China begins publishing Nanjing Massacre testimonies

Xia Shuqin (left) and Wu Zhengxi, survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, attend a meeting in Nanjing for the oral testimonies of 100 survivors.[Photo provided to China Daily]

China has begun to publish oral testimonies of 100 survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in the latest move to refute Japanese politicians' denial of Japan's World War II aggression.

The daily publications began on Wednesday with the testimony of 85-year-old Xia Shuqin. It was posted on China's National Memorial website and that of the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

Xia, born in May 1929 in Nanjing, was a member of a family of nine before the Japanese invasion of the city. Her grandparents, parents, two older sisters and a younger sister were slaughtered by Japanese troops. Only she and her 4-year-old sister Xia Shuyun survived.

"Unforgettable pain. It is like a scar which will bleed each time it is torn open," Xia says in her testimony.

"My own experience proves the existence of the Nanjing Massacre. No one can erase history. We should remember it forever."

The testimonies are selected from those of 4,176 survivors, witnesses or victims collected by the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.

The massacre occurred over a six-week period in late 1937. Japanese soldiers killed more than 300,000 people in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, then the capital of the country.

In February this year, China's top legislature set Dec 13 as a national memorial day for Nanjing Massacre victims. There are only some 100 survivors still alive, with an average age of more than 80 years old.