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Nanjing Massacre diary to be published
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-01-11 15:52

A diary kept by a Chinese witness during the World War II Nanjing Massacre is expected to be published this year, the Beijing Morning Post reported Tuesday.

The diary of Cheng Ruifang, a medical worker in the Nanjing International Security Zone, the temporary asylum for wartime refugees, was the first Chinese diary found, the newspaper said.

Other diaries written by foreign witnesses have been found and published, such as the diary of German John Rabe and the wartime diary of Japanese veteran Azuma Shiro.

Cheng's dairy, records the events in Nanjing, then capital of China and now capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, between December 8, 1937 and March 1, 1938. It was found three years ago in Nanjing and has since been kept in the Second Historical Archives of China in the city, according to the Beijing Morning Post.

After Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945, Cheng appeared on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to give testimony on the wartime atrocities of the Japanese troops.

The city of Nanjing fell to the Japanese army on December 13, 1937, and the massacre, also known as "the rape of Nanking," lasted for about six weeks. During this time, Japanese soldiers killed 300,000 unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians.

The Beijing Morning Post published an excerpt of Cheng's diary from December 18, 1937: "The Japanese soldiers were terribly beastly and stopped at nothing. They killed people and raped womenat will. In one reported case, a woman who was over 60 years old was gang raped by three Japanese soldiers, while her daughter, in her 40s, also fell victim to other two soldiers. This was really inhuman."

Today, some Japanese right-wing activists continue to deny thatthe massacre ever took place.



 
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