September 3, 1945 is the day of the great Victory of Chinese people in the war of Resistance against Japanese invasion, the Day of the victory of all peoples of the anti-fascists coalition in World War II. By the 69th anniversary of the great victory of Chinese people, Chinese scientists have published research materials from the archives of the Jilin province, which reveal the history of the crimes, committed by Japanese militarism against the people of China, as well as they reveal sacrifices and heroic deeds of the people during war of Resistance. This research work is a great contribution of Chinese scientists to the exploration and restoration of historical truth. Their work is of outstanding international scientific and political significance, informs «Тихоокеанская Россия», ТоРосс.

Because, in modern Japan there are scientists and politicians, who do not want to acknowledge crimes of Japanese militarism. Such politicians, though they acknowledge the fact of the military defeat of Japanese fascism, however, they try to dispute, to deny criminal character, criminal intentions, objectives, methods and means of warfare and policy of Japanese state in the past times. Such a vicious ideological position inevitably results today in territorial disputes with all neighbour-countries of Japan, directs Japan to the wrong way in ensuring national security. That is why those politicians are trying to find background to the wrong political attitudes in the field of historical science − by means of oblivion and falsification of the past.

Now, the work of Chinese scholars has restored the truth of history. The work of Chinese scientists, who have published materials from the archives of the province of Jilin, no doubt, will be highly appreciated by Russian historians, too.

In Russia scientific community also does a lot of work to remind our contemporaries of the great victory over Japanese militarism. There are being published many books on the subject. In particular, there was in 2008 held an international conference named «Problems of present international law and historical lessons of Tokyo and Khabarovsk Litigations», where there were presented both old and new materials of trials over the main Japanese war criminals in Tokyo (1946-1948) and Khabarovsk (1949).

The participants of the Conference have described how Japan unleashed and waged war against China and other Nations of East Asia, cooperation of Japan with Nazi Germany, their military provocations against the Soviet Union, about treacherous attack on the United States. There were presented undisputable facts unleashing Japanese invasion, robberies, violence and various other crimes against Chinese people. The total number of victims in China for eight years of Japanese aggression had reached 35 million people.

Mankind should not forget the monstrous crimes in December 1937 − the so-called «Nanjing massacre», when Japanese fascists killed about 300 thousands Chinese citizens. The conference also paid due attention to the activities of the Japanese squad «Tama» in Nanjing, unit “731” in Manchuria − these units conducted horrific experiments on human beings with the aim of developing biological weapons. Their victims were mostly citizens of China, but there were Mongols, Russians, American and Australian prisoners of war, too.

However, admittedly, modern scholars have not done yet everything in order to establish the historical truth. There are still many materials, historical documents, which are still not in use neither in Russia, nor in China, and which could tell a lot information about the sacrifices and heroism of our peoples during the war.

I hope, the success in this work − to study and to promote still not used materials in the Archives and Museums collections − might be guaranteed by partnership and cooperation of historians of China and Russia.

Restoration of historical truth, cooperation of scientists of various countries would be a contribution to develop mutual understanding, peace and cooperation between Japan and its neighbours, among the peoples of all countries. And publication of Jilin provincial Archive constitutes valuable contribution to the solution of these scientific and political tasks.

Anisimtsev N.V. (Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow)