George Ashmore Fitch

Fitch's parents had arrived in China on November 5, 1870. During that time, they were active in the Christian community in both Shanghai and Suzhou.[3] Fitch's father served as the chairman of the Chinese branch of the U.S. Presbyterian Mission Agency.[4] They held bible study sessions every Wednesday, in which they encountered high-profile Chinese people, including Sun Yat-sen, Tang Shaoyi, and Wang Chonghui.[3][4][5]

Fitch's parents also corresponded with a number of Korean Christians during their time in China, including Yun Chi-ho and Lyuh Woon-hyung. While the Fitches’ interest in Korea was initially primarily religious, after the Japanese formally colonized Korea in 1910, the Fitches began providing assistance to Korean independence activists.[3][5] For example, in 1919, they helped Ahn Chang-ho and the Korean Provisional Government with the reestablishment of the Korean Red Cross, as the original had been forcefully absorbed into the Japanese Red Cross in 1909.[4][3][5] In addition to providing direct aid, they also shared their connections to important people with the Koreans. For example, they introduced Lyuh to Charles Richard Crane on November 28, 1918.[5] However, these activities drew the ire of the Japanese government, who went on to monitor the family for decades.[3][5]

The Fitch family in New York (1897)

Fitch and his siblings all returned to the United States for schooling and went back to China to work as missionaries. Fitch returned to the United States in 1900 to pursue his education.[3][4] He graduated from the College of Wooster, Ohio in 1906, and Union Theological Seminary in New York with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1909. He also studied at Columbia University around this time.[2][3][4]

The Fitch couple and notable Korean independence activists. Bottom row from the right are Fitch, his wife Geraldine, Kim Ku, and Franziska Donner (later the first First Lady of South Korea).

Like his father, Fitch assisted Koreans for much of his lifetime, and in his autobiography stated that he considered many prominent Koreans as his friends.[3] In his 1967 autobiography, he said of Koreans:[9]

The Japanese had been telling the world that Koreans were backward, inept, and incapable of self-government. Instead, they are highly intelligent and inventive. [...] They are generous, almost to the point of improvidence. Many of the Christians are conscientious tithers. The way they have supported their churches and the YMCA, when they have so little for themselves, is noteworthy. [...] Is it any wonder that I look back upon my three years in Korea as among the richest and most gratifying in my life?

According to Fitch's autobiography, he helped facilitate the later South Korean president Syngman Rhee's move to the United States.[6] In 1932, Fitch helped hide and facilitate the escape of Kim Ku and other members of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG) in the aftermath of the KPG's assassination of Japanese colonial personnel at Hongkou Park.[10][4][11] He also advocated for Ahn Changho's release after Ahn's arrest for allegedly being connected to the bombing.[3][4] He also introduced Jo So-ang to the Kuomintang Foreign Minister Guo Taiqi.[4][3]

On January 23, 1938, Fitch and 13 other Americans were allowed to leave the city on a Japanese military train.[12][13] He smuggled in the lining of his coat eight reels of 16 mm negative movie film that contained evidence of the massacre.[2][2][13] The film mainly contained evidence filmed by John Magee at the Nanjing University Hospital.[2][13] This evidence later proved instrumental in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also "Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal") in 1946, which he would later testify in.[2][12] After Fitch's departure, Hubert Lafayette Sone was elected administrative director of the successor to the Nanking Safety Zone, the Nanjing International Relief Committee.[14]

He briefly stayed in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. He then took the Philippine Clipper and arrived in San Francisco on March 9. He then flew to Washington, D.C., on March 17 and provided his first-hand account of the Massacre to U.S. State Department officials.[13]

Afterwards, he toured the United States and gave speeches and showed movies of the massacre to various audiences. He visited cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Seattle. In a speech at the Cleveland Heights Presbyterian Church, he said:[13]

The destruction of Nanking was the blackest page in modern history [...] The Japanese for two months kept up continuous looting, burning, robbing and murdering [...] Chinese men by the thousands were taken out to be killed by machine guns or slaughtered for hand grenade practice. [...] The poorest of the poor were robbed of their last coins, deprived of their bedding and all that they could gather out of a city systematically destroyed by fire. There were hundreds of cases of bestiality inflicted upon Chinese women.

Fitch was quoted in a June 11, 1938, story about Fitch's advocacy published in the San Francisco Chronicle:[13]

I heard the cries of tens of thousands of women kneeling and praying for help which we were helpless to give. First, their husbands and sons were torn from them and ruthlessly murdered. Then night after night squads of Japanese soldiers would invade the neutral zone and drag away hundreds of them, crying hysterically, to be subjected to unspeakable indignities. Theirs was a fate worse than death.

The Fitch couple joined two organizations that Syngman Rhee founded: the Korea–America Association (KAA) in 1942 and the Christian Friends of Korea in 1943.[3][4][lower-alpha 4]

Geraldine Townsend Fitch (1892–1976). Missionary, Korean independence activist, and second wife of Fitch

During the early 1940s, Geraldine stayed in the United States and actively participated in both of these groups. She wrote an article on behalf of the KAA and KPG that was published in The New York Times. She also advocated for the formal recognition of the KPG by the Kuomintang and by the US government via her connections to Soong Mei-ling and Eleanor Roosevelt. Through these efforts, she became close to influential Korean Americans such as Rhee and Yong-jeung Kim.[3]

George also advocated for the formal recognition of the KPG. In June 1944, he sent a letter to the US Department of State with twelve points that advocated for the recognition of the KPG.[3]

Upon the end of the war in August 1945, Fitch announced his retirement from the YMCA. He then served as deputy director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in the flooded Yellow River area of Kaifeng in 1946.[2][3] After this role, Fitch, then around 63 year old, intended to retire.[3]

Poster from the South Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs commemorating Fitch as the independence activist of the month for January 2018.

For his role in the Korean independence movement, Fitch is remembered fondly in South Korea. On January 8, 1952, Fitch received the Order of Cultural Merit from the South Korean government. On March 1, 1968, Fitch was among 56 foreigners who were awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation.[3] As of 2015, Fitch was among 46 foreigners to have received the award.[15]

On December 12, 2016, Li Qiang, then the Party Secretary of Jiangsu, awarded Fitch and five others the Zijin Grass International Commemorative Medal of Peace for their role in protecting civilians during the Nanjing Massacre.[16]

The personal documents of him and his wife between 1909 and 1949, including their correspondence with Syngman Rhee, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek, are held in the Fitch collection at the Harvard–Yenching Library of Harvard University.[17]