Young Japanese infantry Sawamura feel cold hands and feet. Executive ordered him stabbed with a bayonet of a Chinese peasant, and watching the other soldiers laugh at him. “You caught him, you have to kill him.” Lieutenant shouted at him, and the age of 21 soldiers into the struggling victim. December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing.
“I stumbled came forward, his body will hold into the bayonet until the other side piercing. Executive said that this will not waste bullets, it is a kind of training new recruits.” Chak village, now 94-year-old said, ” After that I told myself, killing is wrong. “Chak village took part in the Nanjing Massacre is one of only small number of Japanese veterans. Sawamura such as the Nanjing Massacre involved the number of Japanese veterans, and now is rapidly reduced. Historians believe that the Nanjing massacre was committed by the Japanese army in China, the worst atrocities of war. According to the history of Japan-China Committee on a joint study released this year, China said the actual death toll of 30 million people, but the Japanese have different views on the digital.
In Japan, the Nanjing Massacre was basically taboo subject, only a few veterans talked about, most people remain silent, their witness to the grave. But this year, retired teachers Matsuoka Central Japan released a documentary, to preserve the memory of this dark and made a desperate stroke. In the film, the first time the Japanese invasion of China veterans admitted opening the mass killing and rape that year. This entitled the “Nanjing – are fragmented memories” (Torn Memories of Nanjing) documentary, recently screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and soon will be in Sydney, Australia in June’s Film Festival debut.
10 years, retired teachers interviewed hundreds of Matsuoka Central Nanjing Massacre of Chinese survivors, and about 250 former Japanese soldiers. She has been a conservative Japanese nationalist thorn in the side. Now, leaving only those veterans, including Sawamura, including 3 living. Matsuoka said: “The I do not just want foreigners to see this film, I hope the Japanese people to see, to understand the truth.” However, despite the efforts she made this film so far in only three theaters in Japan , few people read.
In Japan, World War II history is still a sensitive topic, it is also leading to tensions between Tokyo and its Asian neighbors as a source. Japanese textbooks often cover up the Japanese army in World War II atrocities, which caused other countries, China and anger. Some Japanese officials even called the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication.
Matsuoka said he was fighting whom this cause, often brought her life-threatening. She was Japanese nationalists nuisance, verbal abuse, some of the conservative magazine even called her a “Chinese spy.” She said he took 10 years to get veterans trust, to convince them to face the camera talking. In the end, a number of veterans and war memorials to her photographs, including a postcard, the above pattern is a group of people standing on the mountains of the Chinese side cracked a smile and head of Japanese soldiers.
