Loud air-defense sirens came on simultaneously Tuesday night, at
21:18, and lasted for three minutes in Harbin, Changchun and
Shenyang cities in northeast China, to mark the outbreak of the
Anti-Japanese War 70 years ago.
All the cars and buses in the streets stopped to horn, and the
scene was televised live by local TV stations.
A
large number of official and non-official activities in memory of
the war were held nationwide Tuesday, according to reports from
different cities.
On
September 18, 1931, Japanese troops, who already occupied part of
northeast China, exploded a section of railway in Shenyang City,
now capital of Liaoning Province, in order to find a pretext to
invade China on a full scale.
The Japanese invasion shows that all Chinese should unite to
safeguard national unity and territorial integration, said Wang
Fuqin, a deputy director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs
Office, at a symposium held in Shenyang. The official blamed some
pro-independence figures in Taiwan for their denial of the Japanese
invasion.
Some other local and foreign experts also spoke at the symposium to
air their views on the issue. General Zhang Xueliang, who joined
hands with the Communist Party of China in persuading the then
leader Chiang Kai-shek to fight against the aggressor in December
1937 and is now living in the United States, also sent a letter to
the meeting.
A
similar symposium was also held in Nanjing, the capital of east
China's Jiangsu Province, where Japanese troops killed 300, 000
soldiers and civilians during the well-known Nanjing Massacre in
December 1937.
In
Shijiazhuang, the capital of north China's Hebei Province, a
ceremony was held to unveil a bronze statue of Henry Norman
Bethune, a Canadian doctor who died in China during the war, at the
Bethune Military Medical Institute of the Chinese People's
Liberation Army (PLA) Tuesday.
The statue, 3.0 meters in height and 1.83 tons in weight, was built
with donations from some old Chinese soldiers and retired officials
as well as Bethune's countrymen.
In
Changsha, the capital of Central China's Hunan Province, 300
students from the city's No. 11 high school sent an open letter to
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, criticizing his recent
visit to "Yasukuni Shrine" and the distortion of that period of
history when China was invaded by Japanese militarists in the
school textbooks.
The students express the hope that the prime minister and all the
Japanese people respect history, look forward to the future, and
make contributions to world peace.
Many people including Japanese tourists visited local museums and
memorial places to commemorate the war.
In
Beijing, a dozen Japanese visited the Chinese People's
Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall. In Fushun City, Liaoning, a group
of 300 Japanese visitors stood in a silent tribute to the over
3,000 victims who were slaughtered by Japanese troops in the
massacre.
(People’s
Daily 09/19/2001)