8.15, remembrance of the Chinese suffering and victory over Japanese invasion

On August the 14th, 1945, the Japanese emperor Hirohito expressed "unconditional acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation". One day later, the Emperor announced the Japanese government formally surrendered.

69 years have passed, but Japanese militarism hasn’t dispersed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the right-wing forces in Japan have denied Japan's historical aggression against China, visited the Yasukuni Shrine, gone on to question the Kono Statement, and denied that the Nanjing Massacre ever occurred.

A huge volume of evidence has revealed the crimes that the Japanese army committed during its war against China.

The Central Archives of China has recently released files on the confessions of the Japanese war criminals. The confessions have disclosed the atrocities of the Japanese army.

Suzuki Keiku，lieutenant general and commander of the 117th Division, said in his written confession in July 1954 that based on his memory alone, 5.470 Chinese people were killed, and the houses of 18,229 Chinese households were burned down or damaged. The actual number may be much higher.

The number of women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army is estimated to be as low as 20,000, which could be as many as 400, 000.

Japanese militarists not only caused a disaster in China, but also brought traumas to people of the world.

Fred Seiker, a British WWII veteran wrote a book about his experiences.

Lest We Forget, the book details the horrors he saw as a Japanese prisoner of war.

About 180,000 Asian civilian laborers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war worked on the Thai-Burma Railway built to carry Japanese forces. Of those, an estimated 90,000 Asian civilians and 12,399 prisoners of wars died as a result of the project.

However, some forces in Japan have denied historical facts.

Despite that, we’ve also noticed voices in Japan that values justice and truth.

Shigenori Nishikawa has been researching on crimes committed by the Japanese invaders. "I am sorry to say that many Japanese people know little about the terrible crimes committed by the Japanese army during the Japanese War of Aggression against China. The atrocities are unspeakable.”

Nishikawa took out a book he usually refers to and said that the Japanese army carried out the infamous extermination policy of "burn all, kill all and loot all".

The Chinese people remember August 15 as a victory day over the Japanese invasion. This was the day when a nation that had lived under a century of enslavement to foreign powers finally rid itself of its oppressors.

The past, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future. The Japanese politicians’ clinging to their negative legacies of militarism would only prevent a better future for Japan.