Memorial Hall of Nanjing Massacre
The Nanjing Memorial Hall was built in 1985 in memory of the 300,000 civilians and Chinese soldiers who lost their lives during the Massacre. On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army occupied Nanjing. They committed many crimes, including rape, arson, looting and torture. They even conducted killing competitions, by comparing how many live Chinese prisoners they killed. The Chinese government estimated that 300,000 people were brutally slaughtered.
When we entered the memorial hall, it had a gloomy atmosphere. This place is to remember people who were cruelly killed by the Japanese. There were many graves here and bones that were shown. Some of the bones showed how the person was killed. For example, there was a nail in one of the skull. This shows that the Japanese had nailed a iron nail into the person's head before the person died. There was also another person's skull who had a bullet in it. This showed that the person was shot in the head before he or she died. The Japanese killed very cruelly and tortured a lot of people in Nanjing. Thus, this place was to honor those people who had died during this time. Also, the white stones in the memorial hall represents how many people had died during this time. Thus, we were not allowed to step on these stones as a sign of respect to those who had died.
After that we went into an exhibition hall. When we went in, there were many horrific pictures of what the Japanese had done to the Chinese in China. Some pictures were Japanese holding up a head to show that he had killed someone and some were Chinese heads that was dismembered from the body and placed on a bridge. From there, we also know what the Japanese did to the girl's they fancy and how they were not even merciful to let a three month baby off. It was a horrendous sight and we felt very uncomfortable at some parts of the exhibition. Although they showed many cruel things the Japanese did to the Chinese at the beginning, they also showed pictures of the Japanese realizing their mistakes at the end and the modern Japanese president feeling sorry for what the Japanese in the past did to the Chinese thus visiting China every year to pay his respect. At the very end of the exhibition, there were many tall shelves of files. These files contain details of people who had died during this period of time. There was also this part where every 7 seconds, a picture of a person who had died during that time will light up. This is to show us that every 7 seconds, someone would have died because of the Japanese.
From this memorial hall, we had learnt many things that the Japanese in the past had cruelly done. Although it was the Japanese fault, we should not blame the modern Japanese as they had no control of what their ancestors had done last time. We also learnt many life lessons from this memorial hall. The pictures may be gruesome but they show us what the Japanese had truly did and pictures says a thousand words. Thus, if we could come back, we would love to visit this place again and have a more detailed look at all the pictures and eye-witnesses' or survivors's account.
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living