The Liaoning Provincial Archives in northeast
China on Friday received the donation of a substantial number of
wartime documents relating to Comfort Women, the Nanjing Massacre
and other brutalities committed by Japanese troops in China during
WWII.
The donation was made by the son of late American-Chinese
historian Wu Tianwei, a history professor at Southern Illinois
University who dedicated himself to the study of Japanese wartime
brutalities and started the first "Japanese Wartime Atrocity
Memorial" outside China in California.
The donation includes more than 1,000 videotapes tracking how
the Japanese invaders captured Shanghai and Cangxian County in
north China's Hebei Province, as well as 2,000 files, books and
magazines preserving historical proofs about Comfort Women, the
Nanjing Massacre, and the biochemical experiments carried out on
Chinese civilians in northeast China by the notorious Unit 731 of
the Japanese Imperial Forces.
Briand Wu, Wu Tianwei's son, said he was very happy to see the
precious books and research materials stored here, and hoped they
will play an important role in providing further understanding of
the Japanese atrocities that future Chinese generations should
remember.
"I am following my father's will, I'm sure that's what he wanted
to see," he said at the donation ceremony.
More and more evidence proving Japanese wartime atrocities have
been added to the Chinese museums after collectors donated them
from home and abroad.
Some 20 items including combat dispatches, letters and
newspapers were donated last September by Daito Satoshi, abbot of
the Kyoto-based Enkoji Temple, and will be displayed in the
Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
Even though there is already abundant proof, some right-wing
conservatives in Japan continue to question the massacre and the
numbers of people that were murdered in Nanjing.
At a regular press conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign
Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday criticized Japanese
dietmen's denial and cover-up of the Nanjing Massacre. Asked to
comment on the Japanese dietmen's denial of the massacre in a
report released on June 19, he said their attempts to obliterate or
conceal the historic facts including the Nanjing Massacre would
bring them international condemnation.
Qin said that those who tried to blot out the memory of the
massacre have an unethical approach to history and lack
courage.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre.
Qin said that China hoped Japan would adopt a responsible attitude
in handling historical issues including the Nanjing Massacre and
the issue of comfort women.
The massacre occurred in December 1937 when Japanese troops
occupied Nanjing, then capital of China. More than 300,000 Chinese
were killed, one third of the city's buildings were burned and more
than 20,000 women were raped in eight weeks.
(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2007)
