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1st Ld Writethru-China Focus: 71st anniversary of WWII marked across China

Xinhua, August 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

The 71st anniversary of the end of World War II was marked across China on Monday, with war victims remembered nationwide.

People from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea attended the annual peace assembly in Nanjing, commemorating China's victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

At the Nanjing Massacre Victims' Memorial Hall representatives from the three countries recited a declaration of peace.

On Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese troops began six weeks of destruction, pillage, rape and slaughter after capturing Nanjing. More than 300,000 Chinese, including unarmed soldiers and innocent civilians, were murdered.

On Aug. 15 every year, NGOs from across the world gather in the city to pay their respects to the victims.

Miyauchi Yoko, head of an anti-war NGO based in Kobe, Japan, said the hot summer weather in Nanjing reminded her of the brutality suffered by Chinese during the war, giving her and her colleagues the motivation to do everything in their power to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again.

In Harbin, one year after the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731 opened on the site of the former headquarters of the army unit, visitors topped 950,000, three-fold the number prior to the musuem's opening.

Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research base established in 1935.

Jin Chengmin, curator of the museum said it held many historical documents, and about ten percent of visitors came from overseas.

In Shanghai, the "Transcript of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East" was published for the first time and is scheduled to debut at Shanghai Book Fair on Tuesday.

The book selects and translates sections pertaining to China of a previous English book on the military tribunal. It was jointly published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press and the National Library of China Publishing House.

Xiang Longwan, honorary director of the Center for the Tokyo Trial Studies of Shanghai, Jiao Tong University, said the Tokyo Trial has significant meaning for international relations today.

"Hopefully, the book will become standard material for future studies of the trial, " he said. Endit