[Alberta Special Issue on the 70th Anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory] Nanjing Massacre

[Alberta Special Issue on the 70th Anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory] Nanjing Massacre Phoenix Zhang Zhaohong On September 12, 2014, I went to Nanjing to participate in a competition organized by...

Phoenix City Zhang Zhaohong

On September 12, 2014, I went to Nanjing to participate in a seminar organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. On September 18, arranged by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Jiangsu Province, we visited the "Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese Invaders."

In 1982, Japan escalated its long-planned action of tampering with history and changed the word "invasion of China" in its textbooks to "entering China." This despicable act immediately aroused great indignation among the people of Nanjing, who decided to establish a site history museum to commemorate the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders. The site of the museum was selected at Jiangdong Gate in the southwest of Nanjing City, which was the main site of the Japanese massacre and the burial place of the victims. The memorial hall was built and opened in 1985. After two expansions in 1995 and 2005, it now covers an area of ​​75,000 square meters and a construction area of ​​25,000 square meters. It includes four areas: exhibition gathering, site memorial, peace park and collection. The exhibition gathering has three parts: square display, remains display and historical materials display. It has collected more than 10,000 historical materials and cultural relics and is a national first-class museum.

Our students from all over the world came to the exhibition venue with great sadness and indignation. There is a large cross stone in the square with the timeline of the Nanjing Massacre engraved on it. Passing through the cemetery square, the ground is paved with cobblestones and there is no grass growing, which symbolizes the accumulation of bones and death. You can see large sculptures such as "Disaster of the Ancient City" and "Broken City Gate". The "Cry of the Wounded Souls" sculpture group stands at the entrance of the square. Behind it is the "Wall of Disaster" inscribed with the words "Victims 300,000" in the characters of the Thirteen Kingdoms. The innocent souls of the Nanjing Massacre turned into statues and stood sadly under the long wind. They screamed to the sky, wept to the earth, and complained to the world, just like the inscription on the public sacrificial tripod:

The Japanese invaders invaded China and destroyed Nanjing. Rob the common people and massacre the common people.

Thirty thousand dead souls, drinking and hating Jiangcheng. The sun and moon were miserable, and the world was shocked.

The brutality of the beast is unheard of in the world. How can we blame our compatriots? The country is in dire straits.

The soldiers rose up in mourning, with jingles and drums. Brothers work together to resist foreign aggression.

Sacrifice your life and shed your blood, your spirit will be filled with glory. Sweep away the smoke and revive the world. ...

On December 13, 1937, the Japanese invaders invaded Nanjing and caused the brutal Nanjing Massacre. 300,000 compatriots were killed, countless women were raped and mutilated, countless children died, one-third of the buildings were destroyed, and a large amount of property was looted. This inhumane massacre perpetrated by the Japanese invaders is one of the "three major tragedies" in the history of World War II. It is an appalling crime against humanity and a very dark page in human history.

On September 18th, we gathered here with Chinese people from all over China and overseas. Coming to the entrance, this is a pavilion extending underground, indicating that people will enter a purgatory on earth.

The historical exhibition of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders is divided into eleven parts. The exhibition hall covers an area of ​​9,000 square meters and houses more than 10,000 cultural relics, of which more than 3,000 are on display. The Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese Army was a terrible and horrific tragedy that shocked both China and the world during the Anti-Japanese War; it was the most concentrated, prominent and representative atrocity during the Japanese invasion of China.

The exhibition hall environment is dark, allowing the historical photos and picture descriptions on the wall to be expressed more clearly under the light. The actual objects on display include various military supplies used by the Japanese army during the massacre, including guns and steel cannons, various military uniforms, helmets, long and short sabers, and various related pictures, newspapers and magazines. During the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese army killed without blinking an eye, and even competed with each other. They killed a hundred people without a winner, and then killed a hundred and fifty people. Their brutality was outrageous. What about the Chinese who died! Those killed by plane bombs, blasted with cannons, shot to death with guns, picked to death with bayonets, hacked to death with sabers, and buried alive. The Japanese invaders set fire to the city, and more people died while fleeing, starving, or having their homes destroyed. Women committed adultery, and the elderly and children died after losing their loved ones. During the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese army even threw the bodies of more than 10,000 victims into the Yangtze River. This is what the Japanese call the "Greater East Asia Holy War"!

Tick, tick, tick, every 12 seconds, a drop of water falls from the sky. As the lights turn on, the portrait of a victim appears in front of us. Immediately, the lights went out and the portrait disappeared. From December 13, 1937 to January 1938, in just six weeks, the Japanese invaders brutally massacred more than 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians in Nanjing, killing one Chinese every 12 seconds on average. Since this place is a "mass grave" site, the corpses of refugees are half-buried in the soil, and the tragic circumstances of their deaths are vividly visible. Countless people were crying in the exhibition hall, and even more people were casting curses on the invaders!

Photography is not allowed during the visit. From time to time, pickets shoot flashlights to stop photographers. I turned off the flash, but still couldn't help but raise the camera, trying to capture the brutality of the invaders, the misery of my compatriots, and the resistance of the Chinese people into the lens. But my trembling hands couldn't control it. I took the most blurry series of photos since taking pictures, and many of them were unusable! As a result, when writing this article, I could only partially rely on the information from the Nanjing Massacre atlas.

There are no guides in the exhibition hall, but there are voice devices for use. There are also 5 film and television halls, with 16mm cameras playing various types of documentary film and television materials. What is touching is that during the bloody days of the Nanjing Massacre, our compatriots helped and supported each other, and many international friends also took risks to protect the people of Nanjing in various ways and record the brutal acts of the Japanese invaders. Among them are Germans, Danes, Americans, etc. Their humanitarian spirit and fearless deeds will never be forgotten by the Chinese people.

In order to fight against the aggression of Japanese imperialism and save the Chinese nation from danger, the Chinese people fought a bloody war of resistance for 14 years. On August 15, 1945, Japan was forced to announce its unconditional surrender. On September 9 of the same year, the surrender ceremony of the Chinese Theater was held in Nanjing, marking a great historic victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan. After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Military Tribunal for the Trial of War Criminals in Nanjing held special trials on the Nanjing Massacre, confirming that the Nanjing Massacre was a typical incident in the history of World War II; it was an unforgettable memory of national humiliation and suffering that the country's poor and weak people suffered; it was a historical scar exposed by the Chinese nation that should be permanently remembered by future generations as a result of foreign aggression and enslavement. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the China Military Tribunal for the Trial of War Criminals investigated the tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre and made legal characterizations and conclusions. A group of Japanese war criminals whose hands were stained with the blood of the Chinese people were tried and severely punished by law and justice, and were forever nailed to the pillar of shame in history.

In the memorial hall, I saw historical materials about the joint resistance of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The left picture below shows the "guerrilla warfare" led by Mao Zedong. There are three flags in the picture on the right, representing the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of China respectively. I took this shot and copied the statement under the flag: "The purpose of the Three Kingdoms is to deprive Japan of all the islands it has captured or occupied in the Pacific since the beginning of World War I in 1914, and to return to China the territories Japan stole from China, such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands." Excerpted from the Cairo Declaration 1943 December 1, 2019

A small scolding helps a lot:

* Japan is a nation in human history. It has made contributions to the world and also brought trauma to the world. This is a mistake of militarism. The Japanese people should remember it, and the Japanese government should remember it even more.

* Those who blame their crimes on the weakness of their own nation:

China's modern sufferings are the result of national backwardness. As long as the nation unites and struggles! We will surely embark on the road to national rejuvenation!

* History is a mirror. Each of us must respect history and remember history. Every descendant of Yan and Huang must unite as one to build our strong motherland and never allow historical tragedies to repeat themselves.

* Our nation is too kind, our nation is too forgetful, and our education is too practical, so that the history of massacre is forgotten in an instant. How many people know about the National Memorial Day? How many people know about the National Memorial Network? The militarists are already sharpening their knives. Who will wake up the Chinese people?

* Nowadays, schools no longer have the activity of going to the martyrs’ cemetery to sweep the tombs during the Qingming Festival to receive patriotic education. When we were in school, every year the school would organize a trip to the martyrs’ cemetery to sweep the tombs and listen to the deeds of the martyrs. Start with the children and let them have patriotic thoughts from an early age. Our stable life is hard-won. I think the school should organize students to perform public sacrifices on this site during the Qingming Festival, instead of being keen on accident-prone spring outings and autumn outings.

But more of the messages were as hateful as hatred:

* Expressed deep condolences for the dead compatriots, high respect for the anti-Japanese comrades, strong indignation against the Japanese invaders, and deep disgust for the current small Japan. Now when we go to Japan, I will sign up first!

* The Japanese devils still have no intention of bowing their heads and admitting defeat, and they still have the intention of making a comeback. I feel that now is the time to nip the idea of ​​militarism in the bud, launch a full-scale war against Japan, and completely destroy this country that has been rich and powerful through aggression.

* History will not change due to the changing times, and facts will not disappear due to clever denials. The tragic evidence of the Nanjing Massacre is irrefutable and cannot be tampered with. If anyone wants to deny the tragic fact of the Nanjing Massacre, history will not agree, the souls of the 300,000 innocent victims will not agree, the 1.3 billion Chinese people will not agree, and all peace- and justice-loving people in the world will not agree.

* It was a tragic massacre. 300,000 people, 300,000 people! Those are our parents, brothers, and sisters. They could have lived peacefully in their own homes, but they suffered this fate for no reason.

* Therefore, we must demand war compensation from the Japanese invaders. The Chinese people must wake up and the Chinese people must propose that the Japanese pay war compensation for the Nanjing Massacre and also demand war compensation for China's aggression. From now on, China must be more practical and ask the Japanese to calculate how much blood debt they owe China and how many lives they owe us Chinese!

Anti-Japanese War Veterans Stare at "The Disaster in the Ancient City"

Out of respect for history, here I also copy a narrative about the "Victory of the Anti-Japanese War" from the "National Army Historical Museum" on the other side: "Japan bullies the weak and deliberately invades our country. The First Sino-Japanese War forced the Qing government to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands. In the 20th year of the Republic of China, the "September 18th Incident" occupied Northeast my country. After the "July 7th Incident", the "Nanjing Massacre" was first followed by the "Chongqing Bombing". The crimes are countless. When Japan was defeated and surrendered, our leader, Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, upheld the supreme virtue of the Chinese nation. Not only did he advocate for the maintenance of Japan's emperor's political system at the Cairo Conference, but when Japan announced its surrender, he called on the military and civilians across the country to "not remember old evils" and "repay grievances with kindness." In addition to instructing Japan to faithfully fulfill the terms of surrender, it will never retaliate against grievances. Therefore, after the war, Chairman Chiang did not advocate that my country send troops to occupy Japan, maintain the integrity of Japan's territorial sovereignty, voluntarily gave up asking Japan for compensation, and promptly sent Japanese overseas Chinese and Japanese prisoners back to the country after the surrender, so that they could reorganize their post-war homes and quickly recover. "

Let's take a look at the current attitude of the Japanese government: At a press conference held on the morning of February 26, 2014, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed doubts about China's draft decision to establish December 13th of each year as the "National Memorial Day" when the Nanjing Massacre occurred: He questioned China's intentions and had questions about why the National Memorial Day was only established 69 years after the war. Calling the "Nanjing Massacre" the "Nanjing Incident", questioning the statement that the death toll was 300,000, arguing that the death toll could not be verified, and denying the "Nanjing Massacre" in disguise.

After the Germans were defeated in World War II, every mark they earned had to be paid as war compensation as a percentage, so it was very painful. The German Chancellor was a hero in World War II. Only by kneeling in front of the monument can I be forgiven by the world. On the other hand, Japan brazenly launched a war of aggression against China, which brought unprecedented disasters to the Chinese people. China paid a heavy price of 35 million casualties. The war in China's urban and rural areas continued, and the people were devastated and suffered a lot. However, after the war, Japan did not want to pay war compensation! Today, the Japanese are unrepentant and ambitious. The Japanese Prime Minister takes the lead in visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the souls of Class-A war criminals in World War II. The Japanese not only cause trouble on the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, but also sell aircraft and submarines to Southeast Asian countries to resist China in the South China Sea. "Phoenix.com" reported: Japan provides intelligence to the Americans. In the event of a conflict, it will first blow up fifteen bridges along the Yangtze River from the upstream to the downstream, cutting off China. The north-south artery; Japan continues to expand its military. The "Izumo" was originally a flagship during the invasion of China and was sunk during the Anti-Japanese War. But now Japan has named a new helicopter carrier "Izumo" and has been put into service. This shows that Japanese militarism is back! In addition, the Japanese are also carrying out "atomic bomb commemorations" every year. The United States will one day let this poisonous snake bite again!

Those who doubt the present look at the past; those who do not know what is coming look at the past! Some people suggested letting go of hatred, while others suggested forgiveness. But there is no premise mentioned here, no serious argument made, so the Chinese people can relax their vigilance! The Chinese must keep up the pressure, demand war compensation, and demand the Japanese to fully repent for their war of aggression! Without this premise, any letting go and forgiveness will only encourage the arrogance of Japanese militarism!

When we came out of the memorial hall, it was pouring rain outside. The sky is weeping for September 18th, mourning for the 300,000 innocent souls who died tragically at the hands of Japanese butchers in Nanjing!