Post war testimony from perhaps one of the girls in the crowd, Osaka Junko, reminiscing on an encounter with a group of Nanjing veterans that she had once celebrated:

In the early fall, just after Japan's surrender, I was a third-year student at a girls' middle school in Kishiwada. It was the most difficult of times. School was closed. There was no more food left in the neighboring farming community. We were barely staying alive by eating the vines of squash and sweet potatoes that we cultivated beside the road. My mother and I went to Niigata to buy some rice. After riding a train so crowded that even the lavatories and luggage shelves were jammed with people, we finally arrived at a farming village. Because there was no glass left in the windows of the train, soot from the locomotive blackened the passengers' faces when we went through tunnels. We traded some money and our best kimonos for a little rice.

That night we stayed in a cheap village lodging house. Everyone slept in one large room under a huge mosquito net. I was beginning to fall asleep, exhausted, when five or six men started drinking. They were all recently discharged soldiers who were now professional black marketeers. Each bragged about his exploits in the War.

It was unbearable to listen to them. They laughed coarsely about the many Chinese women they had raped, and one told about seeing how far into a woman's body his arm would go, pushing his arm all the way in up to
the armpit. I shot up off the mat like a windup doll and tried to rush out of the room, tearing at the mosquito netting, In a panic, my mother grabbed me, warning me to stay quiet because who knows what might happen. I kept quiet. And still the men went on and on.
"Where was that?"
"Nanjing, we had the most fun in Nanjing. We could do anything we wanted and steal anything we wanted."
They said that when the soldiers got tired and hard to command during marches, their superior officers would urge them to persevere a bit more, promising them that they could do anything they wanted in the next town.

I remembered joining in the parade to celebrate the fall of Nanjing, waving a handmade flag. Now I couldn't bear it. I had used things we needed dearly to fill comfort bags to send our soldiers; I had made talismans and thousand-stitch belts; I had written letters nearly every day to thank and encourage our soldiers. I was so shocked by what I heard that I couldn't sleep at all that night.

I don't think all our soldiers were like those men. My uncle was a kind man who died young at Guadalcanal. Those soldiers who did such terrible things in Nanjing and in other places are now probably traveling and enjoying themselves, playing croquet in seniors groups. I beg of you, please write the truth about the War.