Catherine Matysik
Fair Lawn High School, Fair Lawn, New Jersey
2007 China Study Tour Participant
It is hard to write about the
experience of this study tour. I would have to write a book in order to give
justice to all we accomplished in those 17 days.
After meeting the survivors, I still could not imagine what their lives must
have been like during WWII. For example, this was the account from survivor
Grandma Xia Shuqin: When the Japanese arrived in Nanking, they were going
from house to house murdering, raping, and stealing. The Japanese soldiers
knocked on Grandma Xia’s door and her father answered. The soldiers
immediately killed Grandma Xia’s father, sisters and grandparents. Her baby
sister was thrown out the window and shot. Her mother was raped and then
murdered. Xia was stabbed in the shoulder and in the back through her ribs.
Grandma Xia had passed out and presumed dead by the Japanese. When Grandma
Xia woke up, everyone but her 4-year old sister, who was hiding in the
closet, was dead.
I have no idea how they can go on day by day, always reliving these
tragedies in their heads.