Nanjng massacre: Never forget
( 2001-12-14 02:14 ) (1 )

Air-raid alarms screamed over the city Thursday as they did 64 years before, when Japanese invaders stormed the city.

About 3,000 Nanjing residents gathered at the city's Massacre Memorial Hall to mourn the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, which killed 300,000.

On the same day, 1,000 delegates from Nanjing and other cities across the globe prayed at the St Maria Cathedral in Los Angeles in the United States for peace as well as for the 300,000 Chinese civilians slaughtered in the massacre that started on December 13, 1937.

The delegation from Nanjing will set up a large-scale exhibition starting on December 16 in Los Angeles titled "Nanjing Massacre: Historical Facts.''

The 600 historical pictures, 30 relics and their replicas will tell the bloody truth of the massacre and the rebirth of Nanjing after 1949.

The exhibition also will convey the joint fight of the Chinese and American soldiers and civilians against the Japanese during World War II and the help offered by American citizens to Nanjing residents in the 1937 massacre.

"We are to tell the American people, especially the mainstream society and media, that the Nanjing massacre took place, that history cannot be denied, and that we are willing to make friends with the people all over the world,'' said Yao Xiaodong, deputy chief of the delegation.

The delegation to the US got support from the Nanjing residents who gathered Thursday at the Nanjing Jiangdongmen Massacre Memorial Hall to sing the national anthem and songs written during the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-1945).

"I am too old to fly to the US, but I can remember the days when the whole city was almost immersed in blood, and corpses could be seen everywhere,'' said Li Xiuying, 83, one of the survivors of the massacre.

Li is suing the Japanese ultra-rightists for defamation of character. The rightists claim Li is only pretending to be a survivor.

The gathering moved many others as well.

"It teaches my child a sense of responsibility towards the history and the nation,'' said He Huiyu, a local resident who asked for a day's leave from the office to bring her four-year-old son to the hall.

A four-member delegation from the East Japan Railway Workers' Union attended the gathering and prayed before the memorial hall.

"We don't want such a tragedy to happen again, so we pray for peace and for friendship between the Japanese and the Chinese people,'' said Masakazu Takahashu, chief of the Union's organization and education section.

"In Japan, even our life is threatened by the ultra-rightists, but we still come because we feel we can do something for this friendship,'' he said.

(China Daily by Wang Shanshan)