In May 2016, in the middle school textbook of the Chinese Publishing House, the article "Nanjing Massacre" was replaced by "Escape from Death". This is not to forget history, but to better document it.
"Escape from Death" is an excerpt from Zhang Chunru's book "Nanjing Massacre". This book breaks the silence of China, Japan and the United States for the first time, exposes Japan's atrocities to the world, and is the best memorial to the 300,000 wronged souls in Nanjing.
But while the author Zhang Chunru illuminates the darkness, he is also swallowed up by the darkness.
On November 9, 2004, she ended her life with a pistol in her car.
The last words she left us were:
"You'd better remember the me I was—the one who was a best-selling author—than the one who came back from Louisville and became disillusioned... Every breath I took became difficult—an anxiety that was like drowning in an open ocean. I know that my actions will pass on some of this pain to others, those who love me the most. Please forgive me. ”
Without her beloved parents, husband, and two-year-old son, we don't know what kind of struggles and pains she went through inside to make this choice.
In 1968, a small life was born in New Jersey, and her parents named her "Pure Ru", taken from the Analects: "From it, Pure As also", which means "pure harmony". She is also like the name in the photo, pure and beautiful.
Zhang Chunru was born in Xiangmendi, his grandfather was Zhang Tiejun, a general of the Anti-Japanese Nationalist Army, who was the chief writer of Taiwan's "Zhonghua Daily", his parents were scientists, he went to the United States from Taiwan to study, and then stayed in the United States. As a child, she often heard her parents mention the distant year of 1937, when the Yangtze River surrounding Nanjing was almost blocked by corpses, and the river was stained bright red with blood. She imagined what a cruel time it was, and how her grandparents escaped from Nanjing, known as hell on earth.
However, when she wanted to know more about this history, she was surprised to find that she could not find any written information to record this historical fact.
"I went to the library trying to get more details, but I couldn't find a single star or a dozen bits of information about it. In our school library, in the city's public library, in my world history textbook, I couldn't find anything. Worse still, my teachers didn't know anything about it. ”
Sometimes she even felt that there was an exaggeration in whether it was her parents' story, until a black-and-white photo appeared in front of her. This photo changed her life.
"Although I had heard a lot about the Nanjing Massacre as a child, I was never prepared to see these pictures—severed heads, severed bellies, naked women forced into various erotic poses by rapists, their faces distorted and deformed, with expressions of pain and shame that will never be forgotten, all of which are unabashedly presented in black and white images."
Also bloody history, the Holocaust has attracted wide attention in the Western world, there are constantly movies, books to tell this history, Auschwitz concentration camp has also been listed by UNESCO world cultural heritage. So, what about Nanjing? Why is Nanjing forgotten by the world?
Zhang Chunru decided to disclose this history. "Hopefully, this book will pique the interest of other writers and historians so that they can investigate and study the experiences of nanjing massacre survivors as soon as possible, after all, these voices from the past are decreasing year by year and will eventually disappear all." More importantly, I hope that this book will arouse the conscience of Japan and accept responsibility for this incident. ”
She believes that "truth is indestructible, has no borders, and has no political leanings".
"I want to let people all over the world know what happened in Nanjing in 1937, so that tragedies like the Nanjing Massacre will not be repeated."
In order to get the most authentic information, she came to Nanjing alone, and even if her body did not adapt to the hot weather, she still insisted on working more than 10 hours a day. At a time when most girls who have just walked out of school are still addicted to love, at the age of 27, she buries her head every day to read bloody historical materials: beheading, burning alive, burying alive, opening the chamber, drowning in the cesspool, digging up the heart, splitting the body... These terrible scenes often made her tremble with anger.
To focus on writing, she would wait for her husband to fall asleep and write until four or five o'clock in the morning the next day. During the writing process, she often stops to calm her emotions. She asked herself to remain objective and calm, without any personal emotions, but only to tell everyone the truth of the matter.
She did.
Zhang Chunru went to find Mr. Rabe's niece, Mrs. Reinhardt, and found the 59-year-old "Rabe's Diary". It was she who brought fragments of Wei Tering's diary and more than 1,000 pages of materials about the trial of the Nanjing Massacre war criminal Matsui Ishigen by the Far Eastern Military Tribunal to China, so that these precious historical materials can be seen again.
After the publication of "Nanjing Massacre", this English book that detailed the historical truth immediately caused a sensation, and mainstream society in Europe and the United States began to pay attention to this history. Zhang Chunru began to participate in frequent social activities, shouting for the truth of the atrocities in Nanjing.
On April 23, 2001, at an international academic conference held in San Francisco, she was the first to give a speech entitled "Rape of Nanjing", which won long applause from the participants. But it was also attacked by the Japanese with ulterior motives. On the spot, two Japanese people stood up and challenged Zhang Chunru and arbitrarily raised so-called questions. She refuted it on the grounds, criticized the two Japanese for being incoherent, and left the venue in a daze. Later, the Japanese Baifang Study bought the publishing rights of "Nanjing Massacre" and asked for changes to the contents of the book, which she strictly refused.
Because of this, Zhang Chunru was monitored by Japanese right-wing forces for a long time and received a letter containing two bullets. Faced with tremendous pressure from all sides, she began to have nightmares of insomnia, and slowly, she began to lose weight and her hair was falling. She once told a friend that she had been living in fear all these years. After touching the darkest side of human nature again and again, she suffered from depression.
In July 2003, while writing her fourth book, she was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. On August 11, 2004, her mother, Zhang Yingying, found that Zhang Chunru had not eaten or slept much for several days, and almost collapsed. At two o'clock in the morning of August 13, Zhang Chunru's voice on the phone was terrified, saying that he turned on the hotel TV and saw that the screen was full of horrific and bloody photos, as well as the scene of children being brutally killed in the war, and hell was in front of him. She also felt someone peeking out the window and suspected that someone had put a bugging device in the room. Zhang Chunru, who was almost collapsed, was already unwilling to communicate with people at this moment.
What choices will people who no longer have hope for all the good in the world make?
During the Japanese invasion of China, Wei Telin used the Jinling Women's College to shelter countless women and children, and the diary she wrote was also the most convincing evidence to expose the rape, murder and plunder of the Japanese army invading China. Like Zhang Chunru, Wei Tering was born in Illinois and also graduated from the University of Illinois, and has always been regarded as a role model by ChunRuxin.
However, on April 14, 1940, Wittlin wrote: "I am almost exhausted. In the past, although the progress of the work was slow, it was possible to formulate a work plan in a step-by-step manner, but now even this cannot be done, and the hands do not listen to the call. I hope to go on vacation right away. Two weeks later, she went insane and returned to the United States. On May 14, 1941, Wittling committed suicide by gassing the kitchen in her American apartment.
On November 9, 2004, when Chunru pulled the trigger on herself, the two female warriors met in another world.
It can be said that it was the ugliness of the Nanjing Massacre that destroyed these two women who were originally extremely determined. Although they did not die in the massacre, they were also victims of the massacre. And Zhang Chunru, at the cost of her life, in exchange for the re-emergence of historical truth, everything she did deserves to be remembered and praised. But there are still a group of people who deny the crimes they have committed, deny the truth of history.
In order to confuse cognition, the CEO of Japan's APA hotel chain placed his own books in his hotel rooms, openly denied the existence of the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women, and declared that "the so-called crimes committed by Japan are lies made up by the United States to drop the atomic bomb." ”
Emperor Meiji's grandson, Takeda Tsunetai, advocated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and repeatedly disparaged China on television programs, piecing together a book on the "demonization" of China.
Former Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada not only supported the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and denied the Nanjing Massacre, but also served as a lawyer in the "lawsuit against the reputation of the 100-man beheading competition (Toshiaki Xiang, Takeshi Noda and their survivors)", and published a book to defend the murder competition... Such incidents keep breaking out.
Today, there are fewer than 100 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, the souls of the victims are still groaning in pain, and the perpetrators are constantly denying their crimes. What is even more frustrating is that the hero is gradually forgotten by the world. The "Zhang Chunru Memorial Park" project in San Jose, San Francisco, which was scheduled to start in late 2015 or early 2016 and completed in the spring and summer of 2017, has been postponed again and again for some reason.
We remember Zhang Chunru over and over again, not just for her personal bravery or tragedy. It is even more because without the participation of everyone, the truth of history and the people who guard the truth will become vulnerable.
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Nanjing Massacre
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