71st anniversary of WWII marked
Print Edition
CHINA marked the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II yesterday, with victims of the war remembered nationwide.
People from China, Japan and South Korea attended the annual peace assembly in Nanjing, commemorating China’s victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
At the Nanjing Massacre Victims’ Memorial Hall, representatives from the three countries read out a declaration of peace.
On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops began six weeks of destruction, pillage, rape and slaughter after capturing Nanjing. More than 300,000 Chinese, many innocent civilians, were murdered.
On August 15 every year, NGOs from across the world gather in the city to pay their respects to the victims.
Miyauchi Yoko, head of an anti-war NGO based in Kobe, Japan, said the hot summer weather in Nanjing reminded her of the brutality suffered by Chinese during the war, giving her and her colleagues the motivation to do everything in their power to prevent such a tragedy happening again.
In Harbin, one year after the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731 opened on the site of the former headquarters of the army unit, visitors topped 950,000, three-fold the number prior to the museum’s opening.
Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research base established in 1935. Jin Chengmin, the museum’s curator, said it held many historical documents. About 10 percent of visitors came from overseas.
In Shanghai, the “Transcript of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East” will be unveiled at Shanghai Book Fair today. The book has translated sections on China from a previous English book on the military tribunal.
Xiang Longwan of the Center for the Tokyo Trial Studies of Shanghai said the Tokyo Trial has significant meaning for international relations today. “Hopefully, the book will become standard material for future studies of the trial,” he said.
Separately, the Liji Alley Comfort Women Museum, Nanjing, has begun to collate information on military brothels, or “comfort stations,” established by the Japanese during its occupation of the eastern city.
The investigation will result in a comprehensive record of Japan’s war crimes, according to the museum curator Su Zhiliang. The evidence will be used as supporting documentation to have “comfort women” inscribed on the Memory of the World Register, established by UNESCO.
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