The Last Witness: Being grateful to international friends

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Xia Shuqin is one of the fewer than 100 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre still alive today. Despite age and time, the 88-year-old remembers the day she lost her loved ones like it was yesterday.

On the morning of December 13, 1937, Japanese troops entered her house and killed her parents, grandparents and two sisters.

Seven family members were murdered before her eyes. Xia was stabbed three times and passed out.

Staying next to the bodies of their kin and suffering hunger, fear and desperation for about two weeks, Xia and her four-year-old sister were eventually found by a neighbor.

"The Japanese troops killed my seven relatives. Only my four-year-old sister and I escaped alive. When I woke up, I shook everyone around, but none of them had survived," Xia, who was eight years old at the time, said.

She managed to stay alive, and many decades later can still recount the details of the doomed day despite the pain.

"I feel so much pain every time I think of my family. Why did they kill my family?" Xia said with tears in her eyes.

During that dark period, many foreigners who were staying in Nanjing saved as many people as they could.

John Rabe, chairman of the Nanking Safety Zone, along with others, rescued over 200, 000 people in an area of four square kilometers.

"I'm now 88 years old, I am very grateful to the international friends. They did save a large number of people during that time," Xia noted.

Survivor of Nanjing Massacre Xia Shuqin lays flowers in front of a wall where the names of victims have been inscribed at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, April 5, 2015. /Xinhua Photo

Hundreds of thousands of documents serve as records of the rampage by Japanese invaders. Despite the evidence, the Japanese government still denies the Nanjing Massacre.

"Oppose war and cherish peace; only then can we live a better life. I want to remind other people of this history. It cannot be forgotten," Xia said.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. Eighty years on, and history remains rooted in Chinese people's minds. For the survivors, the scars of that winter will never heal and memories will never fade.