Essay collection to record memories of Nanjing Massacre

NANJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- A scheme was launched Monday in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, to record people's memories of the Nanjing Massacre.

Their recollections, themed "my family and the Nanjing massacre," will form a collection of essays, to be published at an unspecified date.

The activity is part of memorial services to be held this month to mark the 74th anniversary of a tragedy that claimed the lives of 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers.

Sponsored by the Assisting Association for the Survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, the Nanjing Chinese Communist Party History Association and the Nanjing Daily, the scheme will mainly target survivors of the period and their family members or heirs.

As time goes by, the survivors are getting older and older, many having passed away already.

Zhu Chengshan, deputy director of the Assisting Association, said the aim was to collect more evidence of this miserable period in China's history and inform more people of the tragedy.

One of the survivors, 86-year-old Yang Cuiying, said she will ask someone to record her narrations.

Nanjing witnessed mass murder, genocide and war rape following the Japanese capture of the city on December 13, 1937, during World War II.

Memorial events have been held every year since Nanjing opened a memorial hall for the massacre victims in 1985, according to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.