Reflecting on Nanjing Massacre

After a persistent campaign in the Ontario Legislature, the Nanjing Massacre Victims Monument was finally unveiled on Sunday in Richmond Hill, Canada.

The monument follows the legislature’s decision last year to observe Dec. 13 as Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day at the provincial level.

Lessons of the massacre are not taught in Ontario classrooms as often as those of the Holocaust, said former lawmaker of Ontario parliament Soo Wong, whose motion was passed unanimously in Ontario’s legislature last year, recognizing Dec. 13 as the day to commemorate the massacre, in the Canadian province.

Ontario, home to Canada’s largest Asian community with more than 3 million people of Asian descent, became the first regional legislature in a Western country to adopt the motion.

In San Francisco on Sunday, a memorial service also was held to mark the 81st anniversary of the massacre.

Jointly launched by the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations and Chinese Freemasons of Canada (Toronto), the monument was supported by Chinese communities in Canada with a donation of more than C$240,000.

Engraved with “Remember History, Pray for Peace”, the granite black monument at the Elgin Mills Cemetery sits in the west and faces east, to the ancestral home of Chinese Canadians.

Han Tao, the Chinese consul general in Toronto, said at the ceremony that the memorial is not meant to evoke hatred but to prevent similar tragedies.

“The monument will help people of all backgrounds here understand the tragic history of the Nanjing Massacre, (and to) safeguard justice and value peace,” said Han. “It will also deepen the mutual understanding and friendship between China and Canada and contribute to a stable and prosperous world.”

The Nanjing Massacre unfolded when Japanese troops captured the city on Dec 13, 1937. In six weeks, they killed 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers

Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, sent a message to acknowledge the horror of the crimes.

“We gather to remember the (tens of) thousands of Chinese citizens who were brutalized and killed during the Sino-Japanese War. … In doing so, we learn from the lessons of history and strengthen our commitment to peace and to building a better world.”

Gayle Nathanson, associate director at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said at the Richmond Hill event that those who don’t know the past are bound to repeat it.

“All of us have an obligation to remember Nanjing,”she said. “My hope is that today is only the beginning of a closer relationship between the Chinese community and the Jewish community, so that together we honor the victims of Nanjing and make sure that no such tragedy happens again.”

In California, an event organized by the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, the Committee to Promote Reunification of China, the Alliance for Preserving the Truth of the Sino-Japanese War and the Comfort Women Justice Coalition,drew 300 people, including Chinese officials, local elected officials, activists and members of the Chinese and Korean communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Only when you squarely face history, you can create the future. Today we mourn our compatriots not to continue hatred but to learn from the history, so that history is not repeated,” Zou Yonghong, China’s deputy consul general in San Francisco, said at the service.

“The Nanjing Massacre is one of the worst atrocities committed in human history. All Chinese worldwide are united in December to commemorate it,” Jennifer Cheung, president of the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, told the audience. “We gather here every year. We want to tell the world we will not forget, and we will make sure the young generation will learn the history.”

“We are living in a dangerous time; we are living in a time of fake news; we are living in a time when people like to forget; we are living in a time when right-wing nationalism is rising again, so it’s important that we are here to remember,” said Judith Mirkinson, president of the Comfort Women Justice Coalition.

In 2015, the Nanjing Massacre was listed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Memory of the World Register, a compendium aimed at preserving documented heritage of universal value, making the massacre part of the world’s collective memory.

But the Japanese government tried to whitewash the history by calling the Nanjing Massacre “a local riot” in Japan’s secondary school textbooks, said Cheung.

“It is a blatant lie,” she said.

Xinhua contributed to this story. Contact the writers at renali@chinadailyusa.com