The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum has started to hold family memorial services for Nanjing Massacre victims in anticipation of the country’s fifth National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre victims.
Shi Xiuying, 91, witnessed the death of her father and elder brother during the Nanjing Massacre. She and her mother survived the ordeal by taking shelter in the safety zone.
Yu Changxiang, also 91, made to the Memorial Museum at the accompaniment of his daughter and stood in front of the list wall to pay homage to the father who was killed in the Nanjing Massacre.
What is heartbreaking is that two more Nanjing Massacre survivors, Zhao Jinhua and Chen Guangshun, passed away Sunday and Monday. They were 94. Their death reduced the number of existing survivors to less than 100.
Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China’s capital, on Dec 13 of 1937 and started a campaign of slaughter lasting more than a month. More than 300,000 unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians were murdered and over 20,000 women were raped.
In China the Nanjing Massacre is seen as the lowest point of an era in which the country was bullied and humiliated by foreign powers. In February 2014, China's top legislature designated December 13 as the national Memorial Day for victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
