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Unit 4—Handout 15
Survivor Testimony of Chang Chu Yeh, Survivor of the Nanking
Massacre (Presented at the Nanking Massacre 70th Anniversary
Commemorative Event at Brookdale Community College in
Lincroft, New Jersey – 12/18/2007)
My name is Chu-Yeh Chang, and I was born in one of the old capitals of China, Nanking. I personally
lived through the cruelty and persecution of the Japanese military during the Nanking Massacre and would
like to share that with you today.
I am 84 years old. Seventy years ago on December 12 th , 1937, when I was 14, 50,000 of the Japanese
military invaded and occupied Nanking, thus beginning this terrible and unthinkable massacre. According to
the trial that took place between August 1946 and February 1947 by the Far East International Tribunal Court,
formed by the United Nations’ War Crimes Investigation Committee, the estimated number of Chinese
murdered by Japanese military during the six-week-long Nanking massacre was between 340,000 and 400,000.
I belonged to a family of eight, with four younger siblings (two brothers and two sisters), a greatgrandmother
of 80 years old, and my parents. My father worked as an accountant for the Jiang-Ning county
government. Knowing that Japanese military was bombing the residential area in Nanking, we were very scared,
so we locked our doors, left our house behind, and crossed the Yangtze River to the countryside to escape
the Japanese occupation. Our relatives in the countryside, in the midst of moving inland themselves, could
not accommodate us, so we ended up staying in this little town Wu-Yi along the Jin-Pu railroad line, hoping
to catch the train to move westward, as the Chinese Nationalist troops had also moved westward. There were
so many people escaping to the west that there weren’t any train tickets available for us to purchase, except
for very expensive tickets which we couldn’t afford. Soon afterward, this escape route was also closed, as the
Japanese military wasted no time to occupy the towns along the railroad.
There was also a Japanese military engineering troop, stationed in Wu-Yi, waiting for orders to repair
roads and bridges, so that the Japanese troops could go inland to chase after the Chinese Nationalist troops.
This Japanese troop drafted my father and me to help them move equipment and machinery. One day the
offi cer of this troop happened to see me, and communicated with me by writing down the Chinese characters
on paper. He asked how old I was and whether I went to school. I told him that I was 14 and in 8 th grade. He
was pleased with my answer and took out a picture from his wallet and told me, “This is my 14-year old son,
and he is about your height also.” He then took me to eat and shared his food with me. He told my father that
he would like to teach me some Japanese everyday using the English alphabet as phonetic symbols. He also
taught me some Japanese songs, which I still remember how to sing. But I never knew the meanings of the
lyrics until almost 60 years later in 1996 when I was invited to give a talk on the Nanking Massacre at Okinawa
University in Okinawa. During that talk, I sang that song, and the Okinawans told me that song was about
sending soldiers off to war and was an old folk song from Hokkaido part of Japan.
On the New Year’ Eve’s of 1937, this offi cer took me to the farmers’ village to catch chickens and dig
out scallions for a feast; we also decorated the doors with rice straws, and drank wine to celebrate the New
Year. Never did I know that this very night would turn out to be so devastating in my life! That night, fi ve
Japanese soldiers charged into our house, forced my father and me out, and then raped my mother, my eightyyear-old
great-grandmother, and my eleven-year-old sister. My father sent me to get urgent help from the
offi cer. Unfortunately, by the time I woke up the offi cer and hurried him to my house, my great-grandmother
had already died and was lying in a pool of blood from this violent abuse and unbearable suffering. When
he scolded those soldiers, I couldn’t help lashing out loudly the Japanese curse word I knew of, “bagayalu”,
at them as well. One of the soldiers got very mad and punched me to the ground. That hit on my head has
caused permanent partial loss of hearing on my left ear. When the offi cer took away those soldiers, he told
me that for our safety’s sake, my family should leave as soon as possible. My father and I wrapped my great-
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