement from the
belligerents not to enter the area. The local press dubbed it
the “Jacquinot zone” and praised the French Jesuits as the
“Christian savior” of Shanghai.
Jacquinot went about his mission of mercy in his usual attire,
a long threadbare cassock and a floppy blue beret. Born in
1878 in Saintes, France, he had arrived in Shanghai in 1913 to
study Chinese and serve as pastor of a Chinese parish. He was
soon teaching science at the Jesuits’ Aurora University,
established in 1903. It was here that he lost his right
forearm in a laboratory accident, though he was able to save
his eyesight and a student in the mishap.
Despite this handicap, Jacquinot did “more with his left
hand,” as one colleague noted, “than most people do with two.”
In 1927, he saved a group of nuns from Communist attack and
was commended by the Chinese government for his valor. During
hostilities in 1932, he secured cease-fires on several
occasions, earning a Croix de Guerre for evacuating more than
2000 civilians and setting up camps for some 20,000 refugees.
Jacquinot also established relief committees for flood victims
in 1932 and 1936. Jacquinot’s Shanghai zone offered refuge to
about 250,000 refugees. The zone’s neutrality was respected
until refugees began to disperse in 1938. Jacquinot returned
to the arduous task of feeding and housing the refugees, all
without political power, military force, or adequate
resources.
In 1940, after 28 years in China, he returned to France to
help war victims in suburban Paris with the Red Cross. In
December 1945 he became head of a Vatican delegation for
refugees in Berlin where, a few months later, he died of
exhaustion at age 68. Though military and ecclesiastical
honors were given him at his funeral, a far more touching
homage had been offered before his death by a humble rickshaw
puller in Shanghai. After taking Jacquinot to the place where
he would be inducted into the Legion of Honor, the driver
refused fare for the ride. Carrying the “Savior of Shanghai”
had been enough reward.
Events
In
2005, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) marked a milestone.
Twenty-five years earlier, Superior General Pedro Arrupe, SJ,
created JRS to minister to those displaced by the Vietnam War.
Few today, however know of earlier work with refugees by a
pioneer in the field, Fr. Robert Jacquinot de Bésange, SJ
(1878-1946), a French Jesuit who set up a “safety” zone in
Shanghai, China in 1937. 
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