As a writer, I want to save those who are forgotten and speak up for those who cannot speak. —Zhang Chunru
Before the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, in the long course of history for thousands of years, Japan was a follower of the ancient Chinese dynasty, whether it was culture, official system, or military system, all learned from China. In the Opium War of 1840, after the completion of the First Industrial Revolution, the West opened the door of China with the cannon of the ship, and also opened the door of Japan.
Faced with powerful enemies and the test of historical crises, both China and Japan implemented the law change, the Qing government implemented the foreign affairs movement, and Japan implemented the Meiji Restoration. China's family base at that time was much thicker than that of Japan, but due to the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government, the foreign affairs movement eventually failed, and Japan's Meiji Restoration was victorious, and the developing Japan quickly pointed its spearhead at China, began to invade China, and won the Sino-Japanese War.
Since then, Japan has made it their goal to invade China in an all-round way, first invading Korea, then invading Northeast China, and finally launching a full-scale war of aggression against China in 1937. In order to invade China, the Japanese spent decades to prepare, and later the senior generals of the Japanese army that invaded China have been engaged in espionage in China for decades, and they know China better than Chinese.
In 1937, after the Japanese invaders launched an all-out war of aggression against China, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized the whole country to fight a battle with the Japanese in Shanghai, and finally the Chinese army suffered 300,000 casualties and suffered a complete rout. After the end of the Battle of Songhu, the Japanese army launched an attack on Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, in three ways, because the Japanese army was not prepared to fight deep inland, the logistics troops were abandoned behind, and began to rob the grain, the Japanese army in the process of robbery was also accompanied by adulterous evils, in order to cover up their crimes, the Japanese army will kill the victims, but also often set fire to the entire village.
On December 12, 1937, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Tang Shengzhi, commander of the Nanjing Garrison District, to order the Nanjing troops to retreat immediately. On the 13th, the Japanese army invaded the city of Nanjing and began the Nanjing Massacre that shocked the world. In the decades that followed, Zhang Chunru was one of the representatives of many benevolent men who spent their lives collecting the crimes committed by the Japanese invaders.
Born on March 28, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey, Zhang Chunru was a second-generation Chinese American. Zhang Chunru's grandfather is the Nationalist anti-Japanese general Zhang Tiejun, his father graduated from the Department of Physics of National Taiwan University, is a famous physicist, his mother has been engaged in biochemistry, Zhang Chunru was admitted to the University of Illinois in the United States, at first his family wanted her to study computer science, but at the age of 20, he gave up the computer professional degree certificate that was about to arrive, but instead studied journalism.
After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1989 with journalism, she began her career as a journalist for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, and then with a master's degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University.
Zhang Chunru has been interested in writing since she was a child, and her parents have also paid attention to her cultivation in this regard, and when she was young, every time she talked to her parents, her parents would tell her that in 1937, the Japanese invaders invaded Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, and carried out a massacre of unarmed Chinese civilians and prisoners of war for six weeks. In those six weeks, the mighty Yangtze River turned red, and Nanjing, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties, became a hell on earth.
For Zhang Chunru, who was born in the United States and grew up in the United States, she did not know much about the history of the Nanjing Massacre at first, but in December 1994, Zhang Chunru saw some black-and-white photos of the Nanjing Massacre in a library in California, and she was shocked by the contents of the photos and felt extremely angry. But when she went to look for books about the Nanjing Massacre, she found that of all the English non-fiction books, there was not a single book that mentioned this period of history.
Zhang Chunru was shocked by this phenomenon in the United States at that time, and almost everyone in the United States and Western countries knew about Hitler's crimes and the atrocities of the German fascists, but few people knew that the crimes committed by the Japanese fascists in China were really more than those committed by the German fascists.
Zhang Chunru was very puzzled at that time, since such a terrible massacre had indeed occurred in nanjing, far away, China, and someone had recorded it with a camera, why would anyone deny him, and why all the English books did not mention such a history that made Chinese painful. Seeing that his compatriots had suffered great harm, but they could not be complained, could not get apologies and compensation from the invaders, and even could not be justly recognized by some countries in the world, Zhang Chunru could no longer suppress his feelings, and he decided to go to Nanjing to investigate and collect evidence on this history that should not be forgotten.
After learning about the relevant history, Zhang Chunru decided to spend several years writing a book about the Nanjing Massacre to publicize this history to Westerners, so that they knew that China during World War II was also tormented by fascism, and she felt that this history should not be forgotten. After Zhang Chunru's idea was learned by his friends, they were very surprised, because they felt that Zhang Chunru would spend a few years to write a book that was not popular in the United States at that time, and he would not make much money, but Zhang Chunru still decided to do it.
In the summer of 1995, Zhang Chunru came to Nanjing from the United States and began sampling and surveying the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. The truth was not so different from what she imagined, facing the scarred survivors and listening to them tell their tragic experiences, Zhang Chunru shed tears countless times, and she herself seemed to return to that bloody history.
What Zhang Chunru did not expect was that the atrocities committed by the Japanese invaders in China not only caused dissatisfaction among the Chinese, but even some Japanese people could not watch it, and a Japanese reporter wrote on the report: On December 13, I saw a massacre, a group of prisoners stood by the city wall, and the Japanese soldiers stabbed them in the chest one after another with bayonets.
After learning a large number of facts and evidence, Zhang Chunru fell into endless depression and pain, and the huge mental pressure made Zhang Chunru interrupt writing for a while, but in the process of finding himself, after inadvertently seeing a diary, Zhang Chunru re-strengthened his determination to make the truth of the Nanjing Massacre public, and this diary was left by Ms. Wei Tering, one of the members of the Nanjing International Committee at that time, when Wei Turin gave herself a Chinese name - Huaqun.
During his time in Nanjing, Zhang Chunru worked more than ten hours a day, and in order to write "Atrocities in Nanjing", Zhang Chunru also collected a large number of materials Chinese, English, Japanese, and German, as well as a large number of unpublished diaries, notes, original materials of government reports, and transcripts of the trial records of war criminals in Tokyo.
In December 1997, "Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten Catastrophe of World War II" was published. What Zhang Chunru did not expect was that as soon as the book was published, it entered the most highly regarded New York Times bestseller list in the United States within a month and was named the most popular book of the year.
However, this incident also brought great trouble to Zhang Chunru, and many Japanese people who were unwilling to face up to history accused and criticized her, and some people followed her and interfered with her normal life. On November 9, 2004, Zhang Chunru, a woman who had campaigned for the 300,000 wronged souls in Nanjing, parked her white car next to a deserted highway and pulled out a pistol, ending her life at the age of 36.
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Nanjing Massacre Zhang Chunru
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