An aging former Japanese solider yesterday called for support his controversial memoirs detailing wartime atrocities in Nanjing.

Shiro Azuma, 87, has appealed against a Tokyo court decision in December which ruled that his memoirs wrongly accused his former commander of atrocities in the 1937 Rape of Nanjing.

"If the matter is allowed to rest ... then obviously the massacre will be treated as fiction and the Japanese people will ignore this piece of history," he said at a news conference at the YMCA in Tsim Sha Tsui.

"That's why I appeal for the support of the Chinese people. That's why I appeal for your moral support."

Mr. Azuma asked that letters of support be sent to his lawyer, Masao Niwa, so they could be presented to an appeals court. His account of his experiences in Nanjing, based on a diary he kept during the war, was published in 1996.

The book accused his former commander of atrocities during the massacre, in which Japanese soldiers killed 300,000 civilians between late 1937 and early 1938, according to Chinese estimates.

The former commander sued Mr. Azuma, claiming his account was wrong and unsupported by evidence. A Japanese court ruled in the commander's favour in December, prompting criticism from China.

Mr. Azuma was in Nanjing last week to launch an exhibition centred on his diary which will run for a year.

The veteran, who has admitted killing Chinese women and children, said the forgiving attitude of China's people was one reason Japan had failed to fully own up to its wartime actions.

On Feb 12, the testimony of Mr. Azuma organized by the Chinese Alliance for Commemoration of the Sino-Japanese War Victims at The Chinese University of Hong Kong was attended by over 2,000 teachers and students of the university and of local high schools.