Another Nanjing Massacre survivor passes away

A Nanjing Massacre survivor passed away at the age of 95 on Monday, reducing the number of registered survivors to 70, said the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

Cai Lihua was the second survivor to die this year.

"In the winter of 1937, Japanese soldiers suddenly broke into my house. I watched with my own eyes as they tied my father's hands and hung him on a wooden ladder before brutally stabbing his eyes with a bayonet, making egg-sized holes in my father's eyes, and then killed him with several shots," Cai once said in a testimony.

"My mother was also stabbed in the back and a bullet grazed her scalp. I was there and narrowly escaped by hiding under a table," said the testimony.

The Nanjing Massacre took place when Japanese troops captured the city on December 13, 1937. Over six weeks, they killed about 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.

The Chinese government has preserved the survivors' testimony, recorded in both written documents and video footage. These records of the massacre were listed by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Register in 2015.