About 3,000 Buddhist monks and masters from the Chinese
mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao attended a service on Monday
at the Lingguang Temple in Beijing to pray for world peace.
"We must take history as a mirror and face the future to promote
peaceful co-existence between different countries," Sheng Hui,
vice-president of the China Buddhist Association, said.
On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his
country's surrender to the allied powers, marking the end of World
War II.
Also on Monday, more than 120 military attachés from 35 foreign
embassies in Beijing visited the exhibition near the
Marco
Polo Bridge. The exhibition commemorates the 60th anniversary
of China's
War of
Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the end of World War
II.
The group expressed the wish that all countries learn from
history and cherish peace.
There are more than 600 pictures, 800 relics, and reconstructed
scenes on display.
"It's very moving, and I can see the bravery of the Chinese
soldiers through the show," said Leroy Coleman, a United States air
attaché.
"But, no museum or exhibition can fully depict what the Chinese
people suffered during the war," Coleman added.
Choe Myong-hun, deputy military attaché for the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, said people of the Korean Peninsula
share the Chinese people's feelings because "we fought side by side
against a common enemy."
In
Nanjing,
capital of East China's
Jiangsu
Province, an exhibition of historical documents and records are
on display at the
Nanjing Museum. The
exhibition was opened to the public on Monday morning. It will run
until September 15.
Exhibits include more than 300 historical documents and 400
pictures, depicting Chinese people's courageous deeds during the
eight-year war.
Exhibits also showcase atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers
during their occupation of Nanjing.
?
At least 300,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed by
Japanese troops in what is now known as the Nanjing
Massacre, which started on December 13, 1937 and lasted for a
month.
Hundreds of people from the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions
and Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong
Kong (DAB) marched
to the Consulate-General of Japan yesterday morning, urging the
country to learn from history.
Pang Cheung-Wai, a member of the central standing committee of the
DAB, said that 60 years after the war, Japan still adopts history
books that glosses over its aggression, and its top politicians
still visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where 14 Class-A war
criminals are enshrined.
The two organizations strongly requested the Japanese Government
apologize and compensate victims.
The Hong Kong
Reparation Association and some other organizations also
marched to the consulate-general later in the day.
(China Daily August 16, 2005)
