Nanjing Massacre: Brave survivor passes away at age 93

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One of the few remaining survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, Chen Fengying, has died at the age of 93. There are fewer-than-100 people still living today, who witnessed first-hand the mass murder, rape and torture committed by Japanese troops in China's former capital during World War Two. Tao Yuan reports.

These are faces of those who survived a brutal mass murder 80 years ago. They are the only ones still alive today, most are in their 90s. Another photo is scheduled to be taken down, marking the passing of 93-year-old Chen Fengying.

In December 1937, Japanese invaders captured the former Chinese capital, Nanjing. What followed was six weeks of mass murder, rape and torture. Chen was 12 years old. Decades later, she remembered how she lost her family.

"My brother Chen Xinglin and his wife had just gotten married two days earlier. Japanese soldiers captured my sister-in-law and were about to rape her. She chose death over humiliation and jumped into a pond. The Japanese soldiers then killed my brother."

Today, there are fewer than one hundred Nanjing massacre survivors left to tell their stories. Li Gaoshan is one of them. He was one of the city's defenders who surrendered their weapons in 1937. His troops were rounded up and shot near the city gate. The bullet missed Li. He pushed his way out of the dead bodies piled on him and ran away.

LI GAOSHAN NANJING MASSACRE SURVIVOR "There aren't many like me nowadays. I would've been dead for 80 years now had I been less lucky."

An estimated 300 thousand unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians died during the massacre, which remains, as one historian wrote, "a blemish upon the honour of human beings." But even today, Japanese ultra-nationalists are denying the massacre ever occurred. Their lives, and deaths, are both reminders of one of the darkest chapters in human history. Tao Yuan, CGTN, Nanjing.