# war memory

Last Witnesses Fade: The Death of a Nanjing Massacre Survivor and What It Means for Memory

Guan Shunhua, a survivor of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, died at 101 on 18 March 2026, leaving just 21 registered survivors. Her testimony—of beheadings, hiding from bayonets and starvation—underscores the urgency of preserving eyewitness accounts even as living memory fades and the politics of historical narrative intensify.