The Nanjing Massacre Historical Materials Collection is a major scholarly undertaking. Collecting and organizing source materials, as well as translating, editing, and publishing documents in English, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, and other languages, is an immensely complex and demanding task, so the volumes can only be published in installments. Similar source materials have sometimes had to be published in separate volumes at different times. We ask readers for their understanding. We hope this collection will provide historians and readers at home and abroad with as much rich and comprehensive historical material as possible.
However, because the materials come from a wide range of sources, including firsthand accounts by perpetrators, victims, and third parties, memoirs, archival documents, newspapers, and periodicals, they do not all describe the Nanjing Massacre in the same way. Some accounts contain contradictions, owing to the authors’ positions, perspectives, or limited understanding; others include mistakes or erroneous views. This is hardly surprising.
Accounts of a catastrophe that shocked the world cannot be entirely uniform. Preserving historical sources in their original form is a matter of professional ethics and scholarly standards for historians. Accordingly, we have reproduced all source materials as they are, without alteration, and provided them to historical researchers, who can examine and analyze them when using them and draw sound conclusions consistent with the historical facts.
It is too true and history should not be misinterpreted.
Ooooooooo in tears