Tamaki Matsuoka, a Japanese peace activist, donated on Wednesday materials she collected while interviewing survivors and victimizers in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. The materials donated by Matsuoka are believed to have an irreplaceable value for the study of the history of the Nanjing Massacre.
At the donation ceremony, Ms. Matsuoka described the experience of filming the video images of the Nanjing Massacre survivors and her intention of doing so.
Beginning in 1988, after doing her own research into the Nanjing Massacre, Matsuoka decided to seek out survivors of the massacre and record interviews with them.
In the 30 years after her first visit to Nanjing in 1988, Matsuoka eventually interviewed hundreds of survivors, most of whom have since passed away, and World War II veterans. Based on their testimonies, Matsuoka wrote books and produced documentaries to convey the historical truth.
Since 1988, Ms. Matsuoka has been to China several times a year to search for victims of the Nanjing Massacre throughout Nanjing and the surrounding areas. From 1998 to 2006, she interviewed more than 300 Nanjing massacre witnesses and used DV and tape recorders to record these valuable oral testimonies.
Today, fewer than 100 Nanjing Massacre survivors are alive and the early dynamic testimony of the survivors is even more precious. These images are of an irreplaceable value for the study of the history of the Nanjing Massacre. The Memorial Hall will digitalize these images before adding them to the database of the Nanjing Massacre Image Archive Data Center for in-depth research by experts and scholars both at home and abroad.
Tamaki Matsuoka, a former primary school teacher in Matsubara, Osaka teaching history subject, is a Japanese activist who challenges Japanese perceptions of the country’s war crimes in the Rape of Nanking during Second Sino-Japanese War.
In an effort to make her interviews available to the public, Matsuoka wrote The Battle of Nanking – Searching for Forbidden Memories in 2002. She also produced the documentary film Torn Memories of Nanjing in 2010.
In the Chinese press, Matsuoka is nicknamed “the conscience of Japan.”
Matsuoka is a member of the Japan-China Peace Research Organization which attends the memorial ceremony at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing on August 15 every year to show the regrets of Japanese people to the war crimes.
(Source:Jiangsu International Channel)
