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Source: People's Republic of China in Russian – People's Republic of China in Russian –
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Source: People's Republic of China – State Council News
NANJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum in east China's Jiangsu Province on Friday said it has collected 573 artifacts or sets of artifacts and historical materials this year, providing new evidence of war crimes committed by Japanese troops who invaded China during World War II.
Among the new exhibits is a four-page letter written in pencil by a Japanese soldier on January 8, 1938, in which he describes the Nanjing massacres in chillingly mundane terms, the museum said at a press briefing.
In a letter to his father, the soldier described a "very interesting" pier in Nanjing that was used by invading Japanese forces as an execution site, where they killed defeated or wounded Chinese soldiers with bladed weapons and guns every day and then dumped their bodies in the Yangtze River.
The museum also reported receiving a letter from a Japanese researcher.
Ai Delin, head of the cultural heritage department at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, said staff had checked and confirmed the sender's identity, the military unit he was assigned to, his home address and date of death, confirming the letter's authenticity.
Wang Weixing, a researcher at the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said the soldier's carefree tone in describing the killings and disposal of the bodies showed that some Japanese soldiers viewed the massacre as a light and pleasant event, reflecting the invaders' complete loss of humanity.
Nanjing-born Chinese-American Lu Zhaoning has made numerous donations to the museum, including a donation of important historical materials this year.
These include a copy of the American newspaper The News
The French newspaper's article echoes the testimony of American surgeon Robert Wilson at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo after Japan's surrender and is a convincing refutation of the Japanese right-wingers' erroneous claims, said Zhang Sheng, head of the Nanjing Massacre Research Society.
According to Zhang Sheng, R. Wilson testified that before the war, the population of Nanjing was about a million people, but after the Japanese occupation it dropped sharply to less than 500,000 people.
"Japanese right-wing forces have long denied the massacre, claiming that Nanjing's population was less than 300,000," Zhang Sheng added.
Other notable exhibits include a dossier on a military doctor killed during resistance in the city, a group of photographs depicting Nanjing after its occupation by Japanese troops, an American magazine with four photographs documenting Japanese atrocities, and another letter written by a Japanese soldier.
The Nanjing Massacre occurred on December 13, 1937, when Japanese forces captured China's then capital. Over six weeks, Japanese soldiers killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers, marking one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.
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