NANJING, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A memorial hall in east China's Jiangsu Province said the historical materials it received this year have provided new evidence of war crimes committed by invading Japanese troops during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, located in Jiangsu's capital Nanjing, collected more than 150 sets of artifacts and historical materials, as well as over 100 pieces of archival documents, in the first half of 2026, the memorial hall said on Saturday, which marks the 81st anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II (WWII).
The newly acquired items, many donated by young students, include private correspondence from Japanese soldiers, battlefield postcards, instructional materials on gas warfare, and compilations of wartime press coverage.
Among them is a collection of private letters written between 1937 and 1939 by a soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army's 16th Division, surnamed Ishikawa. In a letter dated Dec. 20, 1937, one week after the fall of Nanjing, Ishikawa wrote, "A few days ago, we killed over ten thousand defeated soldiers." This letter serves as a firsthand account from the perpetrator himself, recorded at the time of the massacre, and corroborates the diary entries of Azuma Shiro, a fellow soldier in the same division.
Also donated are two instructional manuals on the systematic training of poison gas warfare by the invading Japanese forces.
In addition, Marcus Detrez and Bastien Ratat from France and Zhong Haosong from China made a joint donation of archival materials to the memorial hall. The donated items comprise 861 pages of documents from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs relating to Japan's aggression in China, as well as over 50 Japanese-language publications, including wartime illustrated magazines and frontline war records.
"These artifacts, historical materials and archival documents reveal the atrocities committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes, from various perspectives. Coming from different sources, they corroborate one another and form an irrefutable chain of evidence," said Meng Guoxiang, a researcher at the Institute for National Memory and International Peace Studies.
The day also saw a ceremony for the fifth cohort of inheritors of the historical memory of the Nanjing Massacre, with new members including Carly Brady, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, and Christoph Reinhardt from Germany, among others.
"Since 2022, the memorial hall has issued certificates to five cohorts totaling 44 individuals," said Zhou Feng, curator of the memorial hall. "As this group continues to grow, the historical memory of the Nanjing Massacre will be passed on to an ever-wider audience." ■
