John Magee (missionary)
| John Magee | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Gillespie Magee 1884 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Died | 1953 (aged 68–69) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Occupation | Priest, missionary |
John Gillespie Magee (1884 – 1953) was an American Episcopal priest, best known for his work in Nanking as a missionary, and for the films and pictures he took during the Nanking Massacre. He is also credited with saving thousands of lives throughout the event.
Magee was born in 1884 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 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, 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 a missionary from Helmingham in Suffolk, England, Faith Emmeline Backhouse. They had four sons: John, Hugh, David and Christopher. Their first son was named John Gillespie Magee, Jr. after his father, and 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 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.
Some people wanted to buy Magee's original film for large sums of money for political purposes, yet he would not budge. 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.
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