Chinese officials struck a tempered tone on the 80th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre on Wednesday, saying China would “look forward” and deepen friendship with its neighbor Japan despite historical misgivings.
Chinese President Xi Jinping led a citywide minute of silence but did not speak as Yu Zhengsheng, head of China’s parliamentary advisory body, urged China and Japan to draw lessons from history and look forward to the future.
The remarks were a departure from China’s frequent criticism of Japan for not showing sufficient contrition for the brutality of its expansionist campaign that swept across Asia during the first half of the 20th century. China’s ruling Communist Party has often allowed anti-Japanese sentiment to build domestically, but relations have improved in recent months
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World should reflect on Nanjing Massacre
In recent years, the world has been gripped by the concept of history. Some bury history, while others bring it into the light. We now understand that telling the truth and uncovering the past is the only route to reconciliation and peace in society, as well as in the hearts and minds of survivors and families.
It is with this lens that I reflect on the Nanjing Massacre. December 13, 2017 marks 80 years since this atrocity which, despite the horrifying loss of life and troubling legacy, remains largely unknown and undiscussed in the West.
On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops began a six-week massacre in Nanking (today known as Nanjing), the then-capital of China. Acts of arson, murder, and the slaughter of 30,000 prisoners of war occurred for weeks after their surrender.
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Why the Nanking massacre must never be forgotten
The memory of the Nanking massacre victims has a secure place in the national identity. Yesterday’s 80th anniversary is testament to that. Attended by state leaders including President Xi Jinping, the ceremony in Nanjing was the fourth annual national memorial day since the anniversary was accorded a higher profile in 2014. The enhanced recognition also reflects its contemporary relevance. Even though the atrocity perpetrated by the Japanese aggressor happened so long ago it remains a big psychological and emotional factor in China today.
Regrettably, it still poisons relations between the two countries, amid disputes over the toll of soldiers and civilians – put at about 300,000 by China – and denials by some on the Japanese far right that it ever happened. The tragedy therefore also has resonance for the people of Asia, given that China and Japan are the most important players in the region.
The toll of the years on the surviving victims of war crimes, with fewer than 100 designated as Nanking massacre “survivors” still alive, adds to the poignancy of the legacy of suffering.
related: 80 years on, China tempers Nanking massacre anniversary
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Chinese worldwide share Nanjing’s painful memory
China will hold an annual memorial for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre on Wednesday as the tragedy is becoming a shared memory for Chinese around the world.
On Wednesday, leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the central government will attend the ceremony in Nanjing at a square in front of the Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
On December 13, 1937, Nanjing fell to Japanese invaders who went on a more than month-long slaughter of civilians. About 300,000 Chinese were killed, and 20,000 women raped. In February 2014, China's top legislature designated December 13 as a national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
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Oldest survivor of Nanking massacre dies at 100, just before memorial day
Oldest survivor of Nanking massacre dies at 100, just before memorial day
The oldest survivor of the 1937 Nanking massacre died on Sunday at the age of 100, state media reports, just days before the 80th anniversary of the mass killings on Wednesday.
There are now less than 100 survivors still alive, China News Service reported on Sunday.
Guan Guangjing was 20 when the massacre began on December 13, 1937 – the day the Japanese captured the city now known as Nanjing, which was then the capital of China under the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek.
relaed: 80 years later: can China, Japan overcome Nanking massacre’s legacy?
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Survivors of Nanjing Massacre
Combo photo shows portraits of survivors of the Nanjing Massacre: (from L to R, top) Guan Guangjing (deceased); Zhu Sizi (97 yrs); Liu Tingyu (95 yrs); Chen Yulan (95 yrs); (from L to R, bottom) Li Suyun (94 yrs); Wang Yilong (94 yrs); Wang Changfa (94 yrs); Xue Yujuan (93 yrs).
The year 2017 marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, in which more than 300,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese invaders who occupied Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, marking the start of six weeks of destruction, pillage, rape and slaughter in the city.
There are only less than 100 living survivors of the atrocity. Reporters from Xinhua spent many years to look for the survivors of Nanjing Massacre and recorded their current lives. (Xinhua/Han Yuqing, Li Xiang and Ji Chunpeng)
related: China holds state memorial ceremony for Nanjing Massacre Victims
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The faces of massacre survivors: Powerful portraits show the Chinese residents who survived a WWII bloodbath which saw 300,000 people killed by Japanese soldiers
Behind their kind, weathered eyes, the survivors of the Nanjing Massacre have witnessed unspeakable tragedy that has left them shaken but astoundingly resilient.
Portraits of survivors of the Nanjing Massacre were unveiled in honour of China's third official Day of Remembrance which acknowledges the horrific six weeks that began December 13, 1937.
This year marks the 79th anniversary of the tragedy that killed 300,000 people and left tens of thousands of women sexually assaulted by Imperial Japanese soldiers.
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Sculptor captures the horrors of war in tributes to victims of Japanese aggression
Wu Weishan works on a sculpture. Photo: Courtesy of Yangzi
Wednesday marked the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, an episode of brutal violence during which invading Japanese troops killed more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, over a period of six weeks.
Over the years numerous artists have used their art to memorialize the massacre and ensure that its victims are not forgotten.
Internationally renowned sculptor Wu Weishan is one of these artists. Beginning in 2005, Wu made his first series of sculptures depicting the pain and anguish surrounding this horrific event. Returning to this sad moment in history over the years, Wu has worked hard to raise awareness about the massacre through his artworks.
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The ‘Western front’ of the war over ‘The Rape of Nanking’
December 13, 2017, marks the 80th anniversary of the Japanese Imperial Army’s seizure of Nanjing, then capital of Nationalist China. What occurred next, with alleged weeks of mass executions, rapes, torture, looting and arson, is steeped in controversy and poisons relations between China and Japan and their peoples to this day.
This year is also the 20th anniversary of Iris Chang’s 1997 book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.
Weaving contemporaneous letters and diaries, government intelligence reports, war-crime investigations and testimony with modern oral history, The Rape of Nanking arrived at a time when the events at Nanjing had been largely forgotten in the English-speaking West. That could no longer be said after the book’s appearance. Chang’s book achieved remarkable sales and was showered with praise from leading academic historians and others. Chang herself, a mere 29 years of age when the book was published, was feted at book signings and other public events.
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“Scars Of Nanking,” To Premiere On 80th Anniversary Of Nanking Massacre
In Scars of Nanking, American missionaries struggle to save Chinese civilians from slaughter and rape at the hands of Japanese invaders—and to smuggle out evidence of the infamous Nanking Massacre of 1937. Directed by John Ealer (World Wars; Making of the Mob) and produced and written by Frederick Rendina (World Wars; Francisco, the Jesuit).
Four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a small band of foreigners, including American missionaries, choose to stay in the fallen Chinese capital during the brutal “Rape of Nanking” —and help create a safety zone for civilians. These Americans play a key role in bringing evidence of the Nanking Massacre to the rest of the world. One missionary, Father John Magee, films the aftermath of atrocities, while another, George Fitch, risks everything to clandestinely spirit the films out of the city. Dr. Robert Wilson saves countless lives as the only remaining surgeon in Nanking, and a heroic teacher, Minnie Vautrin, prevents hundreds of rapes singlehandedly. Their stories come to life through the letters and diaries they actually wrote during that terrible time as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.
Renowned experts provide powerful insight, including historian Ian Buruma, editor of the New York Review of Books and author of Year Zero: A History of 1945 and Academy Award nominated filmmaker Christine Choy (In the Name of the Emperor; Who Killed Vincent Chin). Survivors and eyewitnesses add resonance.
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The Rape of Nanjing 1937-1938: 300,000 Deaths
In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.
The actual military invasion of Nanking was preceded by a tough battle at Shanghai that began in the summer of 1937. Chinese forces there put up surprisingly stiff resistance against the Japanese Army which had expected an easy victory in China. The Japanese had even bragged they would conquer all of China in just three months. The stubborn resistance by the Chinese troops upset that timetable, with the battle dragging on through the summer into late fall. This infuriated the Japanese and whetted their appetite for the revenge that was to follow at Nanking.
After finally defeating the Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000 Japanese soldiers then marched on toward Nanking. Unlike the troops at Shanghai, Chinese soldiers at Nanking were poorly led and loosely organized. Although they greatly outnumbered the Japanese and had plenty of ammunition, they withered under the ferocity of the Japanese attack, then engaged in a chaotic retreat. After just four days of fighting, Japanese troops smashed into the city on December 13, 1937, with orders issued to "kill all captives."
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THE RAPE OF NANKING OR NANJING MASSACRE (1937)
BURIAL ALIVE AT NANKING (NANJING) 1937
Japanese armies invaded China's northern provinces and quickly captured the ancient Chinese capital Peking (now called Beijing). In the conduct of this war, the Japanese adopted a policy of deliberate savagery in the expectation that it would break the will of the Chinese to resist. Although poorly trained and equipped, the Chinese army and communist irregulars put up strong resistance to Japan's armies which enjoyed overwhelming superiority in numbers, training, and weapons. The Japanese troops responded to Chinese resistance to their invasion by embarking on an orgy of murder, rape, and looting that shocked the civilised world at that time, although it has now been largely forgotten in many Western countries where the rigorous teaching of history is becoming a neglected discipline.
While fighting was continuing in northern China, the Japanese launched a second front at the city of Shanghai on the eastern coast of China. Despite determined resistance by Chinese Nationalist troops, the Japanese captured Shanghai in November, 1937. As if to make an exhibition of their brutality to the Western world, the Japanese marched hundreds of Chinese prisoners of war down to the Bund, or river bank, and slaughtered them by machine-gun in full view of horrified observers aboard foreign ships moored in the river. Having captured Shanghai, the Japanese were then able to move up the Yangtze River and lay siege to the Nationalist capital Nanking (now called Nanjing).
It is not possible to document here the full extent of the horrors experienced by China at the hands of the Japanese between 1937 and 1945. Those who are interested in a detailed treatment of this terrible episode in China's history will find it in the books of Lord Russell of Liverpool, Iris Chang and Laurence Rees that are mentioned at the end of this chapter. I will mention here only the Rape of Nanking (now called the Nanjing Massacre) which is the best documented of Japanese atrocities in China owing to the presence of Western observers who were eyewitnesses to the mass slaughter, rape and looting that the Japanese inflicted on the unfortunate population of the Chinese capital.
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Remembering Nanjing 1937
On December 13, Chinese President Xi Jinping led a memorial ceremony in Nanjing to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. All major state and Party newspapers published black-and-white front pages and website home pages.
Chinese officials estimated the civilian death toll during during the six-week orgy of violence at around 300,000. Some Japanese revisionist historians question those numbers or even deny it occurred, salt on an already raw historical wound. On the other hand, Beijing’s calls for Japan to “remember history” strike some observers as hypocritical (in Chinese) for a Party that prefers to gloss over the unappealing aspects of its own past.
But whatever story the Party prefers to tell about the Nanjing Massacre, it is a historical atrocity that should be remembered and studied. To that end, I’d like to recommend a few things.
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Iris Chang: Divided into the Truth of Nanjing Massacre
It is still inconceivable to imagine how a gentle young woman who decided to take on Nanjing Massacre, an event where more than 300,000 Chinese were tortured and murdered by the Japanese army in 1937, ended up dead at the age of 36.
Born in the US, Iris Chang, whose Chinese name was Zhang Chunru, was the daughter of two University of Illinois professors. Chang's mother remembered her as a diligent and passionate person who was deeply curious about Chinese history, and never gave up in her quest for social justice.
Despite her youth, she directed this passion to interrogating the Nanjing Massacre, traveling to China to scour stacks of archives and interview survivors of the massacre.
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China Observes Landmark Anniversary of Nanjing Massacre
China marked the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre at the hands of Japanese imperial forces with a call for the two Asian neighbors and rivals to "deepen" their longstanding, yet frayed relationship.
President Xi Jinping was on hand, but did not speak, during Wednesday's ceremony, which included a moment of silence and featured Chinese soldiers bearing large funeral wreaths in honor of the 300,000 victims they said died at the hands of Japanese troops during a six-week long rampage through what was then China's capital.
A postwar tribunal eventually cut that to 200,000, but some Japanese officials have questioned whether the incident even took place.
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Painful Past: China Observes 80th Anniversary of Nanjing Massacre
On December 13, 2017 China observed the 80 th Anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre , a sordid episode in Imperial Japan’s history and a source of pain and resentment against Japan for Chinese people around the world. In a speech delivered at the ceremony, Yu Zhensheng, the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a leader of the Communist Party of China referred to Japan’s atrocities in other countries during the Second World War, like the Manila massacre (1945), the Bataan Death March (1942) in the Philippines and the Thai-Burma railway construction (1942-43).
Whether this is a bid to project Chinese ‘soft-power’ or to undermine the efforts of the ‘Quad’ (a grouping of India, Australia, Japan, and the United States of America) is yet to be seen. Yu in the same address mentioned that “China and Japan must act on the basis of both their people's basic interests, correctly grasp the broad direction of peaceful and friendly cooperation, take history as a mirror, face the future and pass on friendship down the generations”.
The ceremony was also attended by President Xi Jinping, who did not speak but stood in the audience. This is the second time he has attended the ceremony since the first memorial day was held in 2014.
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Nanjing massacre remembered
A memorial service to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre committed by the Japanese military during World War II brought together hundreds of activists and members of the Chinese and other Asian communities on Sunday in San Francisco.
The memorial, organized by the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, the Committee to Promote Reunification of China, the Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War and Comfort Women Justice Coalition, has been held annually for the past 20 years with the aim of exposing the Japanese Imperial Army's war crimes and encouraging people to understand and never forget the dark chapter of history.
"The Japanese Army blatantly violated international conventions and committed the extremely cruel atrocity in Nanjing, where 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered and one third of the buildings were destroyed," said Zha Liyou, acting Chinese consul general in San Francisco, at the service.
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Boston Chinatown to hold 80th Nanjing Massacre candle light vigil Dec 13
Wednesday, December 13, 2017 marks the 80th Anniversary of the “Nanking Massacre” aka “Rape of Nanking”.
Chinese American Citizen’s Alliance (CACA) Boston Lodge will hold a peaceful candle light vigil at Chinatown Gateway Park from 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM on that evening.
This is not an anti-Japanese demonstration. The vigil is to remember what happened 80 years ago and to honor the memories of more than 300,000 Chinese civilians who were raped and murdered by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
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Nanking Massacre (Rape of Nanking)
The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre is also known as the Rape of Nanking or, using Pinyin romanization, the Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing.
The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000] and perpetrated widespread rape and looting.
Since most Japanese military records on the killings were kept secret or destroyed shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, historians have been unable to accurately estimate the death toll of the massacre. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated in 1946 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident. China's official estimate is more than 300,000 dead based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in 1947. The death toll has been actively contested among scholars since the 1980s
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NANKING MASSACRE
In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking (or Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Nanking, then the capital of Nationalist China, was left in ruins, and it would take decades for the city and its citizens to recover from the savage attacks.
Following a bloody victory in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese turned their attention towards Nanking. Fearful of losing them in battle, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek ordered the removal of nearly all official Chinese troops from the city, leaving it defended by untrained auxiliary troops. Chiang also ordered the city held at any cost, and forbade the official evacuation of its citizens. Many ignored this order and fled, but the rest were left to the mercy of the approaching enemy.
A small group of Western businessmen and missionaries, the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, attempted to set up a neutral area of the city that would provide refuge for Nanking’s citizens. The safety zone, opened in November 1937, was roughly the size of New York’s Central Park and consisted of more than a dozen small refugee camps. On December 1, the Chinese government abandoned Nanking, leaving the International Committee in charge. All remaining citizens were ordered into the safety zone for their protection.
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HOW DID THE NANJING MASSACRE HAPPEN?
On December 13, 1937 Imperial Japanese troops invaded the capital city of Nanjing where they ransacked, pillaged and slaughtered civilians for six weeks. The city was essentially abandoned by Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek who called for the removal of most official troops following a brutal loss in Shanghai. He forbade official evacuation of civilians and ordered the untrained troops left to defend the city at any cost.
The soldiers who remained were tracked down by the Japanese and killed. They were lumped into mass graves along with civilians who happened to be in the way. They even had killing contests to see who could get the highest body count. Decaying bodies filled the streets and the safety zone which was established for the protection of civilians was ignored. According to History.com, the safety zone was about the size of Central Park.
In addition to the slaughtering of 300,000 people in six weeks, women were raped in the thousands. There were 40 military brothels in the city alone where Japanese soldiers would rape women as young as 12 years old. They were referred to as 'comfort women'.
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