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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, December 13, 2002

Nanjing Marks 65th Anniversary of Japanese Massacre

A bronze road of footprints from 222 witnesses to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre during which more than 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered by invading Japanese troops, was added to the Nanjing Memorial on Thursday to mark the 65th anniversary of the tragedy.


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China Holds Memorial Ceremony for Nanjing Massacre
A bronze road of footprints from 222 witnesses to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre during which more than 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered by invading Japanese troops, was added to the Nanjing Memorial on Thursday to mark the 65th anniversary of the tragedy.

The road, 40 meters long and 1.6 meters wide, is made of bronze blocks cast with the footprints and the handwritten names and agesof those survivors.

The number 300,000 is inscribed in black at the end of the road at the memorial's plaza in the capital city of Jiangsu Province, east China.

Two bronze sculptures of survivors Peng Yuzhen and Ni Cuiping stand on either side of the road.


Nanjing Marks 65th Anniversary of Japanese Massacre
Ni, four of whose family were killed by Japanese troops, was invited to speak at the launching ceremony. Showing a scar on her left shoulder to the audience she said, "I hate the brutality of Japanese soldiers. Now I hate more those Japanese who deny history."

Wu Xiulan, 89, was accompanied by her family to the ceremony. She left only one footprint on the road because she lost her left foot during the massacre.

Zhou Wenbin, 65, shared his memory of one of his toes being cut off during the massacre when he was a baby in a cradle.

The memorial designers went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Anhui and Jiangsu provinces to collect the footprints and signatures of the 222 witnesses.


Japanese Testimonies on Nanjing Massacre Published
More than 300,000 unarmed Chinese civilians and soldiers were slaughtered 65 years ago by the Japanese troops, an event right-wing Japanese have repeatedly tried to erase from history.

Japanese testimonies on Nanjing Massacre published
A book comprising of testimonies of Japanese World War II veterans on their wartime atrocities was published in Chinese in Nanjing, the eve of the 65th anniversary of the notorious Nanjing Massacre.

The book, titled "The Battle of Nanjing -- a Search of Sealed Memories", consists of testimonies from 102 Japanese veterans who participated in Japan's invasion of China from 1937 to 1945, especially the battle of Nanjing.

In the book, compiled by Japanese peace advocates headed by Matsuoka Tamaki who interviewed some 250 veterans across Japan, the former soldiers, in their 80s and 90s, confessed to committing atrocities in Nanjing, including murder, rape and robbery.

On December 13, 1937, Nanjing, then capital of China, fell to the invading Japanese imperial army. In the following weeks, the Japanese soldiers brutally murdered more than 300,000 civilians and disarmed soldiers and over 20,000 cases of rape were recorded by foreign observers, giving the massacre another name, "the Rape of Nanking".

At a ceremony in Nanjing Thursday, Matsuoka said that she and other Japanese volunteers involved in the collection of the testimonies hoped to "tell the truth to our people". Japanese conservatives deny the Nanjing Massacre, calling it a fabrication.

Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Memorial Hall for Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, thanked Matsuoka and her colleagues for their efforts and called the newly-published book a "precious record of history".

The Japanese version of the book was published in Japan in August. Its Chinese version has some 400,000 characters.


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