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Chinese city remembers Japanese 'Rape of Nanjing'
December 13, 1997
Web posted at: 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT)NANJING, China (CNN) -- Air raid sirens filled the air over Nanjing on Saturday. Ships on the nearby Yangtze River sounded fog horns, trains blew whistles, and the city of 5 million came to a standstill for three minutes -- all in memory of what some describe as a "forgotten holocaust."
Sixty years ago, Japanese Imperial Army troops pushed up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, which had fallen that November. On December 13, 1937, they marched into what was then called Nanking, the capital of China.
The Chiang forces had already fled far upriver, to establish a new capital. The people of Nanjing stayed behind, and suffered. Historians say up to 300,000 of them died.
For six weeks, chaos consumed the city. The Japanese lined people up by the hundreds and killed them en masse. Firing squads and beheadings became common scenery. As many as 57,000 people died during one execution, according to Rong Weimu, a researcher at the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Scenes from the ceremony 1.6M/40 sec.
QuickTime movieAn estimated 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped; many were disemboweled and left to die. Some soldiers even cut off the breasts of their victims, then nailed the women alive to walls.
Li Xouying was 19, and seven months pregnant.
"Thirty-seven times the Japanese bayoneted me ... 37 times," Li recalled. "Some from the left, some from the right. I have no sympathy for the Japanese. I still hate them. They did horrible harm to me, and they should give me compensation."
Pan Kaiming, now 80, and a former autoworker, carries a calling card that reads "Nanjing Massacre Survivor." Pan says that on December 14, 1937, he was among about 300 people who were lined up to face a firing squad. The Japanese sprayed the group with machine gun fire. Pan awoke beneath a pile of bodies.
"Slowly, slowly, I made my way out," he recalled. "My coat was completely soaked with blood. I thought I was a ghost."
He went to the river to clean the blood from his body, but the river was red -- filled with blood running from hundreds of corpses tossed into the water. Pan escaped by pretending to be a messenger for a Japanese officer.
Memorial built on former mass grave
Today, about 1,800 people living in Nanjing are survivors of what the Chinese call the "Nanjing Massacre," and others call the "Rape of Nanjing." Of the survivors, one in 10 were victims.
The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall stands as a tribute to those who suffered, and as a reminder that such slaughter should not be repeated.
Scholars are divided on the massacre's death toll. But Zhu Chengshan, director of the memorial, says the numbers do not matter.
"It is a history written in blood. Even 300 deaths would be a massacre," he said.
The memorial, which opened in 1985, was built on a former mass grave, where some 8,000 bodies were exhumed. It is a series of galleries and walkways of rough granite blocks, surrounded by beds of stones, like giant tombstones, representing the dead. It was the first permanent public site devoted to China's holocaust.
In one underground gallery, glass walls reveal a pile of bones from victims whose bodies were dumped on the ground.
Protests and politics
Today, Japan is the biggest outside investor in China. But Nanjing is a sensitive issue for both nations.
For the Chinese, it fuels hatred. For the Japanese, it fuels denial. But that is slowly changing.
The Japanese commanders blamed for Nanjing's bloodshed were executed as war criminals. But, like Li, many Nanjing survivors feel the Japanese should pay a price for their atrocities. Activists keep the issue alive, and the massacre was the subject of many student protests during the 1980s.
China, however, waived claims for war damages in 1972, when Beijing and Tokyo established diplomatic ties. Now, when Japanese officials visit Beijing, the Chinese clear the city's streets of Nanjing activists.
Recently Japan began mentioning Nanjing in its school books, but the text is vague, suggesting the civilians died in battle. In 1994, a member of the Japanese cabinet was forced to resign after he claimed the Nanjing massacre was a hoax.
'I can never forgive Japan'
In his official comments marking the 60th anniversary of the massacre, Chinese President Jiang Zemin carefully balanced his words. He urged Japan to learn from the aggression that brought "disaster for the Chinese and suffering for the Japanese."
"Past experiences, if not forgotten, can be a guide for the future," Jiang said.
Jiang and other Beijing officials stayed away from Nanjing on Saturday. Scheduled appearances by Nanjing's mayor and the governor of Jiangsu province were canceled at the last minute.
At an officially sponsored event, one young man held up a T-shirt bearing anti-Japanese slogans. Police quickly took him away.
Some 3,000 people gathered at the city's memorial, where they watched as cages of pigeons were flung open and the symbols of peace flew out to fill the gray winter sky.
"I can never forgive Japan," Li said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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