China marks 73rd anniversary of Japan's WWII surrender

A peace assembly was held Wednesday in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

Representatives from countries, including China, Japan, the United States and Thailand, attended the event held in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, mourning the 300,000 people who were killed in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.

Japanese invaders slaughtered about 300,000 Chinese during a six-week rampage after they captured the city, which was then China's capital, on Dec. 13, 1937.

Members of an anti-war NGO based in Japan's Kobe laid wreaths and paid tribute to the victims in silence. It was the 22nd time the group had attended the peace assembly in Nanjing.

"We choose to come to China to mark the event because Chinese people were the victims of the war and they deserve tribute and remembrance," said Miyauchi Yoko, head of the group.

"Ordinary people suffer the most in times of war," said a student from Thailand. "Everyone should make contributions to world peace."

Ge Daorong, a survivor of the massacre, was only 10 years old when Nanjing fell to the Japanese invaders.

During the massacre, he and his close family took refuge in a safety zone and survived the onslaught, but his three uncles did not.

"We look back at sad episodes of history in order to cherish today's peace," Ge said at a forum held after the assembly.

In northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, nearly 100 teenagers from China and Russia took part in a historical reenactment to mark the 73rd anniversary of Japan's surrender.

The activity was held at Shengshan Stronghold, a war relic that has now been turned into a base for patriotic education of young people from China and Russia.

"Both China and Russia suffered great losses during WWII," said Yulia Ablova, an education official in the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk and representative of the Russian youth delegation. "We need to remember the history and cherish the peace."

In the southwestern city of Chengdu, 1,207 hand prints of World War II Chinese veterans were donated Tuesday to the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, the largest private museum complex in China, to commemorate the anniversary.

The hand prints were from surviving soldiers in Hunan Province who fought during the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-1945).

During the ceremony on Tuesday, Fan Jianchuan, curator of the Chengdu based museum, said that the veteran hand prints installation was expanding. More than 4,800 red hand prints have been imprinted on tempered glass slabs arranged in a V-shape to symbolize victory.

"Seventy-three years ago, these hands held broadswords and spears, threw hand grenades and buried landmines to safeguard our country and rescue our people," Fan said. "They should be remembered."