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Thread: Drawing lessons from the past.

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[quote=LEONARDO,258164]December is a gloomy season for Chinese people. Ten days later, we will have to face the unforgettable disastrous day-December 13th. Seventy years ago, on that darkest day, (December 13th, 1937) Japanese aggressors occupied Nanjing.They embarked on a six-week long orgy of destruction, pillage, rape and slaughter. Historical records show that more than 300,000 Chinese people, including both unarmed soldiers and innocent civilians, were murdered.

Although I haven’t witnessed the war on the spot, but the bitter words from my forefathers echoed in the sky where I live. The cruel “Loot all, kill all, burn all” polic aimed to drive Chinese people towards extinction. Fortunately, Chinese people survived through their united efforts.

The reason why I retell this tragic episode is not to make people of good conscience and justice suffered and gloomy, but to memorize the great martyrs’ who sacrificed their lives for the cause of peace.

However, should we exclude this tragic episode from our memories? If Japan has regretted his crime, we should talk about this issue as few as possible, since nobody is infallible, let alone Japanese militarists. 
Regrettably, Japan seldom expressed his regret sincerely. The former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, insisted in visiting to the shrine in Japan, where war criminals executed for their part in the Massacre are among those honored. The history textbook distortions written by the Japanese have angered the Chinese people in recent years.

Certainly, these are some acts of Japanese militarists and politicians, not the average Japanese civilians’ attitudes. Therefore, I have no prejudice against Japanese, but some sophisticated politicians and so-called scholars. What lessons should we draw from history? I am not sure. How about Japan?

There is a saying in China: forgetting the history indicates betrayal. Another saying goes, “history never repeat itself”. This might not be very accurate. I’d like to say: history will never repeat itself provided that human beings can take history as a mirror and draw lessons from the past.

（Notes：On Monday the Chinese government published an eight-volume name list containing the names of 13,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre. The publication set contains information including the name, sex, age, occupation and residential addresses of the victims, as well as which Japanese army unit committed which crime and how the victims were killed.）

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