Sword that bares a massacre

A visitor looks at a samurai sword — used by Japanese soldiers in a contest to kill Chinese during the invasion — on display at the Shanghai Songhu Anti-Japanese Campaign Memorial Hall in Baoshan District yesterday. The exhibition, about Japanese wartime atrocities, opened on Tuesday, the eve of national memorial day. The day commemorates the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese invaders slaughtered about 300,000 Chinese during a six-week rampage after they captured the city, then China’s capital, eight decades ago. The sword was donated by the descendants of Shi Meiyu, chief judge of the Nanjing military tribunal. It belonged to second lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, notorious for killing scores of Chinese.