NANJING (China) - CHINA marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship.
Sirens wailed, calling citizens to silence, a bell tolled, and tens of thousands of people, including frail survivors, gathered on Thursday for the reopening of a newly expanded massacre memorial in the former national capital in eastern China.
The six-week wave of killing by Japanese soldiers after Nanjing fell was among the bloodiest episodes of Japan's invasion of China. Official Chinese accounts say 300,000 were killed.
For China, how Japan remembers the 'Rape of Nanking' - as the city was then called in English - has become a test of how contrite its neighbour is about its brutal occupation of much of the country from the 1930s up to 1945.
Aged survivors came out to remind the world of the event.
Mr Chen Fubao, 75, clutched a black-and-white photo of his father, who was killed in the slaughter.
'We hope that the Japanese government, especially those in the nationalist factions, will admit the truth in history and learn from the Germans,' he said. 'They should not cover up their crimes any more.'
Beijing and Tokyo have been moving in recent months to ease long-running tensions over history, territory and energy and commemorative propaganda has avoided harsh words about Japan's current leaders.
Peace bell Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is due in China soon, more than a year after his predecessor, Mr Shinzo Abe, broke the ice with a visit. Top Chinese leaders stayed away from the memorial activities in Nanjing.
But the potency of wartime memories was clear in Thursday's ceremonies. Tearful survivors, officials and young people struck a 'peace bell' that rang out over the crowd.
Ms Qiu Xiuying, 80, said her mother had been killed in the massacre and an aunt injured. 'So every time there is a memorial, my tears will naturally flow,' she said.
While China insists that Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children in the weeks that followed Nanjing's capture, raping, torturing and mutilating many victims, some Japanese historians say the number was much lower. Some apologists for Tokyo's military past deny the massacre even happened.
An Allied war tribunal put the Nanjing death toll at about 142,000.
Mr Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, told Xinhua news agency that there was no doubting that 300,000 died.
Xinhua accused Japanese doubters of 'selective amnesia'.
'Curing this disease is not hard and sufferers often fully recover,' it said. 'But when it strikes a country or a nation, treating it is not easy.' -- REUTERS
NANJING - Nanjing retiree Xiang Yansong was 11 when invading Japanese soldiers shot his sick brother dead during their brutal occupation of China's wartime capital.
Seventy years on, a tearful Xiang is still waiting for an apology.
"Some Japanese just refuse to admit the truth. Why deny the truth, if you have done wrong, just admit it," the 81-year-old said, his voice choking with sobs.
"Every time we come up to this anniversary, our tears cannot stop flowing."
On Thursday China marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking". Chinese historians say Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children in the weeks that followed the city's fall, raping and torturing many of the victims.
An Allied war tribunal put the Nanjing death toll at about 142,000, but some Japanese historians say even that number is exaggerated, or deny the massacre ever happened.
While Beijing and Tokyo are enjoying a fragile thaw in ties after years of history-related tension, Japan's continuing refusal to acknowledge wartime atrocities remains a sticking point for older Chinese haunted by their memories, and for younger generations who say Tokyo has not properly atoned.
Every anniversary, sirens wail across Nanjing, a grim reminder for most residents born long after the bombing raids.
SEETHING ANGER
"The Japanese are the ones who did all the wrong. Every time I see them, I seethe with anger," said massacre survivor Zhang Huixia at a brief ceremony on Wednesday honouring victims killed at Nanjing's Dong Ping Gate.
Zhang was 10 when she hid from Japanese soldiers in an empty house.
"When I see them on television, I wish I could slice their flesh up. Perhaps after that I will feel better."
As Japanese and Chinese historians work together to narrow differences in historical perceptions, a number of films and books marking the 70th anniversary of Nanjing have reopened wounds and provoked howls of condemnation in both countries.
Earlier this month, China published an eight-volume collection of books profiling 13,000 massacre victims and the Japanese unit deemed responsible for their death.
The coming release of a Japanese nationalist-backed film, "The Truth About Nanjing" by director Saturo Mizushima, has been condemned by the Chinese government for denying the massacre.
"I feel it is wrong to cover up historical facts and not give respect to these victims. This is as good as not respecting the value of human life," said Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.
To commemorate the anniversary, Zhu will open a 25,000 sq metre extension on Thursday which will add documents, twisted sculptures and a display of victim remains unearthed during its construction.
"This is the 70th anniversary for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. I feel the future generations should not forget this part of history... Also, we hope such historical tragedies will not be repeated and hope that there is eternal peace in this world."
China looks ahead on 70th anniversary of Nanjing Massacre
AFP - Thursday, December 13
NANJING, China (AFP) - - Air sirens wailed in Nanjing on Thursday as China marked the 70th anniversary of the massacre here by Japanese troops, but the nation also showed signs of wanting to finally look ahead.
Thousands of sombre and tearful residents crowded the grounds of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall to commemorate those killed by the Japanese during their occupation of this eastern Chinese city that began on December 13, 1937.
The nation's government-controlled newspapers were also full of articles recalling the agony of the bloodshed that led to what China believes was the deaths of 300,000 civilians in Nanjing.
However this year's anniversary has coincided with a warming of Sino-Japanese ties and it appeared that Beijing had tempered its ferocious rhetoric over Japan's wartime record.
As white doves meant to symbolise peace soared skyward, officials here took care in a subdued ceremony that re-opened an expanded memorial hall to avoid inflammatory rhetoric that was seen during a diplomatic freeze between the two countries from 2002-2006.
"(The memorial hall) is to better preserve history. To never forget the past. To treasure peace and open the way to the future," said Xu Zhonglin, a provincial Communist Party chief who delivered the main speech at the ceremony.
Relations between Asia's two dominant powers, at odds over territorial disputes as well as wartime history, may still be fragile but China is genuine in wanting to improve ties, Chinese history professor Wang Weixing said.
"Today's commemoration is not to continue or deepen hate. It is precisely the opposite... to understand it," said Wang, from the Nanjing-based Jiangsu Academy of Social Science.
The English-language China Daily newspaper, which is a main vehicle for expressing the government's views to a foreign audience, said there was still much disappointment that Japan's atrocities had not been fully recognised.
"(But) we harbour no intention to cultivate animosity between the Chinese people against their Japanese neighbour," the editorial said.
Sino-Japanese relations began improving last year under former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who made reaching out to China a top priority of his brief tenure and travelled to Beijing in October 2006.
His visit was the first to China by a Japanese leader in five years.
Abe was replaced in September by Yasuo Fukuda, who is also a longtime advocate of warmer relations with China and is similarly expected to visit China soon, perhaps this month.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is then slated to visit Japan early next year in what would be the first visit by China's top leader there in a decade.
China, which suffered immense loss of life during World War II, has always reserved special anger for Japan's wartime record, infuriated by a sense that the island nation, unlike Germany, has never properly atoned for its past.
Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, stoked these feelings with his refusal to stop visiting a controversial Tokyo shrine where war criminals are among the honoured, prompting China to suspend all high-level diplomatic contacts.
China compares the bloodshed in Nanjing to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
Japan has apologised for wartime atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere in Asia, but the anger in China still simmers below the surface, and in the past has turned to dangerous anti-Japanese nationalism with frightening ease.
The world got a snapshot of this in early 2005, when protests by tens of thousands of Chinese students over the publication of Japanese school textbooks that glossed over Japan's war past turned violent in several cities.
China yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre by opening a memorial hall that blends commemoration of atrocities inflicted by invading Japanese with a message of peace.
The relatively positive tone of the new hall, along with measured reporting on the anniversary by state media, highlighted Beijing’s desire not to let historical disputes disrupt its recent rapprochement with Tokyo.
“Correct treatment of history can help people calmly and rationally deal with the contradictions in ties between the two countries,” the People’s Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist party, said in an opinion article noting the “sensitivity” of the anniversary year.
Officials in Nanjing, the former Chinese capital that suffered rape and killing of civilians and unarmed soldiers by Japanese forces in the winter of 1937-38, say its new enlarged memorial hall embodies an “appeal for peace”.
“In the past it was just about the Great Nanjing Massacre - now the peaceful content is more important,” Zhu Chengshan, the hall curator, told a news briefing this week. The softening of the tone of a hall that has been both focus and fuel for bitterness at past Japanese brutality reflects Beijing’s efforts to create more positive ties.
However, China shows no sign of easing its insistence that the invaders killed more than 300,000 people in Nanjing city in the weeks after its fall, a figure many historians see as highly inflated.
The number is carved into signs and walls at the new hall and Mr Zhu said Japanese who questioned a total confirmed by postwar tribunals were acting out of “ulterior motives”.
“Three hundred thousand is a cast-iron fact and distortion of it by anyone will not be tolerated,” he said.
Some rightwing historians and commentators in Japan seek to deny that any significant massacre of civilians or unlawful execution of prisoners took place in Nanjing. Estimates of the number killed by mainstream Japanese historians range from around 13,000 to more than 100,000, with totals depending in part on whether deaths before the city’s fall and in nearby regions are included.
China has sought to prevent debate on the scale of the killings being included in government-sponsored discussions between historians launched last year as part of the diplomatic warming that began after Shinzo Abe became Japanese prime minister.
Ties have continued to improve under Mr Abe’s successor, Yasuo Fukuda. However, Beijing and Tokyo have yet to make progress on a maritime border dispute, and a recent gathering of economics ministers was marred by accusations that China excised part of Japan’s position from its version of a post-meeting communiqué.
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NANJING (China) - CHINA marked 70 years since Japan's Nanjing massacre, invoking memories of the atrocity to remind Tokyo that the wartime past remains a bitter backdrop to an improving relationship.
Sirens wailed, calling citizens to silence, a bell tolled, and tens of thousands of people, including frail survivors, gathered on Thursday for the reopening of a newly expanded massacre memorial in the former national capital in eastern China.
The six-week wave of killing by Japanese soldiers after Nanjing fell was among the bloodiest episodes of Japan's invasion of China. Official Chinese accounts say 300,000 were killed.
For China, how Japan remembers the 'Rape of Nanking' - as the city was then called in English - has become a test of how contrite its neighbour is about its brutal occupation of much of the country from the 1930s up to 1945.
Aged survivors came out to remind the world of the event.
Mr Chen Fubao, 75, clutched a black-and-white photo of his father, who was killed in the slaughter.
'We hope that the Japanese government, especially those in the nationalist factions, will admit the truth in history and learn from the Germans,' he said. 'They should not cover up their crimes any more.'
Beijing and Tokyo have been moving in recent months to ease long-running tensions over history, territory and energy and commemorative propaganda has avoided harsh words about Japan's current leaders.
Peace bell
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is due in China soon, more than a year after his predecessor, Mr Shinzo Abe, broke the ice with a visit. Top Chinese leaders stayed away from the memorial activities in Nanjing.
But the potency of wartime memories was clear in Thursday's ceremonies. Tearful survivors, officials and young people struck a 'peace bell' that rang out over the crowd.
Ms Qiu Xiuying, 80, said her mother had been killed in the massacre and an aunt injured. 'So every time there is a memorial, my tears will naturally flow,' she said.
While China insists that Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children in the weeks that followed Nanjing's capture, raping, torturing and mutilating many victims, some Japanese historians say the number was much lower. Some apologists for Tokyo's military past deny the massacre even happened.
An Allied war tribunal put the Nanjing death toll at about 142,000.
Mr Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, told Xinhua news agency that there was no doubting that 300,000 died.
Xinhua accused Japanese doubters of 'selective amnesia'.
'Curing this disease is not hard and sufferers often fully recover,' it said. 'But when it strikes a country or a nation, treating it is not easy.' -- REUTERS
Nanjing massacre scars Chinese hearts 70 years on
December 13, 2007
NANJING - Nanjing retiree Xiang Yansong was 11 when invading Japanese soldiers shot his sick brother dead during their brutal occupation of China's wartime capital.
Seventy years on, a tearful Xiang is still waiting for an apology.
"Some Japanese just refuse to admit the truth. Why deny the truth, if you have done wrong, just admit it," the 81-year-old said, his voice choking with sobs.
"Every time we come up to this anniversary, our tears cannot stop flowing."
On Thursday China marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nanjing massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking". Chinese historians say Japanese troops killed 300,000 men, women and children in the weeks that followed the city's fall, raping and torturing many of the victims.
An Allied war tribunal put the Nanjing death toll at about 142,000, but some Japanese historians say even that number is exaggerated, or deny the massacre ever happened.
While Beijing and Tokyo are enjoying a fragile thaw in ties after years of history-related tension, Japan's continuing refusal to acknowledge wartime atrocities remains a sticking point for older Chinese haunted by their memories, and for younger generations who say Tokyo has not properly atoned.
Every anniversary, sirens wail across Nanjing, a grim reminder for most residents born long after the bombing raids.
SEETHING ANGER
"The Japanese are the ones who did all the wrong. Every time I see them, I seethe with anger," said massacre survivor Zhang Huixia at a brief ceremony on Wednesday honouring victims killed at Nanjing's Dong Ping Gate.
Zhang was 10 when she hid from Japanese soldiers in an empty house.
"When I see them on television, I wish I could slice their flesh up. Perhaps after that I will feel better."
As Japanese and Chinese historians work together to narrow differences in historical perceptions, a number of films and books marking the 70th anniversary of Nanjing have reopened wounds and provoked howls of condemnation in both countries.
Earlier this month, China published an eight-volume collection of books profiling 13,000 massacre victims and the Japanese unit deemed responsible for their death.
The coming release of a Japanese nationalist-backed film, "The Truth About Nanjing" by director Saturo Mizushima, has been condemned by the Chinese government for denying the massacre.
"I feel it is wrong to cover up historical facts and not give respect to these victims. This is as good as not respecting the value of human life," said Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.
To commemorate the anniversary, Zhu will open a 25,000 sq metre extension on Thursday which will add documents, twisted sculptures and a display of victim remains unearthed during its construction.
"This is the 70th anniversary for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. I feel the future generations should not forget this part of history... Also, we hope such historical tragedies will not be repeated and hope that there is eternal peace in this world."
China looks ahead on 70th anniversary of Nanjing Massacre
AFP - Thursday, December 13
NANJING, China (AFP) - - Air sirens wailed in Nanjing on Thursday as China marked the 70th anniversary of the massacre here by Japanese troops, but the nation also showed signs of wanting to finally look ahead.
Thousands of sombre and tearful residents crowded the grounds of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall to commemorate those killed by the Japanese during their occupation of this eastern Chinese city that began on December 13, 1937.
The nation's government-controlled newspapers were also full of articles recalling the agony of the bloodshed that led to what China believes was the deaths of 300,000 civilians in Nanjing.
However this year's anniversary has coincided with a warming of Sino-Japanese ties and it appeared that Beijing had tempered its ferocious rhetoric over Japan's wartime record.
As white doves meant to symbolise peace soared skyward, officials here took care in a subdued ceremony that re-opened an expanded memorial hall to avoid inflammatory rhetoric that was seen during a diplomatic freeze between the two countries from 2002-2006.
"(The memorial hall) is to better preserve history. To never forget the past. To treasure peace and open the way to the future," said Xu Zhonglin, a provincial Communist Party chief who delivered the main speech at the ceremony.
Relations between Asia's two dominant powers, at odds over territorial disputes as well as wartime history, may still be fragile but China is genuine in wanting to improve ties, Chinese history professor Wang Weixing said.
"Today's commemoration is not to continue or deepen hate. It is precisely the opposite... to understand it," said Wang, from the Nanjing-based Jiangsu Academy of Social Science.
The English-language China Daily newspaper, which is a main vehicle for expressing the government's views to a foreign audience, said there was still much disappointment that Japan's atrocities had not been fully recognised.
"(But) we harbour no intention to cultivate animosity between the Chinese people against their Japanese neighbour," the editorial said.
Sino-Japanese relations began improving last year under former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who made reaching out to China a top priority of his brief tenure and travelled to Beijing in October 2006.
His visit was the first to China by a Japanese leader in five years.
Abe was replaced in September by Yasuo Fukuda, who is also a longtime advocate of warmer relations with China and is similarly expected to visit China soon, perhaps this month.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is then slated to visit Japan early next year in what would be the first visit by China's top leader there in a decade.
China, which suffered immense loss of life during World War II, has always reserved special anger for Japan's wartime record, infuriated by a sense that the island nation, unlike Germany, has never properly atoned for its past.
Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, stoked these feelings with his refusal to stop visiting a controversial Tokyo shrine where war criminals are among the honoured, prompting China to suspend all high-level diplomatic contacts.
China compares the bloodshed in Nanjing to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
Japan has apologised for wartime atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere in Asia, but the anger in China still simmers below the surface, and in the past has turned to dangerous anti-Japanese nationalism with frightening ease.
The world got a snapshot of this in early 2005, when protests by tens of thousands of Chinese students over the publication of Japanese school textbooks that glossed over Japan's war past turned violent in several cities.
Nanjing Massacre Rape of Nanking Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgENINXPrAM
Nanjing Massacre Rape of Nanking Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwdzxTMFUl4
China softens tone on Japan’s war crimes
By Mure Dickie in Beijing
December 14 2007
China yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre by opening a memorial hall that blends commemoration of atrocities inflicted by invading Japanese with a message of peace.
The relatively positive tone of the new hall, along with measured reporting on the anniversary by state media, highlighted Beijing’s desire not to let historical disputes disrupt its recent rapprochement with Tokyo.
“Correct treatment of history can help people calmly and rationally deal with the contradictions in ties between the two countries,” the People’s Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist party, said in an opinion article noting the “sensitivity” of the anniversary year.
Officials in Nanjing, the former Chinese capital that suffered rape and killing of civilians and unarmed soldiers by Japanese forces in the winter of 1937-38, say its new enlarged memorial hall embodies an “appeal for peace”.
“In the past it was just about the Great Nanjing Massacre - now the peaceful content is more important,” Zhu Chengshan, the hall curator, told a news briefing this week. The softening of the tone of a hall that has been both focus and fuel for bitterness at past Japanese brutality reflects Beijing’s efforts to create more positive ties.
However, China shows no sign of easing its insistence that the invaders killed more than 300,000 people in Nanjing city in the weeks after its fall, a figure many historians see as highly inflated.
The number is carved into signs and walls at the new hall and Mr Zhu said Japanese who questioned a total confirmed by postwar tribunals were acting out of “ulterior motives”.
“Three hundred thousand is a cast-iron fact and distortion of it by anyone will not be tolerated,” he said.
Some rightwing historians and commentators in Japan seek to deny that any significant massacre of civilians or unlawful execution of prisoners took place in Nanjing. Estimates of the number killed by mainstream Japanese historians range from around 13,000 to more than 100,000, with totals depending in part on whether deaths before the city’s fall and in nearby regions are included.
China has sought to prevent debate on the scale of the killings being included in government-sponsored discussions between historians launched last year as part of the diplomatic warming that began after Shinzo Abe became Japanese prime minister.
Ties have continued to improve under Mr Abe’s successor, Yasuo Fukuda. However, Beijing and Tokyo have yet to make progress on a maritime border dispute, and a recent gathering of economics ministers was marred by accusations that China excised part of Japan’s position from its version of a post-meeting communiqué.
十年生死兩茫茫。不思量，自难忘。
千里孤坟，无处话凄凉。
纵使相逢应不识，尘滿面，鬓如霜。
夜来幽梦忽还乡，小轩窗，正梳妆。
相顾无言，唯有淚千行。
料得年年肠断处，明月夜，短松冈。
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