China unveils book series on casualties in anti-Japan war

BEIJING - A set of books that detail Chinese casualties and property losses in the war against Japanese aggression have been unveiled after 10 years of field research.

Initiated by the Party History Research Center of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in October 2004, about 600,000 people were involved in the research.

The 300-volume collection will be published at home and abroad in succession, featuring special reports on influential historical issues, such as germ warfare and "comfort women," those forced into sex slavery by Japanese soldiers during the war from 1931 to 1945.

Researchers conducted enormous field surveys, visiting witnesses and scholars across China as well as collecting archived information in the United States, Russia and Japan.

According to the research, 173 bloody massacres with casualties of more than 800 people were committed by Japanese aggressors during the war.

"The book series, which is based on facts, archives and testimony of witnesses, aims at recording the history and preventing the repeat of the tragedy rather than spreading hatred, " said an unidentified official with the Party History Research Center.