"I Will Never Forget": Voices of Survivors

Three testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing Atrocities are included below.
They are only three of many and each has been translated from Mandarin
Chinese.

All include memories of extreme acts of violence and trauma. Gender violence is
prominent in each testimony and great care and sensitivity should be considered in any
use with students.
Survivor testimonies—firsthand accounts from individuals who lived through war
and atrocities—supplement what we learn from historians and other secondary
sources. Their voices offer perspectives on difficult and often unimaginable
situations people experienced during war and collective violence. We must
remember that testimonies given decades later are voluntarily given and are
based on individual experiences and personal memories. They are also self-edited
and must be understood and listened to with these factors in mind.

At the same time, some scholars suggest that the very thing that makes survivors’
accounts so powerful can also affect their reliability. While some read survivors’
stories as evidence to be weighed along with other sources, we know these
accounts offer something more. They teach us not only about the past, but about
memory as well. For many people they force a confrontation with the past,
reminding us that behind numbers or documentary accounts are human beings.

Testimony of Wen Sunshi

My name is Wen Sunshi, this year I turn 82 years old. My house was
originally in the Xiaguan district of Nanjing. I was married in 1936 of
the Chinese lunar calendar. My husband’s original surname was
Guo, but because my family had arranged the marriage, he changed
his name to Wen—my surname.

When the Japanese entered the city on the December of 1937, many
retreating Chinese Nationalist troops attempted to cross the river to
escape, with some even coming to my house to board. When the sky
was getting dark, my entire family took refuge at the nearby
[Hutchinson International].

En route, we saw Japanese warships rake down crossing Chinese troops with
indiscriminate machine gun fire.
The refugees at the [Hutchinson International] were many. One day,
six or seven Japanese troops arrived, all of them armed with guns,
knives hanging by their waists. They took six or seven maidens from
the crowd of refugees. I was among those taken. There was also a
maiden I recognized, her name was Little Qiaozi. One Japanese
soldier forced me into an empty room. I can remember him being
chubby, with a beard. Once we were both in the room, he used a
knife to force me to take off my pants—I would be killed if I didn’t. I
was thus raped in this manner.

After the rape, the Japanese soldier turned to me and said “opened
path, opened path” and I was released. In order to avoid the
Japanese soldiers coming again to hurt us, that night, the manager of
the [Hutchinson International] ferried us—about eighteen maidens—
to the cellar of the Egg Beating room. Those among us also included
several maidens who had escaped from the Suzhou prefecture of
Jiangsu. I hid in that cellar for several months, with the owners
secretly sending me food. Only after the situation was deemed
“peaceful” did I return to live with my mother and father. I had lived
in the [Hutchinson International] for more than a year before I had
returned home.

My husband knows that I was raped by a Japanese soldier, but

empathizes with me. He passed away a couple of years ago. In my
home, I can’t bear to tell my sons and daughters, and I’m worried
that other people will find out and look down upon me.

At that time, my cousin was only eighteen-years-old. He was taken

away by the Japanese troops and never returned. I personally
watched as the Japanese troops massacred many people. We had a
neighbor, elderly Ms. Zhen, who was about eighty-years-old. She
thought that because she was old, she could remain at home and be
fine. In actuality, she was brutally murdered by the Japanese, with
her stomach slashed open. There was also a tea specialist, who
couldn’t bear leaving his home. He was also murdered by the
Japanese.

Testimony of Chen Jiashou

My name is Chen Jiashou. I was born on September 16, 1918. When

the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Nanjing in 1937, I was living in
a small Nanjing district with my Uncle, Mother and Father, my two
brothers and my sister. At that time, I was only 19 years old. I was an
apprentice. After the Japanese invasion, I, along with several other
people, collectively escaped to a refugee camp by Shanghai Road. At
that time, since the refugee camp had run out of food, I ventured out
to replenish the supply. But because of some casual remarks I made
while lining up, I was taken by some nearby Japanese soldiers and
brought to a pond adjacent to Shanghai Road. Having not stood
there for more than two minutes, I watched as a group of armed
Japanese soldiers hustled several lines of about two hundred Chinese
troops toward the edge of the pond, surrounding them with weapons
to prevent them from escaping.

At that time, I was also ordered to stand among the front line of
Chinese soldiers. I was only 19 years old, and terribly frightened.

Thus, the instant the Japanese soldiers opened fire on us all, I

immediately fell toward the ground, faking my death. Struck by the
flying bullets, my Chinese comrades all piled up on my body. Right
up till it got dark and the Japanese soldiers had all left, I lay under
the dead bodies, not daring to move. Only then did I climb out from
under the pile of bodies. It was thus how I became a fortunate
survivor of the Nanjing massacre.

I was captured again by the Japanese near Sanhe Village, and sent to
work at a Japanese-occupied silk factory near nowadays’ Nanjing
medicine factory. It was at this time that I witnessed more Japanese
atrocities first-hand. One time, after I finished transporting ten
barrels of gasoline to the Japanese military depot near the train
station, Japanese soldiers brought me to a basement. Aside from
large wooden boxes, the basement also contained a bed. The two
Japanese soldiers ripped off the bedsheet covers and
indiscriminately opened fire upon it. On the bed lay four women, all
dead.

Another time, as I came back from transporting provisions, I walked

near the main hall of the Nanjing medicine factory. I saw a few
hundred ordinary citizens collapsed on the road. Driving a truck, the
Japanese troops evidently saw them as well, but simply paid no
attention and pretended not to see them. They drove directly over
the people, transforming the place into a bloodbath.

I will never forget a memory like this:

One day after work, I walked to the entrance of Changshan Park. A
man surnamed Tse heard the sound of a Japanese truck, so stuck his
head out to take a look. Coincidentally, he caught the eyes of the
Japanese troops, who immediately disembarked and tied Old Tse up,
forcing him to kneel on the ground. One of them took out a bayonet,
and violently hacked at Old Tse’s head. Unfortunately, though the
back of Old Tse’s neck was sliced through, his head hung on by the
remaining front part of his neck—he was still breathing and alive,
collapsed on the floor. Seeing this, the Japanese soldiers then raised
their leather boots, mercilessly kicking him around the Changshan
Park’s grounds. It was only then, with his head severed and his body
trashed, that Old Tse passed away.

I will never forget the violence, the atrocities and the aggression that
the Imperial Japanese soldiers enacted during the Nanjing Massacre.

Testimony of Mr. Chen Deshou. Interviewed by Yanming

Lu. Chen: My last name is Chen, spelled with the “ear” and “east”,
De is the “de” from virtue, and Shou is the “shou” from longevity. My
name is Chen De Shou.

Lu: What year were you born?

Chen: 1932

Lu: You were born here in Nanjing?

Chen: Yes, in Nanjing.

Lu: What type of work did your parents do?

Chen: My mother was a housewife, my father was in clothing, he

owned a clothing store.

Lu: What did your grandparents do?

Chen: My grandfather was a tailor, he also made clothes.

Chen: My grandmother too.

 Lu: So your family ran a tailoring shop?

Chen: No, a clothing shop, a clothing store.

Lu: Do you remember what it was like in your family store at the
time?

Chen: Yes.

Lu: Can you talk a little about it?

Chen: Life in our household was a full one. There was my paternal
grandfather, my paternal grandmother, my parents and a younger
brother. My mother was pregnant. My father’s sister also lived with
us, and she had two kids who came to live with us. Life was very
hard. In 1937, at that time, Japan, the Japanese troops . . . they were
setting off bombs, throwing bombs, see at that time, they wanted to .
. . to . . . hiding from the planes. Around December of 1937, there
were so many people, they fled to escape the troubles. Why didn’t
our family go? Because our family was in the clothing ordering
business, and my father got a contract to make uniforms for the
soldiers, uniforms that were for the local army. This money though,
was stuck, so there was no cash, and without the money, you couldn’t
escape, right? So we didn’t leave, we lived in this house. Where was
our house? It was near Nanjing’s Sanshan Rd, in what is now the
street just behind the Gan Family Courtyard. My house was #4. . . .

Life was pretty happy and full. Now on December 13, there came
change that turned our world upside down. At that time, at the end
of the alley, at the end of the alley we lived in, it was called TianQing
St. The Japs started a fire, they started a fire at the end of the alley,
and the blaze was fierce. My father, being a warm hearted man, he
went out to put out the fire. And he never came back. From the
moment he left that day, he never came back, he was gone. So only
my grandparents, my mother, my aunt, the young and the old, were
left at home. On the morning of that day, a Japanese devil

took a bayonet, a rifle, and with the bayonet he came in. When he came in, we
thought everything was as usual, my grandfather even brought out candies for
him, telling him to eat, and treating him as a guest. He said he didn’t want that,
he said one sentence: “I want a woman.” My mother was pregnant, with a big
belly, so he didn’t want her. He dragged my aunt, and at the time she was nursing
my little girl cousin. The house we lived in had 3 rooms, each behind the other,
we were in the third, in the third room. He took my aunt, and dragged her from
the third room to the second room, he was going to humiliate her, he was about
to rape her.
My aunt was an educated woman, she would rather die than submit,
so she struggled, she struggled with that Japanese devil. Then the
devil picked up a knife, and stabbed my aunt, piercing her 6 times, in
her thigh as well, she was bleeding there as well as from her chest. At
the time when he dragged her to the front, my grandmother, and I
was an obedient little boy, she brought me forward, so I witnessed
my aunt’s death with my own eyes. I was 6 at the time, only 6, but I
was old enough to remember things. My aunt handed my little
cousin over to my grandmother, and said, “Mother, my heart aches,
please give me some sweetened water.”

So my aunt, my grandmother, my grandmother carried my little

cousin to the back, and poured a bowl of sweetened water, from the
third room to the second and back to the front. When she got there,
my aunt had already stopped breathing, she didn’t get to taste the
bowl of sweetened water her mother brought. So, just like that, my
aunt died. And then that very night, my mother, she gave birth to her
child, at that time she gave birth. Giving birth at that time, when
there was no one there to help, was extremely difficult. So we stayed
at home.

At this time, we kept my aunt’s body in the second room, within that
room’s entry we put down a door, and her on it, she lay there close to
3 days, we had no other choice, grandfather was old, around 70, he
was an old man. We had no one in the house who could work, we
couldn’t get a coffin, right. The child my mother bore didn’t have
anything to eat, in a few days our household food ran out. The
Japanese devils, were really hateful to the extreme, see, he could kill
without batting an eyelid. He could rape and kill without batting an
eyelid. And then, on the third day, a Japanese soldier arrived—this
was a soldier, not a Japanese devil. He had a short gun on him, a
short gun. And then he also spoke Chinese, he could understand my
grandfather, and he could talk so my grandfather understood. He
said that back in Japan he was a shop keeper, not a soldier, he was
conscripted, he didn’t have a choice, he was conscripted here, and
from the looks of him he wasn’t a soldier, he was a petty official. He
took my grandfather out to the streets, found a couple of youths, and
then found a few able bodies and went with them to a coffin shop
and brought back a coffin to our second room, that is the room
before ours, and put my aunt in the coffin. We couldn’t bury her, so
we had to put her on the ground open to the sky, like that. And then
he took my grandfather, and went out, to a rice shop and a soy sauce
shop and found some food, then put it in a bag and carried it back to
us, and so we survived this hardest of hard times, see.

Now the Japanese devils, they wouldn’t let a single woman off the
hook, right. After my mother gave birth, she put the bloodied paper
on the floor. When they came they’d want to see it, and after they
saw it, they knew she’d had a baby, they didn’t want her and they’d
leave. This harassment went on everyday, there was nothing we
could do.