Former Japanese soldier Azuma Shiro, whose diary disclosed Japan’s wartime atrocities against Chinese people, died on Tuesday in Kyoto, Japan. — Xinhua

Former Japanese soldier Azuma Shiro, whose diary disclosed Japan's wartime atrocities in China, died on Tuesday. He was 93.
Shiro died of cancer at 11:48am at a hospital in Kyoto Prefecture. He was hospitalized last month.
Shiro was a soldier when Japan invaded and occupied Nanjing, then China's capital, in December 1937. In the following weeks Japanese troops killed more than 300,000 unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians.
He recorded the atrocities in a diary and published it in 1987. It triggered Japanese right-wing politicians to accuse him with "lying."
Shiro was taken to court in 1993. He lost the case. In 2000, the Japanese Supreme Court denied Shiro's appeal in which he sought the acknowledgement of Japan's invasion of China.
"I must continue the appeal because this is not just a personal issue,"  Shiro said in Shanghai after the Japanese Supreme Court denied his appeal that year.
"I believe world opinion will strongly support the historical facts and justice."
The penitent war veteran visited China several times. Shiro collected evidence - along with the Memorial Hall to Victims of the Nanjing Massacre and a Japan-based committee - to prove the truth and denounce Japanese right-wing activists attempting to deny the massacre. He also made speeches across Japan to tell the truth about the Nanjing Massacre.
(Xinhua)