there was one incident in which more than 1,000 people who had been bound and marched into a square were separated into rows and made to stand still. Some were wearing long traditional gowns, while others were wearing western style clothing; some in the group were women and there were also children. The entire group was haggard, disheveled, and barefoot. First, the Japanese doused the people with gasoline and then they opened fire on the crowd with machine guns. When the bullets hit their bodies, the gasoline caught fire. The refugees' burning bodies quivered from head to toe causing the whole scene to flicker from the light of the gasoline fires on their bodies. The Japanese soldiers stood by laughing hysterically and taking pleasure from the scene they had created. (See the [two] files from the Nanjing Historical Archives, "A Record of the Miserable Conditions in Enemy Occupied Areas," Volume V (unpublished), and "A Conversation with Liu Rouyuan After His Escape From Nanjing to Hunan.")
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