A visit to The Memorial Hall of Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders

As an American I have taken many history classes, watched programs on our history, read books on history and while that all seems to enrich our lives, there is so much more out there to learn about.  My friend and I recently traveled to the nearby city and former Capitol of China; Nanjing to visit the Massacre Memorial Hall and grounds and learn about one more part of history.

I am sure like myself, many of you are not familiar with the massacre that occurred in 1937 in Nanjing, China.  While I am simply relaying information I read or listened to while there, this is what I learned happened to the 300,000 plus people who died during this tragic incident between China and Japan.  While this took place in 1937, the Memorial Hall was only recently opened in 2006 to share the history with people from all over of what happened in this city.  The Massacre lasted 6 weeks in Nanjing, while China had troops in the city they were unable to defend off the Japanese soldiers whom had taken Shanghai and many cities in between.  The Massacre is often called "The Rape of Nanjing" which is indicative of what happened to many innocent women and children in this city.  This is the event that many Chinese signify for them as the start of World War II.

Most of the men, women and children in this area as civilians were killed amidst the war going on around them.  When the Japanese wanted to take on this city they destroyed it.  The information at the Memorial given was that Japan was empowering their military by telling them the more they killed and the more brutally they took over cities they would be rewarded with higher ranks in the army.  Many of the sections on the Memorial Hall had facts that were what the Japanese reported as counts of solders or lives lost compared to the numbers that the Chinese were reporting.  It was interesting to see this take on how each country has reported the incident.  There were different parts of the Memorial Hall that remembered those lost, those that helped as much as they could such as foreigners teaching at the University of Nanjing and the military influence from both sides.

As you approach the grounds there is a large statue of a mother holding her child who has just been killed.  There is a bell of peace and a large cross with the date engraved on it and all throughout there is the number of lives taken.....300,000.

 

While there is a lot to see on the outside, we spent most of our time inside the Memorial Hall.  There were two floors full of information, we were able to read most of the items as they were in three languages; English, Chinese and Japanese and also rent a headset that read information to us as we walked through the different sections of the Memorial Hall.  While I can't begin to describe the feeling you have when entering a place such as this, I imagine that for someone who's family roots are in China or more specifically Nanjing there is a lot of emotions that go along with a visit here.  For me I would imagine it is similar to the 9-11 Memorial in New York City or the Holocaust Museum and knowing this is part of your history and the World's history.

Below I will share with you some of the photos I took, while this was allowed, I will also say I was very happy to see that today's behaviors of loud phones, answering call anywhere, and loud conversations were respectfully to a minimum in honor of the remembrance of those who lost their lives.  There were many photos of things I didn't take pictures of from newspaper articles, including one from a Montana newspaper reporting the Japanese invading Nanjing to weapons used on both sides.  There were photos of victims after being executed, raped, their homes burned etc. and while you never want to see these images it just puts into perspective how bad of a time this was for the people of Nanjing.

entrance, every 12 seconds a new photo appears of a
person who died in the three weeks

Some of the military uniforms and items

An alarm for when an attack was coming

This was worn for the Chinese military when
it rained to help prevent them from getting wet.

A weapon from the war

Many of the bodies were discarded into the river

Flags that were hung 

At the very end were photos of those who survived and lived to tell their story of what happened in Nanjing.  Many of the Japanese military were put on trial later on for their actions in Nanjing and even some spoke again the commanders and what they chose to do many years ago.  It was quite an impressive memorial and a lot of information to take in.  I know many of you will never make it to the memorial to visit but I hope that sharing this with you gives you a little bit of history that you might not have learned otherwise.

Until next time......