Memories of blood and terror - Revisiting Nanjing(2)

"A devil bayoneted my mom and my sister and brothers hurried to protect her," recalled the old man, his voice trembling.

"One of my younger brothers was three years old and was scared of anything, even dogs. But at that moment, he bit the devil' s hand."

Chang's youngest brother was still a babe in arms. After his mom was attacked, he fell to the ground. The soldier speared him with his bayonet and tossed him into the air.

When the baby landed, Chang, then only nine years old, lay down with his brother and passed out.

After a while, he opened his eyes. The Japanese soldier had left. He saw his mom breast feeding his youngest brother while collapsed on the floor bleeding, both mother and son were dying.

All his brothers died and his last memory of his father was his lifeless body surrounded by a pool of blood. Only Chang and his sister survived.

It was not long until he heard that dozens of bodies had been buried, like fodder, in a vegetable field. One sight remains etched in his mind, a baby nuzzled up against a woman, milk, tears and snot turned to ice. The two bodies were frozen together and nobody could separate them.

SLAUGHTER AND SALVAGE

Today Caoxiexia valley to the northwest of the city is a quiet place. A white monument stands by the road and what was once a reed field is now a water plant.

Zhao Jinhai, guard at the water plant, told Xinhua that people often brought flowers and wreaths for the dead.

Duan Yueping, 82, founder of the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, spoke of a survivor named Tang Guangpu, who had witnessed the atrocities at Caoxiexia firsthand.

At about 4 a.m. on December 18, 1937, Japanese soldiers began tying up their prisoners, it took them more than 10 hours.

Then they led the bound prisoners to the Yangtze River and executed them with rapid gunfire.

"That day, the river ran red," Duan said.

Tang hid beneath a corpse until the executers left.

But he was lucky, as sometimes, the Japanese not only shot the prisoners, but also bayoneted and threw them on a burning pyre afterward.

A Japanese veteran soilder Riichi Kurihara (direct translation) said in his post-war account that they burned the corpses to destroy evidence of their barbarism.

"Not all the bodies were completely incinerated, leaving a black mountain of charred corpses," he said. "It was time-consuming to throw the corpses into the river and that lasted until noon the second day."

The campaign of murder, rape and looting shocked foreigners in the city, many of whom tried to protect the Chinese people, such as German businessman John Rabe.

His former residence, a two-story black building in downtown Nanjing, concealed and protected more than 600 people.