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Unit 4—Handout 17
Survivor Testimony of Zhang Zhouhong, Survivor of the Nanking
Massacre, 83 years old—Interviewed on July 10, 2008, Nanjing
Mrs. Zhang’s family members were farmers. She was the elder daughter with a younger brother and sister.
When she was eleven-years old, the Japanese soldiers came to her home and grabbed her father, saying he
was KMT (Nationalist soldier-Kuomintang). The soldiers began to slap him. The kids were grabbing his legs
and telling the soldiers that their father was a farmer. The Japanese looked at her father and saw that he had
calloused hands and the mark of a band on his forehead. Mrs. Zhang took a hoe and showed the soldiers
how he got the calluses and showed them his rain hat, explaining how he got the mark on his forehead. They
were not convinced; they thought he was a soldier. The soldiers kicked and shoved her out of the way. The
soldiers said that her father was not very honest and after slapping him some more, they left.
After these soldiers left, fi fteen to twenty more came into the yard and burnt down their neighbor’s house.
The Zhang family moved all their possessions out to a fi eld and slept in the fi eld all night. Soon the Japanese
came and burned their house and other villagers’ homes. The soldiers lined up the ugly women in a row and
machine-gunned them. The Japanese said, “If you follow directions, you will not be hurt; however, if you
don’t, we will cut off your legs.” She said although she was only eleven-years old she saw clearly the situation.
Mothers were trying to hide their daughters in haystacks. Japanese used their bayonets to see if anyone
was hiding in the haystacks. Zhang had her fi nger cut but she didn’t cry out. Some women cried and then the
soldiers would burn the haystack and sometimes push people outside into the burning haystack.
After the ugly girls were machine gunned, they took the pretty girls away. She and some other girls knew
that the Japanese didn’t go near the water, so some of them hid in a lake. When the Japanese saw what they
were doing, they machine gunned the girls in the lake. However, Zhang held on to reeds at the bottom and
survived. She said that she cannot understand this cruelty. She hates the Japanese.
She also saw them take babies from their grandparents and put them on the end of their bayonets. She
saw thirty or forty little babies killed this way.
At fi rst the soldiers went for the older girls, but there were not enough so they started taking younger
ones—eight-years-old and up. One day she was with her grandfather. The soldiers came and put a bayonet
to his chest. Her grandfather told her to leave, but she refused to leave him. She said, “I will stay with you.”
The soldiers tore off her pants, spread her legs, and raped her brutally. She blacked out and when she was
unconscious, the soldiers left. When grandfather came in and saw her thighs dislocated, he used a board, tying
her legs together. He was not sure if she were alive or dead. While he was wrapping her legs, she came to
consciousness. She thought that she would never recover. However, about a week after the raping, her bones
came back together. They were afraid the soldiers would come again, so they cut off her hair and shaved her
head, so she looked like a boy. She could have died three times but, instead, was able to survive three times.
She considers herself quite lucky.
The Japanese did not want to admit that they killed all those people, including babies. The Japanese said
that the Koreans did this (Koreans soldiers were drafted by the Japanese—Korea had been annexed by Japan
in 1910.)
One case was of a girl who to escape rape jumped into the latrine. A drunken Japanese soldier fell in, got
stuck, and died. The girl escaped. The Japanese came and punished the whole village, killing them at random.
The family’s farm was on the outskirts of the city of Nanking. In order to sell their produce, farmers had
to take it into the city. The Japanese would not allow them in, so they lost their source of income.
During the Chinese New Year the next year, the Japanese wanted to sell chicks and ducks. She was asked
to carry them into the next town on a pole. If she didn’t walk fast enough, they poked her back with their
bayonets. After a time she threw the pole off and said that she would not carry it anymore. So they beat
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