A resource center focusing on Japan's wartime aggression in China and other parts of Asia has opened in Saitama Prefecture, exhibiting documents in which some 300 Japanese veterans confess to atrocities.

Most of the confessions, to crimes such as murdering and raping civilians, were made under the auspices of the peace group Chukiren, formed in 1957 by about 1,100 repatriated Japanese who had been imprisoned in China after the end of World War II as war criminals.

"This center will be the most powerful weapon to show the truth of the war," said Fumiko Niki, 80, head of the Chukiren peace memorial museum in the city of Kawagoe and a longtime supporter of the group.