UNESCO to consider Nanjing Massacre files

A total of 183 volumes of historic documents related to the Nanjing Massacre are being submitted for inclusion in a UNESCO list by city authorities, the Nanjing Daily reported on Thursday.

This is the third time that Nanjing, in East China's Jiangsu Province, has submitted the documents for inclusion in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, which also includes such items as the diary of Anne Frank and Britain's Magna Carta.

The cache includes documents related to the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing, where Japanese imperial forces went on a six-week spree of rape, slaughter and destruction from December 1937.

Estimates of the dead range as high as 300,000 people.

The papers also include files on the use of "comfort women" forced into sex slavery by Japanese troops.

Many documents, some of which are government files from 1937 to 1947, are rare and unique, said the newspaper.