Scholar of 1937 Nanjing Massacre to deliver talk March 23

The Nanjing Massacre will be the subject of a free, public lecture by Suping Lu, associate professor of university libraries at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, on March 23, at 3:30 p.m. in the Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. Lu is the author of "They Were in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals."

The Nanjing Massacre occurred in China in December 1937, when the city fell to the Japanese Imperial Army. According to the records of welfare organizations which buried the dead bodies after the massacre, as many as 300,000 people were killed by the Japanese.

Born and raised in China, Lu earned his bachelor's degree in English from Nanjing Teachers University in 1982. Before that, he was a student at the American Christian University, Ginling College. The college was a refugee camp that sheltered more than 10,000 women and girls from Japanese atrocities during the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre.

Lu lived in Nanjing for more than a decade before coming to the United States as a visiting scholar at Tufts University. He earned graduate degrees from Ohio University and the University of South Carolina and joined the UNL faculty in 1994.

His first book-length publication was "Nanjing Massacre: The American and British Eyewitness Accounts." It is a collection of original eyewitness English sources that he edited, translated into Chinese and published in 1999 in Beijing.

"They Were in Nanjing" is the result of his continued research effort on the topic. With newly uncovered source materials, the book yields new discoveries, presents issues that have previously not been adequately addressed, and takes readers back in time to revisit the event and live through those horror-filled days.

Professor Lu's talk is sponsored by the UNL Human Rights and Human Diversity Initiative.

CONTACT: David Forsythe, University Professor, Political Science, (402) 472-1690