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Nanjing Massacre memorial shows more evidence of war crime

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-11 21:22

NANJING -- More than 800 new pieces of evidence from the Nanjing Massacre and other Japanese atrocities during WWII were shown here on Thursday, two days before the 71st anniversary of the notorious war crime.

The 816 items, including documents, videos, books, calligraphy and paintings, were collected this year mainly from China, the United States  and Japan, Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, told a press conference.

One of the items was a record compiled by Jiang Jiaqing, who fled through Shanghai, Nanjing and Anhui Province to Hong Kong and recorded the the Japanese atrocities during and after 1937.

The book records how Japanese forces conducted air raids across China. All the times and incidents in the book reflected actual events, Zhu said. "This is the first time the memorial has received such a detailed record by a refugee."

The institution also received a Japanese flag. The flag, donated by a Japanese, was used when Iwane Matsui's troops marched into Nanjing, then the capital of China, on December 17, 1937, according to records.

The Nanjing Massacre began immediately after December 13, 1937 when the city fell to the Japanese Army. More than 300,000 Chinese were killed, one third of the city's buildings were burned and more than 20,000 women were raped in the infamous war crime.

"More than 400 massacre survivors are still alive, but most of them are over 80 and in poor health," said Zhu, who is also the deputy head of the Nanjing Massacre Survivors Aid Association, which was founded four years ago.

"The newly donated items are hard evidence" of the events, Zhu said. "We will preserve the items carefully and choose some for display in the Memorial Hall."