1300 Lives Lost by Taiping (Peace) Gate

Documentary film (75 min)

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Xuanwu Lake is situated on the Eastern side of Nanjing Wall.  In the spring young buds of lake-side Yang willows rustle gently in the breeze, and in the summer, the surface of the lake is filled with elegant lotus blossoms. This has been a place of relaxation since the time of Six Dynasties. There is a gate called Taiping (Peace) Gate by this lake.

Approximately 200,000 Japanese troops headed towards Nanjing at the time of the Nanking Conquering Operation. Mass slaughters at Taiping Gate are documented in the journal of Nakashima Kesago, Commander of the 16th Division, “One company commander on the defense of Taiping Gate disposed about 1,300,” and in the private journal of Sasaki Toichi, Commander of the 30th Brigade, “For days, I heard gun shots everywhere. The outer moat outside of Taiping Gate is being filled with corpses.”

The massacre of civilians and POWs at Taiping Gate, however, was never studied by researchers. That was because there was no survivor who could tell the story to later generations. Several years after Matsuoka Tamaki started researching former Japanese soldiers, she took record of testimonies such as “At one corner of the wall at Taiping Gate, men and women were killed with landmines, machine guns, and burned to death,” and “(We) put hundreds of POWs to into the moan and machine-gunned them.” Since then, she took five years in looking for traces of survivors from around Taiping Gate to the places where they could have moved, and finally found one survivor. This person was called Xiao Wang by residents of Taiping Gate.

Cast

• Director: Matsuoka Tamaki
• Editing: Nakai Shinsuke
• Camera: Matsuoka Tamaki, Lin Boyao, Inokawa Izumi, Nakai Shinsuke, Takeda Michikazu, Ogawa Eiko
• Sound: Nakai Shinsuke
• Translation/Interpretation: Gao Wenjun, Sheng Maodi, Chang Chang, Luo Qingxia, Momen
• Cooperation: Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, Nanjing Private Museum on War of Resistance, former Japanese soldiers, survivors of Nanjing Massacre, residents around Taiping Gate
• Special Support: Chen Junshi, Ivy Chen