Several memorial events are being held Tuesday in the eastern city of Nanjing to mark the 74th anniversary of the massacre that claimed some 300,000 Chinese lives.

Ahead of the anniversary, rehearsals for the ceremonies were held at the Nanjing Massacre Museum. The Nanjing Massacre, which is also called the Rape of Nanjing, happened on December 13th, 1937 during the Second World War.

At that time, Nanjing was the capital of China. To achieve their goal of all-out invasion of China, the Japanese troops marched from three directions and besieged Nanjing, slaughtering over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers.

The mass murder lasted for six weeks. One third of the houses in the city were burned and more than 20,000 women raped. Many of the victims were gang raped and then killed. The figure does not include those captives who were sent to army brothels. The Japanese government has never made any formal or official apology to the Chinese people for their crimes.

Instead, a number of Japanese politicians and writers deny not just the Massacre but any of their wrong doings in the Second World War. They claim that they "liberated" Asian peoples from Western colonialism, and what happened in Nanjing was one of their so-called "liberations".

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