Zhang, 87, still in fear of 'the devils'
Source: Xinhua |
December 14, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Imagine a life where every day you suffer from war injuries and the pain of losing loved ones. Then there's the terror of a possible return of the "devils" that ruined your life when you were a child.
"The devils" is how 87-year-old Zhang Xiuhong still refers to the Japanese soldiers who raped her and burned more than 50 girls to death in her village of Shazhouwei in Nanjing 75 years ago.
She was just 12 years old then and remembers how her grandfather knelt down before the Japanese soldiers and begged them not to rape her.
Zhang was at the Memorial Hall of the Victims for the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders early yesterday to attended the mourning ceremony as a representative of oral history tellers of the Nanjing Massacre.
Zhang was left both physically and psychologically traumatized after she was brutally raped. "When the Japanese came to my house to take me away, my grandpa begged them to let me go since I was only 12, but they threatened to stab him. Then I begged my grandpa to let them take me away, otherwise both of us would die," Zhang recalled.
Three quarters of a century after the atrocity, Japan still won't engage in similar introspection to that of Germany's after the Holocaust. Some Japanese politicians even deny the massacre ever happened.
However, there were some Japanese among thousands of mourners from around the world who lit candles at a vigil in Nanjing on Wednesday night for the people who were killed after the city fell to Japanese invaders in World War II.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party headed by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is forecast to win a majority in the general election.
Abe's comeback has been powered by hawkish pronouncements on military and foreign policy, advocating constitutional changes that would allow Japan to have a more active armed force.
"The devils" is how 87-year-old Zhang Xiuhong still refers to the Japanese soldiers who raped her and burned more than 50 girls to death in her village of Shazhouwei in Nanjing 75 years ago.
She was just 12 years old then and remembers how her grandfather knelt down before the Japanese soldiers and begged them not to rape her.
Zhang was at the Memorial Hall of the Victims for the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders early yesterday to attended the mourning ceremony as a representative of oral history tellers of the Nanjing Massacre.
Zhang was left both physically and psychologically traumatized after she was brutally raped. "When the Japanese came to my house to take me away, my grandpa begged them to let me go since I was only 12, but they threatened to stab him. Then I begged my grandpa to let them take me away, otherwise both of us would die," Zhang recalled.
Three quarters of a century after the atrocity, Japan still won't engage in similar introspection to that of Germany's after the Holocaust. Some Japanese politicians even deny the massacre ever happened.
However, there were some Japanese among thousands of mourners from around the world who lit candles at a vigil in Nanjing on Wednesday night for the people who were killed after the city fell to Japanese invaders in World War II.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party headed by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is forecast to win a majority in the general election.
Abe's comeback has been powered by hawkish pronouncements on military and foreign policy, advocating constitutional changes that would allow Japan to have a more active armed force.
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