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The Memorial Hall of the Victims In Nanjing Massacre By Japanese Invaders 秦逸（南京大屠杀纪念馆） Ladies and gentlemen, on the way to The Memorial Hall of the Victims In Nanjing Massacre By Japanese Invaders, I‟d like to tell you something about its historical background. On Sept 18th, 1931, Japanese started a well-prepared war of aggression to China, Japanese troops occupied three provinces of northeast China within five months. A key moment came on July 7th, 1937. The Japanese troops were carrying out training exercises near Wanping , a strategically important town outside Beijing. Theydeclared that one of their soldiers was missing and assumed that the Chinese army might have captured him and so demanded a search for him in Wanping town, but the Chinese side refused and said they would do the searching themselves. Taking this as an excuse, the Japanese army attacked the Chinese army and the Chinese army fought back. The battle took place at a bridge leading to the town. This is called Lugou Bridge or Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which marked the beginning of a full-scale invasion of China by the Japanese. After Beijing fell, they occupied Shanghai on November 12th, then marched toward Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, General Tang Shengzhi led the national revolutionary army to defend the city but ended in failure. This is known as the “Defending Battle of Nanjing”. On Dec 13, 1937, the Japanese army occupied Nanjing and during the following six weeks they started a bloody massacre in the city. About 300,000 innocent civilians and unarmed Chinese soldiers were brutally slaughtered in mass or by individual beheadings in the killing races. Some were buried or burned alive. More than 20,000 women were raped and many of them were then killed. The memorial hall stands on the site of the massacre at Jiangdong Gate during the Nanjing Massacre. It was built in 1985, and was expanded first from 1994 to 1995, and then from 2005 to 2007. The new memorial hall was completed and opened to the public on December 13, 2007, which was the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. The memorial consists of four parts, namely the assembly ground , the exhibition hall, the site of the massacre and the Peace Park. |
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