Within the confines of the zone, they sheltered over 300,000 civilians during the weeks of the sacking of Nanking. That this number also ended up matching the number of people who survived this period gives you a good indication just what the Japanese high command had meant by no prisoners. However, even that was superseded by the need to keep Europe and America from interfering with Japanese plans at this time, which explains the lack of direct action taken against individual foreign civilians and the cordon's success.
The movie Nanking has been created using as source material the letters and diaries of these extraordinary men and women, who refused to stand by and do nothing while those around them were slaughtered. They were a mixed bag of people: a doctor, a missionary teacher, a Nazi businessman, and a lawyer, to name a few; twenty people who protected three hundred thousand through sheer nerve and courage and the knowledge that nobody else was going to do anything for these people if they didn't.
The people who have created the movie Nanking have not just turned to the letters and diaries of the "International Committee", the name the twenty took for themselves, but have gone and tracked down citizens of the city who survived because of their intercession. Somehow — and considering the fact the Japanese government still refuses to acknowledge the scope of the crime, this is a minor miracle — they also managed to track down Japanese soldiers who were willing to talk about their experiences.
A cast of American, European, Chinese, and Japanese actors, including Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, and Stephen Dorff, have taken on the task of recreating these people by reading excerpts from their letters home and any records they kept during that time. The producers have avoided the safe route of just offering a record of the times as seen by the victims and their saviours. Presenting the views of the Japanese soldiers, no matter what they end up saying, is proof of their integrity as it means that no matter how cut and dried the story appears they have still sought out potentially conflicting views. By putting a human face to the "monsters", it will also force us to realize that it was people, just like you and me, who committed the atrocities.
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