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Chinese scholars on human rights Monday urged Japan to "view its past history of aggression correctly," saying it is a premise for the stable and healthy development of bilateral relations between China and Japan.
"Chinese people will never forgive any denial, obliteration or distortion of the Nanjing Massacre committed by Japanese invaders," said Yang Zhengquan, deputy president of the China Foundation for Human Rights Development, at a symposium in memory of the 67th anniversary of the brutal slaughter.
The Nanjing Massacre occurred after the Japanese troops occupied Nanjing, the then capital of China, on Dec. 13, 1937. More than 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed, one third of the houses in the city were burned and more than 20,000 women were raped in the one-month atrocity.
"But the influential right-wing in Japan is still trying to deny the country's aggression in China during World War II and the bloody killings by Japanese troops in Nanjing," Yang said.
He added that senior leaders in Japan's government have angered Chinese people repeatedly since 2001 by making annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial that most Asian countries deride as a glorification of Tokyo's military invasions.
"The denial of history has seriously affected the ties between China and Japan, which are both influential countries and bear important responsibilities to the Asian and global peace and development."
"The two countries have achieved great progress in bilateral cooperation during the past 32 years since they established diplomatic ties. But there is still a great risk of a militarism revival if Japan's right wing further refuses to view history correctly," Yang said.
The symposium also mourned for Iris Chang, a Chinese-American author who committed suicide in November.
The 36-year-old writer and journalist published in 1997 her best-known book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, the first major full-length English-language account of the atrocity. The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for months.
Sirens wailed in the morning in Nanjing, now the capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, recalling bitter memories of the most hardship Chinese people endured in the war against Japanese aggressors.
More than 2,500 people, including locals from all walks of life, compatriots from Hong Kong and Taiwan and foreigners, gathered at the Nanjing museum that commemorates victims of the Nanjing Massacre Monday.
"A nation with a fading memory cannot have a bright future," said TV play director Yang Yang recently.
Her 29-episode TV series "Witness to Memory" is currently showing in prime time on Channel 1 of the China's Central Television. It is one of the few domestic shows depicting the miserable life of Chinese laborers in Japan during the World War II.
'Nanjing Massacre must not be forgotten'
More than 93 percent of college students in east China's Nanjing said the massacre in which 300, 000 Chinese civilians were killed in the city 67 years ago must not be forgotten, said a survey by Nanjing Normal University's institute on the Nanjing Massacre, Monday's China Youth Daily reported.
The students overwhelmingly said more efforts should be made to keep reminding people of the tragedy.
According to the survey, 62.4 percent of the college students said the country should never forget the history though it will develop peaceful relations with Japan.
Around 83 percent of the students said the Japanese government' s attitude towards the massacre has increased their dislike of that country.
According to the survey, 65.5 percent of the students have read books about the Nanjing Massacre, 64.7 percent knew it happened between 1937 and 1938, and 43.8 percent know the exact date when the massacre started, but 54.1 percent has never been to the Nanjing Memorial Hall of Compatriots Murdered in the Nanjing Massacre.
The country still needs to improve the education on young people about the event, said Li Hongsheng, the researcher with the institute in charge of the survey.
And 88.3 percent of the students disagreed that China should stop dwelling on the history of Japan's invasion into China as some Japanese media have said, while 82.2 percent said China should be alert to possible militarism in Japan.
In the survey, 60.7 percent of the students said China and Japan will have both conflicts and common interests in the future while 63 percent thought Chinese know little about present Japanese society.
The survey sampled ten local universities and collected 973 effective questionnaires out of the 1,000 that were handed out.
Japanese veteran donates anti-aggression prints to China
Japanese veteran Shima Antan donated 30 prints on Japanese invasion of the country six decades ago Monday to China on the 67th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre.
The Museum of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Invasion received the donation depicting Japanese army's beheading, paunching, shooting and raping of Chinese civilians. The work is named Sanguang, which means Japanese war policy of "Burning all, Killing all and Robbing all".
"This is an inhumane war. We abandoned any humanity at the time," said the 84-year-old veteran, who served as intelligence man in China's Shandong Province from 1943 to 1945.
After five years in Soviet Union's labor camp and six years in China's detention house, Shima Antan was exempted from accusation of Chinese government and went back to Japan in 1956.
"I should have been executed, but they sent me back. From that day, I decided to atone for my sin."
Shima Antan started to do Sanguang in 1975. He staged exhibition in TBS and then received blackmails from right-wing extremists several times.
"I'm not worried. This is why I do it. I want to tell the ordinary people the truth of the invasion. I want to ask those who started the war and forced us to kill to apologize. I want to warn those who is leading the nation to the same road to stop and think," said Shima Antan.
Shima Antan believed only when every Japanese recognizes the failure of the war and has courageous reflection on it could the country heal the wounds it did to Asian neighbors and set for the genuine peace.
US reporter's recorded history on Japan's aggression into China translated
Chinese writer and translator Wang Jinling has finished translating American reporter Irving Wallace' s documentary script Japan's Mein Kampf, which gives a detailed account of Japan's aggression against China during World War II.
The script is based on Wallace's reporting in Japan and China in 1940 and 1941 when he worked as an overseas correspondent for an American magazine. But the script was never published in the United States.
According to Wang, Wallace's script tells how Japan pursued its expansion overseas and intruded into northeast China. The script also has certain details about the Nanjing massacre.
Wang said the translation would be completed next year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the world's victory over the Axis countries.
Wallace was born in Chicago, in the United States in 1916. In July 1940 he was sent to Japan as a correspondent and then to Shanghai and Nanjing to continue his report on the war.
Wallace died in 1990, and his son sent the document script of Japan's Mein Kampf, which had been laid aside for some six decades, to Wang years ago at the latter's request.
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2004)
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