China has published a series of historical documents on the
notorious Nanjing Massacre in a bid to reflect history truthfully,
objectively and comprehensively. The series contains 28 volumes,
with the first eight issued in July this year and the remainder
issued Tuesday in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu
Province.
Its compilers consist of more than 60 professors and scholars
from Nanjing University, Nanjing Normal University, Jiangsu
Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, the Second China Historical
Archives, Nanjing Municipal Historical Archives, Jiangsu Provincial
Administrative College and Central China Normal University.
"It took us five years to complete the painstaking work," said
Dr. and Prof. Zhang Xianwen of Nanjing University, also chief
editor of the series, at Tuesday's launch ceremony in Nanjing. The
compilers went to the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany and
Taiwan to collect historical materials during the past few years.
Zhang added that they had collected, compiled and translated a
total of 15 million words of original materials in Chinese,
Japanese, English and German." The series contains many first-hand
materials of inflictors, victims and third parties. It has a very
precious historical value," Zhang said.
"Not a single sentence or word of compilers has been inserted
into the content and the original appearance of the historical
materials was thus kept," he said. "In addition, many materials are
being published for the first time," he added. The last and also
the 28th volume contains 880 picture and photos offered by former
Japanese army officers and soldiers and by people from the United
States and European countries, which truthfully record the
atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in Nanjing 68 years
ago.
Japanese troops occupied Nanjing on December 13, 1937 and
launched a six-week long massacre. Historical records show that
more than 300,000 Chinese people, not only disarmed soldiers but
also civilians, were slain in the holocaust. Due to controversial
shrine visits, history textbook distortions and unilateral oil
field exploration, Japan has experienced chilly relations with
China this year. In 2005, the relations between the two countries
reached a nadir since the bilateral ties were normalized in 1972,
diplomatic observers said.
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(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2005)