Nanjing Massacre victims honored

A number of documentaries have been shown and books published in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, one month before a national memorial day to honor the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.

Grief-Stricken Nanjing, a 30-episode documentary, has been shown since Sunday on the Nanjing channel and two online channels (www.nbs.cn and xwei.tv). Statements of the victims, testimony of foreigners living in Nanjing and historical materials related to the massacre are included in the documentary.

Zhang Jianning, director of Nanjing Television's features department, said that 150 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre are shown in the documentary.

"We prepared the documentary since the beginning of this year," Zhang said. "We hope that through this documentary, the history can be better remembered and peace can be more cherished."

According to Zhang, a film titled Testimony and a four-episode TV documentary, Witness the Nanjing Massacre, which was made by Nanjing Television, will be shown soon.

In December 1937, Japanese invaders captured Nanjing, which was then the nation's capital, and massacred more than 300,000 Chinese people over the next six weeks.

Since 1994, the province of Jiangsu and the city of Nanjing have held memorial activities on Dec 13 every year.

In February, China's top legislature set two national memorial days, July 7 and Dec 13, to mark the victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and to mourn Nanjing Massacre victims.

Chinese documents show that about 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed or injured by Japanese invaders during the war, which lasted from 1937 to 1945.

Many newspapers in Jiangsu province have started publishing a news package, titled For the Unforgettable National Memory: Seeking Evidence in Japan, since Nov 17. The package includes 12 stories, a cover story and many photos.

Local media Xinhua Daily Group sent reporters to Japan in October and interviewed some Japanese veterans, historians, social groups and civilians to finish the package.

Jiangsu News Radio and the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall have joined to air a program that recorded the testimony of 30 massacre victims.

"We didn't realize that the memorial day would be designated as a national one when we first memorialized it in Nanjing," said Zhu Chengshan, curator of the memorial hall, who recently published a book about the massacre in local media.

"China sacrificed greatly as a country being invaded, but what have we done to memorialize the Nanjing Massacre, one of the three main tragedies during World War II?"

cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/26/2014 page4)