Another Nanjing massacre survivor dies, only 22 remain

NANJING -- One more survivor of the Nanjing Massacre has passed away, reducing the number of living registered survivors to 22, the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders said on Saturday.

Xu Deming died at the age of 96 on Friday, the hall announced.

The Nanjing Massacre took place after Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital in east China on Dec 13, 1937. Over the course of six weeks, they proceeded to kill approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of WWII.

"In 1937, the Japanese invaders broke into my home and took my father away. They took him to Shuiximen and later to the Qingliang Mountain area for mass massacre. Someone spotted my father there and then told my elder brother about it. We searched for him everywhere, but just didn't find his body," Xu once recalled.

"My father was only 54 years old when he was killed. My family fled to the refugee area and faced great difficulty getting food," he said.

Over the years, the number of survivors who are able to share firsthand accounts of the massacre has continued to decline.

In 2014, China's top legislature designated Dec 13 as the national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. The Chinese government has also preserved survivors' testimonies, recorded via both written and video transcripts. These documents relating to the massacre were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015.