Annual Nanjing Massacre Memorial in San Francisco Exposes Japanese Imperial Army War Crimes

The memorial, organized by groups including the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition and the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, has been held annually for 20 years to expose Japanese Imperial Army war crimes. Zha Liyou, acting Chinese consul general in San Francisco, said Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China's capital, on Dec 13, 1937, and murdered 300,000 civilians while destroying a third of the city's buildings. Judith Mirkinson, president of the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, linked the massacre to the fate of over 400,000 women sexually enslaved by the Japanese army, urging Japan to acknowledge its crimes for reconciliation.

From Japan's 1931 invasion of northeast China through the 1945 surrender, about 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed or injured. The event coincided with China's National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims, and the massacre was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015. The Japanese Army blatantly violated international conventions and committed the extremely cruel atrocity in Nanjing, where 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered and one third of the buildings were destroyed, Zha said.