26 names newly inscribed on Nanjing Massacre memorial wall

A total of 26 names have been newly inscribed on a memorial wall in commemoration of Chinese killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops in 1937, bringing the total number of names on the wall to 10,664.

Xia Shuqin, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre, pays tribute to her relatives who died in the tragedy on December 10, 2018 at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre. [Photo: VCG]

The memorial wall, also known as the wailing wall, was set up in the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in 1995 with 3,000 names representing the 300,000 victims of the massacre.

"My father She Peigeng was seized by the Japanese troops when I was seven," said She Wenbin, whose father's name was recently added onto the wall. "He never returned, and I was told that he was drowned by the Japanese troops."

The names of the victims were confirmed by the city's committees on wartime loss and Nanjing Massacre investigations, survivors' dictated or published documents and information from victims' relatives, said the head of the memorial hall.

New names will be inscribed on the wall every year before the National Memorial Day, but the confirmation work is difficult, according to the memorial hall.

Japanese troops occupied eastern China's Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, and began a six-week massacre. Chinese records show that more than 300,000 people -- not only disarmed soldiers but also civilians -- were brutally murdered and thousands of women raped.