Victims of 1937 massacre remembered
Huang said that China will remember history, cherish peace and pursue peaceful development.
When Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China's capital, they started a campaign of slaughter over six weeks. More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed and over 20,000 women were raped.
Chang Zhiqiang, a 91-year-old survivor, said the tragedy was unforgettable because it was like "a sharp knife that stabbed in the heart".
The man, then 9, saw his father and four little brothers shot and stabbed by Japanese soldiers, his only sister raped and killed and his mother stabbed to death. The mother was breastfeeding his two-year-old brother in the last moments of her life, and blood flowed from her chest wound.
"I have rarely mentioned the experience to others during my lifetime," he said. "But as I grow older, I feel the responsibility to give testimony and live longer to serve as an eyewitness."
After the memorial hall reopened its renovated historical facts exhibition in 2017, it had received over 15 million visitors by November 2019.
Some 300,000 people have left messages in the guest book at the hall. The 2019 guest book weighs 792 kilograms. Visitors from more than 60 countries have visited, according to the memorial hall.
In 2014, China's top legislature designated Dec 13 as the National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims. The hall conducted its first memorial day ceremony that year.
