Visitors view exhibits at the exhibition "Justice Will Prevail, Peace Will Prevail, the People Will Prevail—Exhibition on the Victory of the Anti-Fascist War in the China Theater and the Trial of Japanese War Criminals" at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province on August 14, 2026. Photo: VCG

August 15 this year marks the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II. As the main battlefield in the East for the war, China fought a 14-year resistance war at the cost of 35 million casualties. It pinned down the bulk of Japanese military forces and made indelible contributions to the victory of the global anti-fascist cause.

On this significant anniversary, French youth Marcus Detrez, his compatriot Bastien Rata, and Chinese youth Zhong Haosong will donate precious historical archives to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

Global Times reporters accompanied the trio throughout their cross-border archival retrieval mission, witnessing firsthand the handover of historical materials collected in Paris and Tokyo to archival institutions and memorial halls in Chongqing, Shanghai and Nanjing.

"Without justice, there can be no true peace," Marcus told the Global Times during his trip from Shanghai to Nanjing on Thursday.

History through multiple perspectives

A landmark handover of historical documents shedding new light on Japan's wartime bombing of China took place on August 10 at the Chongqing Municipal Archives, as Marcus and Zhong donated digital scans of 138 pages of rare materials related to the devastating Chongqing Bombing. 

Compiled by Bastien from the Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre in France, the mostly French-language files—accompanied by Chinese texts and maps—offer an unflinching third-party account of Japanese air raids on Chongqing, Chengdu and other cities between 1938 and 1941. The archives detail exact bombing dates, aircraft formations, ordnance types, civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.

Of particular note within the archives are the Chinese and French translations of a so-called Statement of the Government of the Empire of Japan. Attached to a letter dated November 1938, the document brazenly demanded that China cease its resistance against Japanese aggression and submit to Japan's so-called "new order in East Asia", threatening military punishment if its demands were rejected.

Marking the 89th anniversary of the August 13 Battle of Songhu, also known as Battle of Shanghai, the historical preservation effort reached another milestone on August 13 in Shanghai, where youth activists presented 891 pages of invasion-era archives to Shanghai Songhu Memorial Hall for the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression for further research.

The archives, obtained from the Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre, include records detailing the dates and locations of Japanese bombing raids on parts of Shanghai during the Battle of Shanghai, as well as the number of aircraft involved. The materials also cover Japan's aggression in Northeast China, the puppet state of "Manchukuo", Japanese atrocities and bombings, with some records also relating to the Soviet Union and the Korean Peninsula. 

The third batch of materials, scheduled to be handed over to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders on August 15, was brought back from Japan last week by Marcus, Zhong and others. During their trip, they visited several WWII archival collections and secondhand bookstores in Tokyo, uncovering more than 50 items weighing about 20 kilograms, including pictorials, publications, books and photo albums dating mainly from 1932 to 1945. The materials cover the Nanjing Massacre and Japan's preparations for launching the July 7th Incident, among other topics.

Among the finds was a book titled The Nanjing Front, which documents events related to the Nanjing Massacre despite not mentioning the massacre in its title. They also found photos taken by Asahi Shimbun of Japanese air raids, as well as images of the Great Wall after it was damaged during the Japanese military's occupation.

"These archives should go where they belong," Zhong told the Global Times.

'Guarded' Japanese collectors

In France, archival research was a race against time. Bastien told the Global Times that they had only four days to work at the French diplomatic archives in Nantes. Each person could access no more than six boxes a day, or 24 boxes over four days. Some contained as many as 10,000 to 20,000 pages, while only 10 to 20 percent might relate to Japan's war of aggression against China. "We had to go through the pages one by one, quickly identify anything relevant and scan it immediately," Bastien said.

The team then spent nearly a month organizing the material, working about eight hours a day. They also developed an AI-powered system to translate and classify the records and extract information on dates, locations, people and events, while linking the French diplomatic archives with photos and notes left by Marcus' grandfather.

Finding wartime records in Japan posed a different challenge. Much of the material is not publicly catalogued online, so the team had to visit collectors one by one and keep asking specific questions. 

"The biggest challenge is that many Japanese collectors are cautious about what we are looking for. Some know these materials exist but choose to avoid the issue, while others have clues but are unwilling to share them," Zhong said.

The team visited one Tokyo collecting institution twice. Despite explaining during their first visit that they were looking for wartime materials from the 1930s and 1940s, the collector initially showed them only ordinary photos of Japanese soldiers. The team then changed its approach, asking why many Japanese WWII records contain gaps concerning China. The collector said Japan generally refers to the conflict as the "Sino-Japanese War," rather than Japan's war of aggression against China. The team pressed further, asking whether there were records related to Shanghai, Nanjing or Chongqing. Only then did previously unseen materials gradually emerge.

The team also cross-checked promising finds with Chinese institutions, including the the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, and traced their provenance. One photo album, for instance, came from the family of a Japanese soldier and still contained the photographer's details and names of people pictured.

Anchoring hard-won peace

In early August, Marcus and Zhong stood at a busy intersection in Tokyo's Shibuya district, dressed in black and holding Japanese-language banners urging Japan to confront its history of aggression, including the Nanjing Massacre. They spent about three hours raising awareness on the street. Some foreign tourists stopped to ask what had happened, while some Japanese passersby tried to stop them.

There was also support. A Japanese female blogger livestreamed the event, saying she wanted to share the truth and promote peace. Japan's refusal to face its wartime history and apologize, was "irresponsible," she said. 

"Our long-term goal is simple: to let the world see the truth of history," they told the Global Times.

Zhao Yongsheng, a professor at the Institute of Regional and International Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the growing involvement of international friends in uncovering Japan's wartime history and preserving the truth carries unique value. It not only helps safeguard historical truth, but also challenges long-standing Western biases and neglect of the Eastern theater of World War II. More importantly, it demonstrates that exposing wartime atrocities and defending peace and justice are shared moral responsibilities of humanity.

"There are concerns that confronting Japan's wartime past could create new instability in Asia. In fact, the opposite is true," Zhao said. "Germany became a 'stabilizer' in Europe partly because it confronted its Nazi past. In Asia, only by fully confronting Japan's wartime crimes and curbing the ambitions of right-wing forces can the region escape the shadow of militarism and achieve lasting peace and development."

Regarding the newly recovered materials, an official with the Shanghai Songhu Memorial Hall for the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression told the Global Times that experts will first authenticate the archives before their formal handover. Zeng Jin, deputy director of the Chongqing Municipal Archives, said the materials would complement existing collections and provide new evidence for research through third-party perspectives from foreign governments and societies.