The morning of December 13th was typical; cold, wet and grey. The air outside was smoky, and it just didn’t feel right. Streets were not alive with the sound of people as they usually were by this time. Something was very wrong. Under normal circumstances, I would go outside and look, but I was under strict orders by my parents to stay indoors. There had been a warning from the head of the city yesterday that there was and attack expected to occur soon by the Japanese army. We had received word about the Battle of Shanghai, and that worried the whole city.
So I was cooped up in the house with nothing really to do apart from stare outside at the less than appealing scenery. Before I knew it, I had drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, something was terribly wrong. The house was eerily silent, no parents bickering, no siblings whining, nothing at all. I slowly drew the curtains open to a horrible sight. It was as if I had been asleep for days, not just a few hours. The scene outside had completely changed. It was still cold and still wet, but instead of the streets being deserted, there were soldiers, and prisoners, and bystanders. There was blood everywhere you looked. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me want to hurl, I recognized the face of one of the fallen. It was none other than my neighbor, Chin Shang. That was when it hit me; this was the attack that we had been warned about. The Japanese had done this terror. And it didn’t look like they were done yet. There were still men in strange looking uniforms going into houses. I realized that one was coming near my own home, so I hid underneath the couch, where no one would look to find me. I heard the men come in and look around. They spoke in a strange language, similar sounding to my own, yet different somehow. The men searched for something for about 5 minutes and then left. I slowly emerged from my hiding spot, my heart racing. I quickly grabbed what little I needed and headed out the back door. I needed to find my family.
The weeks that followed were brutal. The killings and rapes continue, and the bodied piled up along the sides of the roads. I had been living in Nanjing my whole life, so I knew my way around to know where to look. I refused to let the possibility that they may be one of the many dead around me enter my head. I looked for them day and night, narrowly avoiding the soldiers. Every time I saw someone I recognized, it was like a kick in the stomach. On one occasion, I saw little Sue Quing on the sidewalk, dead. The image is forever cemented into my mind, and to this very day, it still haunts me. How the Japanese could do such cruelty I have never been able to comprehend. How any human being could be capable of performing such violence is beyond me, but I suppose there isn’t really anyone I could ask about it.
It had been a few weeks of searching when I finally found someone I knew who was not dead or on the brink of death. It was my father. He gravely explained to me how my mother had been unable to find and warn me (seeing as I had been asleep in an unlikely place). The soldiers had stored into the home and raped her, then performed a gruesome murder. They had taken away my younger brother and sister as well. My father had tried to stop them, but they simply beat him up for it. He was knocked unconscious and was lucky not to have been murdered. Ever since he had been looking for me.
I was devastated to hear about what had happened to my mother and younger siblings, but relieved to finally reunite with my father. From there, together we decided rather than to risk losing each other again, we would head to safety by train and find somewhere safe to stay until the danger has passed. We successfully made it out of Nanjing and into communist territory. We have been here since.
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