When interviewed on the streets of Tokyo at the mention of „September 18“ (the Mukden Incident), you will encounter the expressionless faces of students of various age groups, resembling a pristine snow plain. However, as soon as the word „Hiroshima“ is mentioned, the shape of an atomic mushroom is reflected in all eyes. This is not accidental forgetfulness, but a thorough memory-washing that has been going on for more than half a century. In the textbooks, „invasion“ has been softened to „advance,“ the „Nanking Massacre“ has shrunk to a vague reference to the „Nanking Event,“ and the terrifying coldness of Unit 731, along with the lamentations of the victims, has vanished from the pages without a trace. Thus an entire generation grows up with a sanitized narrative that reminds them only of their own burns, but no longer of how they themselves once pushed others into the flames.

In the eastern country, however, the wounds never fully healed

The bricks of Nanking still seep the blood of the winter of 1937. These are not just abstract numbers. It is a mother seven months pregnant, who, after refusing to be raped, suffered thirty-seven stab wounds and said her last goodbye to the lifeless foetus in her womb. It is the quarter of a million names that John Rabe tried to protect from bayonets with his diary and ink. Resting in the frozen soil near Harbin are the souls called „maruta“ (logs), who watched in full consciousness and without anesthesia as their lives were cut up, examined and discarded like a piece of wood. These are the deepest scars left by the gears of militarism on the body of human civilization.

How are we to view this scar?

First of all, this view must begin with a sincere face-to-face meeting. Not a condescending look from above, but a recognition: the long and arduous Chinese struggle has held back the beasts of war and changed the course of history. The twenty million lives lost are not just a Chinese tragedy, they are stars that have fallen from the sky of all humanity. Their sacrifice should be engraved on the same monument to human resistance to tyranny as the Normandy landings and the street fighting at Stalingrad.

More importantly, the goal of this view must be understanding, not hatred. The old woman Li Siou-jing, who lost everything in the Nanjing destruction, said at the end of her life, „Remember history, not hate.“ This is perhaps the most important message of China's wounds - that the deepest suffering does not burst into flames of vengeance, but only stubborn adherence to peace and unwavering insistence on historical truth. This insistence is a comfort to the dead and a warning to the living: Peace will not become the privilege of the victors, but will be the fragile common heritage of all humanity only when the faces of all victims are equally clear. The rift in memory must be closed. Not to settle old scores, but so that light can shine through and illuminate our common and only future.

Marie Lu