Japanese civil groups hold activity to convey truth about Nanjing Massacre

An activity aiming to reflect on and spread the truth about Nanjing Massacre was held in Osaka Prefectural Labor Center on Saturday by civil groups in Japan, in which three documentaries about the massacre were screened and a testimony was given by a veteran who is also witness of the massacre.

The three documentaries screened were "Torn Memories of Nanjing", and "Taiping Gate, 1300 Lost Lives", both produced by Tamaki Matsuoka, a Japanese activist, and "Nanking", a work of US film-makers. About 300 people watched the documentaries.

Tamaki Matsuoka,a former primary school teacher, visited Nanjing, China in 1988, where she saw exhibitions about evidences of the atrocities committed by Japanese army in Nanjing in 1937, and was deeply shocked.

Angered by accounts in her country that denied the Nanjing Massacre and whitewashed the crimes committed by Japanese army in WWII, Matsuoka spent the next 20 years interviewing hundreds of survivors and victimizers of Nanjing Massacre, and based on their testimonies, wrote books and produced documentaries to convey the historic truth.

The 2009 work "Torn Memories of Nanjing" is Matsuoka's first documentary, in which Japanese veterans confessed on camera their atrocities of raping and killing Chinese civilians in Nanjing and survivors of the massacre recalled the tragedy with anger and tears.

"Taiping Gate, 1300 Lost Lives" is Matsuoka's third documentary as well as the most recent one. The documentary shows through testimonies and historic records the fact that the Japanese troops gathered 1,300 Chinese soldiers and civilians at the Taiping Gate of Nanjing in 1937 and killed them cruelly by setting them on fire and mowing them down with machine guns.

"Nanking", a 2007 production by US film-makers, draws on letters and diaries of a group of Western missionaries and businessmen who formed the Nanjing Safety Zone to protect the city's civilians from Japanese forces in 1937, as well as archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and perpetrators of the massacre.

Sho Mitani, a 96-year-old former navy sailor, recounted at Saturday's gathering how he witnessed the Japanese army killing Chinese civilians by gunfire and how the corpses piled up after the city of Nanjing fell in December, 1937.

"Japan should reflect on the history and never start wars again," said Mitani.

The documentaries evoked strong emotions among the audience.

"I'm shocked by the atrocities I saw in these documentaries. As a commoner, I really hope Japan and China could have a peaceful relationship, as they are neighbors. To achieve that goal, we have to face the historical truth first, instead of escaping from it," said Miho, a 40-year-old housewife from Kobe city after watching the documentaries.

"The accounts about Nanjing Massacre in our textbooks are not in details. Most of the young people nowadays don't know much about the massacre, and they seldom have interest in that. I hope we can all respect this history and learn from it," said a student from Osaka University.

Matsuoka, one of the initiators of Saturday's activity and head of the civil group Mei Shin Kai, said she hoped more Japanese could find out the truth about the history through these documentaries and testimonies and therefore learn from the history and prevent the wars from happening again.

The invading Japanese troops captured Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937 and started a bloodbath that lasted for more than 40 days. More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed and about 20,000 women were raped. Endit