The state memorial ceremony for the Nanjing Massacre victims was held in Jiangsu's provincial capital of Nanjing on the morning of Dec 13, 2017.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the massacre. In February 2014, China's top legislature agreed to set aside December 13 as the national memorial day for the massacre victims.
About twenty museums/memorial halls with anti-Japanese war themes and 208 overseas Chinese organizations conducted memorial services today.
Last Saturday, the pastors of MochouLu Church in Nanjing prayed for peace in a peace & prayer worship to commemorate around 300,000 people killed by the Japanese invaders eighty years ago, according to CCC&TSPM.
On Dec. 10, the Church of the Holy Word, Nanjing, also hosted a service to mark the history, and its pastors led the congregation to pray for China, the survivors, and the urban construction of Nanjing.
The Beijing Morning Post reported that fewer than 100 survivors remain, and the youngest one is over 80.
Meanwhile, it was a time to remember those who did humanitarian work during the mass murder. On Nov 22, 1937, the foreigners in Nanjing volunteered to organize a committee called the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to provide refuge and relief to residents of Nanjing.
The track record of those foreign missionaries and pastors' aid and appeal to the international community to impose sanctions on the Japanese troops was poor at that time.
However, China has started to restore and value historical material provided by the members of the committee, including their diaries and letters, in recent years. The book titled "The Nanjing Massacre in the Eyes of American Missionaries" was released on the first National Memorial Day. It showed data from ten American missionaries like Miner Searle Bates, George Fitch, Ernest H. Forster, James Henry McCallum, John G. Magee, Wilson Plumer Mills, Lewis S.C. Smythe, Minnie Vautrin, and Robert O. Wilson.
- Translated by Karen Luo
