Yamamoto Minoh, a peace activist from Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture of Japan, paid a visit Saturday morning to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum where he recounted his father’s eyewitness to the mass slaughter committed by the invading Japanese troops in the wake of Nanjing’s fall in December 1937.
Mr. Yamamoto, a local councilman of Sabae, arrived in Nanjing upon the invitation of the Kyushu and Okinawa Peace Education Institute to attend a symposium on the Historical Truth and Memory of the Nanjing Massacre.
Mr. Yamamoto communicated with the survivors of the Nanjing Massacre by speaking openly against Japan’s war of aggression against China and the Nanjing Massacre.
His father Yamamoto Takeshi was enlisted in 1934 and was incorporated into the 36th Brigade of Subae. He was sent to the Shanghai battlefield in 1937. After Shanghai fell to the Japanese, he advanced to Nanjing with the troops and committed crimes in the Nanjing Massacre.
Yamamoto said that his father had told him about the killings in the war, adding that it is his long-held wish to publish his father's war-time diary. He apologized to the victims of the war and called on people to understand the importance of peace and friendship between China and Japan.
Yamamoto said that although many right-wingers have called their brothers to lodge protest, he believes that it is necessary to confess the history of war to the world. He believes that Japan should reflect on the war from the standpoint of the perpetrators and tell the cruelty of war. For him, telling the truth of history is to shoulder the heavy responsibility of defending peace and stopping war.
Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China's capital, on Dec. 13 of 1937 and started a 40-odd-day slaughter. More than 300,000 Chinese soldiers who had laid down their arms and civilians were murdered, and over 20,000 women were raped.
In February 2014, China designated December 13 as a National Memorial Day to mourn Nanjing Massacre victims and all those killed by Japanese invaders, and to reveal war crimes committed by the Japanese.
(Source: ourjiangsu.com)
