Historical materials have been donated to a Chinese memorial hall, bringing new evidence to light about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre perpetrated by invading Japanese troops. The items include the wartime diary of Nishijo Eikaku, a Japanese soldier who witnessed the atrocities, and a photo collection containing 324 images of Japanese forces occupying Nanjing and other locations in 1937, according to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
Daito Satoshi, a Japanese citizen, donated the photo collection along with Japanese documents on wartime air defense facilities in Shanghai and Nanjing. Notably, the memorial hall received many photographs and documents concerning “comfort women,” including a blueprint for the renovation of a “comfort women” station in Shanghai and physical examination forms from a Japanese military field hospital for “comfort women.”
Previous research has shown that approximately 400,000 women in Asia were forced to become “comfort women”—sexual slaves for the Japanese army during World War II—nearly half of whom were Chinese. The newly donated materials provide invaluable evidence for historians and shed light on this dark chapter of history.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
