Suping Lu, professor and liaison librarian for economics, political science and law, was awarded the Special Contribution Award Medallion by the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum in China for his research and publications.
The award is given to scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the research into atrocities at Nanjing. Lu is only one of 23 people who have earned the award in the last 20 years. The organization recognized Lu for “advocating awareness of the Nanjing massacre in the English-speaking world.”
The ceremony took place on Dec. 9, 2014, at China’s Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing. Lu was not able to attend the award ceremony. He received the award in February.
Lu has authored and edited nine books on the Nanjing massacre. His research focuses on American and British eyewitness accounts on the massacre and brings a Nebraska connection to it. The top American diplomat in Nanjing at the time, John M. Allison, grew up in Lincoln and was a 1927 graduate of the University of Nebraska. Allison cabled a large number of dispatches from Nanjing to the U.S. State Department from January to August 1938. In 2010, Lu published a collection of the dispatches and documents by other American diplomats in the book, “A Mission Under Duress.”
The Japanese occupation of Nanjing started on Dec. 13, 1937.
