Wilson Plumer Mills
American Presbyterian missionary
Wilson Plumer Mills (December 1, 1883–February 26, 1959, Chinese: 米尔士) was an American missionary and humanitarian known for his efforts to protect civilians during the Nanjing Massacre (1937–1938) under Japanese occupation.
Biography
Early life and education
Born in 1883 to William Wilson Mills (1837–1905) and Sarah Edith Ann Smith Mills (1838–1911), Mills grew up in a family with three older brothers, one sister, and a younger sister who died in infancy. He earned his first bachelor's degree from Davidson College in 1903, followed by a second degree at the University of Oxford in 1910. In 1912, he graduated from Columbia Theological Seminary with a Bachelor of Divinity and soon joined the YMCA in China, serving until 1931. From 1933, he worked as a pastor under the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board.
Nanjing and Shanghai
In November 1937, as Japanese forces advanced toward Nanjing, Mills became vice-chairman of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, a civilian protection initiative led by German businessman John Rabe. On November 22, Mills and fellow missionary Miner Searle Bates met with U.S. Consul John M. Paxton aboard the USS Panay to relay a proposal to Japanese authorities a ceasefire, though the effort failed.
After Nanjing fell on December 13, 1937, Mills actively documented Japanese atrocities. From January to March 1938, he sent harrowing accounts of massacres, rapes, and looting to his wife, Harriet Cornelia Seyle Mills, from his residence at 65 Mochou Road. He also protested directly to the Japanese Embassy, demanding restraint from military personnel.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wilson Plumer Mills” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.