December 13, 1937 will forever remain on the calendar a date for commemoration and reflection.

It was on that day that invading Japanese troops began a horrible massacre in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province. More than 300,000 Chinese citizens and unarmed soldiers were slaughtered in six weeks, turning the ancient capital into a living hell.

Sixty-eight years have passed, but the Chinese people will never forget the loss of so many innocent lives at the hands of Japanese aggressors.

This is one of many haunting memories of occupation, massacre and sacrifice from 1937 to 1945. As the war proceeded, about 3 million soldiers were killed. Civilian death, at a rough estimate, amounted to more than 21 million. Japan's warmongers who inflicted untold suffering on neighbouring nations during World War II should forever be condemned.

The sirens sounded in Nanjing yesterday and the signing of the Nanjing Peace Declaration served as a key reminder of national humiliation, and demonstrated the will to not allow war to happen again on this planet that is home for us all.

This attitude comes from genuine respect for history, but it is not intended to continue the hatred.

Mutual trust is possible only when the past is objectively recognized, and concrete actions that speak of true repentance are carried out.

A conscious attempt has been made by "revisionists" in Japan to deny or downplay the involvement of the Japanese military in massive atrocities during World War II.

In 1991, censors at Japan's Ministry of Education ordered textbook authorities to eliminate all references to the number of Chinese killed during the Nanjing Massacre.

In 1994, General Nagano Shigeto, a World War II veteran who was appointed Japan's justice minister told a Japanese newspaper that "the Nanjing Massacre and the rest was a fabrication."

It is absurd that some national leaders of Japan still refuse to face the country's past sins.

Japan carries not only the legal responsibility but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated in Nanjing.

But, in addition to whitewashing history, the atomic bombs that exploded above the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become the only memories of World War II for quite a few Japanese politicians, as they try to obliterate from living memory the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army against millions of people in the Asia-Pacific region.

That Japanese legislators swarmed into the Yasukuni Shrine spoke for their selective memories and forgetfulness. They have betrayed the memories not only of the millions who died at the hands of Japan during its occupation of Asia, but also of their own compatriots.

In a resolution passed in August, the lower house of the Japanese parliament went so far as to deliberately delete the terms for "colonial rule" and "aggression" from the country's past.

Selective amnesia for dark episodes of history will prevent Japan from becoming a normal member of the international community.

A straight encounter with history will enable Japan, in particular its younger generation, to learn from the past and gain vision for the future.

This is crucial for Japan if it expects to win respect from the international community.

(China Daily December 14, 2005)