A candle vigil ceremony was held in Nanjing City of east China's Jiangsu Province on Friday night, cherishing peace while commemorating the atrocities the city experienced in a six-week massacre after the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanjing on December 13, 1937.
People from all walks of life, such as inheritors of the memory of the Nanjing Massacre, descendants of foreign friends, overseas Chinese, students and volunteers, participated in the ceremony to mourn the victims and pray for peace at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
Among the participants was Ge Fengjin, the son of Nanjing Massacre survivor Ge Daorong and also an inheritor of the memory of the Nanjing Massacre.
Ge Daorong was only 10 years old when Nanjing fell to Japanese invaders. He survived by escaping into the "Safety Zone" during the mass killing, but his three uncles did not.
Ge Daorong spent over 10 years writing down more than 100,000 characters of what he witnessed in Nanjing. He titled it "Remembering History" and gave every family member a copy.
"My father started writing this book around 2008. As he wrote it, he constantly revised and added new content. Among my relatives, three of my grandfathers were brutally murdered. My father was in the so-called 'safety zone', but as he recalled, the 'safety zone' was not safe at all. In order to protect his younger brother and sister, my father was whipped by Japanese soldiers and even stabbed in the right leg with a bayonet," said Ge Fengjin.
Ge Fengjin went to Japan twice in 2018 and 2019 to tell the Japanese people about his father's personal experience, conveying the truth about the Nanjing Massacre and remind people to never forget history.
"There are now 32 inheritors of the memory of the Nanjing Massacre, which my father was very pleased with, as he believes that there is inheritance of that memory. We're not holding grudges, but we're remembering the history. We cherish peace, and we hope there will be no war in the world," he said.
During the event, representatives of foreign friends' descendants told the moving stories of their family guarding Nanjing 87 years ago.
The members of the Zijin Grass Art Troupe's Children's Choir and students from a primary school in Nanjing sang to pray for peace, respectively, at the ceremony.
Over the course of six weeks when Nanjing Massacre took place, Japanese troops proceeded to kill approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.
In 2014, December 13 was designated as the national memorial day for the victims of the atrocities by China's top legislature.
Nanjing holds candle vigil ceremony to honor massacre victims
