Saturday was the 71st anniversary of the massacre of many Nanjing citizens by the Japanese. At 10am the sirens started blaring-this continued(off and on) for the next 15-20 minutes. This is approximately the time that the Japanese invasion began in 1937.
Last year I was teaching a class-or trying to when the sirens started. So it was an opportunity to get students viewpoint on the massacre and their feelings toward the Japanese. Most of them did not feel connected to this piece of history-they are on the average 23-25 and more interested in what is happening in their current lives than the past of their grandparents.
There is a memorial museum here with artifacts related to the atrocity-new artifacts have recently been added.
Within 6 weeks in 1937 more than 300,000 people were killed. The military responsible were accused of war crimes by the tribunal held in Japan at the end of the war.
This was the beginning of the Japanese occupation of the east coast of China that continued until 1945. At about the same time the Japanese had taken control of Manchuria-sometimes called Manchukuo. An area where Chinese, Japanese and Russian territory converged.

More later...