Collected Historical Sources on the Nanjing Massacre, Volume 25: Survivor Interviews (Part One)

The Nanjing Massacre Historical Materials Collection is a major scholarly undertaking. Collecting and organizing historical sources, as well as translating, editing, and publishing documents in English, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, and other languages, is extremely complex and demanding work. As a result, the volumes can only be published gradually in batches. It has also been unavoidable that related materials appear in different volumes at different times. We ask readers for their understanding.

We hope this collection will provide scholars and readers at home and abroad with as many rich and comprehensive historical sources as possible. However, the sources come from many places and include firsthand accounts, eyewitness testimony, and hearsay from perpetrators, victims, and third parties, as well as memoirs, archival documents, newspapers, and periodicals. Their accounts of the Nanjing Massacre do not always agree. Some are even contradictory because of the authors' positions, limited perspectives, or incomplete understanding, and some contain mistaken or inaccurate views. This is hardly surprising. There could never be complete agreement about a catastrophe of this magnitude, which shocked the world. Preserving historical sources in their original form is a professional duty and an academic standard that historians must uphold.

Therefore, we have reproduced all materials as they originally appeared, without alteration, and made them available to historical researchers. They can assess and analyze the sources in their work and draw sound conclusions consistent with historical facts.