Testimonies to the truth: Victims of the Nanjing Massacre share their heartbreaking stories with the world (2)

Testimony of Zhu Xisheng

-"The Japanese soldier hacked me on the back of the neck."

Testimony of Zhu Xisheng, a victim of the Nanjing Massacre. (Photo by The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders)

My hometown is Shouxian County, east China's Anhui Province. Around the 20th year of the Republic of China, my father took me to Nanjing because he could not make a living in our hometown. He collected and sold waste for a living then, I followed him to collect scraps. We lived from hand to mouth.

I was 22 years old in the 26th year of the Republic of China (1937). The Japanese army attacked Nanjing and entered the city on Nov. 11 of the lunar calendar. Before that, my father and I went to the refugee camp, which was then called the Gospel Hall, and now is the No. 19 middle school.

One afternoon, around 4 p.m., the Japanese soldiers came in to arrest people. I pretended to be ill and laid on the ground, covered with a quilt. I showed them a certificate issued by the refugee shelter. The Japanese soldiers tore it up without looking. They took me and two other men to the river, and when we got to the river, the other two were hacked to death by the Japanese soldiers. Then a Japanese soldier wanted to kill me, I begged them, saying that I had to support my family and take care of an old man. I used gestures because I was afraid that they would not understand me. As I was speaking, three more Japanese soldiers came, and before I could see them clearly, one of them hacked me on the back of the neck, I fell to the ground. I still had some consciousness at that time, and because I was wearing a torn overcoat, I bit my collar, holding my breath to pretend to be dead. After a few minutes, the Japanese soldiers kicked me with their feet, but I pretended to be dead and didn't move. Then they said something like "dead" and left.

It was about 5 p.m. in the evening, and it was getting dark. I suffered in pain, my clothes covered with sticky blood. Since it was already dark and the Japanese soldiers had gone, I decided to run away as quickly as I could. So, I put up with the pain and ran to the refugee camp. As the streets were full of dead bodies, I stumbled and crawled all the way, it was not easy to get back to the place where I had lived. Seeing me in this condition, my father was shocked, and the other refugees did not dare let me stay there. Later, some good-hearted neighbors helped me by getting some incense ashes and applying the ashes to my wounds. Before dawn, I was sent to a remote shabby thatched cottage. At this time, I was accompanied by my father alone. We suffered from hunger for three or four days because we had nothing to eat, so my father took the risk of taking me home. Fortunately, there were still some neighbors alive, so we asked them for some food.

We lived in this way until the coming of New Year's Day. It was snowing one day, I heard footsteps, and then Japanese soldiers entered the house. They pulled up my arm to see if I had a watch on my wrist. Then they saw the wound on the back of my neck. They began to interrogate me. At that time, I did not dare to say that I was cut by Japanese soldiers. So with hand gestures, I tried to explain with "Boom" and "Pa" sounds, meaning that I was wounded in a Japanese airstrike. They finally believed me and went away. My neighbor had advised me to go to the Drum Tower Hospital to treat my wounds, but I didn't dare to go. I laid in bed at home for more than three months, about a hundred days, until my injury got better and I was able to get out of bed. Today, I still have a scar three or four inches wide on the back of my neck.

When I suffered this disaster, my father was frightened and worried, soon he developed dementia, and in the following September he died. The wound made it difficult for me to work, and I had no family until I was 31. My neighbors and the workers at my recycling company were all aware of the experience I suffered .