Nanjing Massacre survivor passes away

A survivor of the Nanjing Massacre, Su Guobao, has passed away in eastern China's Jiangsu Province, reducing the number of registered survivors of the atrocity committed by Japanese troops to 112.

Su died in his home in Nanjing, the provincial capital and had recently celebrated his 89th birthday. His body was cremated Tuesday.

He survived the massacre thanks to Bernhard Arp Sindberg, a Dane who helped save up to 20,000 Chinese lives during the 1937-38 massacre.

Japanese invaders killed more than 300,000 Chinese lives after occupying Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937.

Su was just 10 when Japanese troops invaded Hushan Village at the outskirts of Nanjing on Dec. 6, 1937. His family fled to a refugee camp at Jiangnan Cement Factory. Sindberg, a watchman at the cement plant, protected Chinese refugees along with a German colleague Karl Gunther.

Su's family survived on money and rice offered by Sindberg.

On Su's death, Sindberg's niece and some Japanese friends expressed their condolences.

A witness to Japanese aggression, Su devoted himself to spreading his experience and stories of humanitarian aid during the massacre.

He mobilized villagers to fund the construction of the first private memorial monument for the massacre victims and provided a list of the names of 64 victims, said Dai Yuanzhi, a researcher on the Nanjing Massacre.

In 2006, Su visited nine Japanese cities, including Tokyo and Osaka, to attend testimonies and denounce the attempts of right-wing Japanese figures to deny the massacre.

In 2014, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark met him when she visited the Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing.

The survivors are hard evidence of the Nanjing Massacre committed by Japanese troops and witnesses of history, said Zhang Jianjun, curator of the memorial hall.

As time goes by, memory of them will not fade away, he said. Endit