Over 500 people participate in a demonstration on Wednesday along the street where the Japanese Consulate General in San Francisco is located. They hold signs and chant slogans demanding the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe make an apology. Lia Zhu/China Daily.

"We do not demand life for life. But they should at least apologize for what they did,"said Kuo, referring to the massacres and other atrocities the Japanese Army inflicted on the Chinese people during World War II.

As a witness to the history himself, Kuo said he lost two uncles in the 1940s in Shanghai when he was less than 10 years old.

"I always remember how my relatives were cruelly killed right in front of me,"he said.

One of his uncles was beaten to death by Japanese soldiers in a Shanghai street just because he put his hands in pockets while walking by some Japanese military facility where the pedestrians were ordered to put their hands in sight, Kuo said.

Another uncle who had been a doctor was taken away as a laborer to lay landmines and later killed at the site, he said.

"We are beyond angry by the Abe government's trying to whitewash Japan's past,"Kuo said, holding a sign saying "Time to Apologize to Millions"in both Chinese and English. "When you bump into somebody, you would say ‘sorry'. How could they refuse to apologize for killing millions of innocent people?"

Like Kuo, many protesters brought signs with slogans and cartoons. Organized by the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia and the Chinese American Association of Commerce, the rally drew more than 500 people, including around 50 from the Korean community in the Bay Area.

The demonstrators were angered by Abe's remarks on comfort women when he addressed students at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Tuesday.

Abe said his "heart aches"for the "comfort women"but blamed it on "human trafficking".

"It's right for his heart to ache, but it's just another excuse to evade responsibility,"Ho told China Daily during the rally.

Phyllis Kim, executive director of theLos Angeles-based Korean American Forum of California, told China Daily that "heartache is not an apology".

Up to 200,000 women were forced into prostitution by the Japanese military, according to Amnesty International.

"It is impossible for civilians to organize such a large scale of prostitution,"Kim said.

She said the Abe government tried to cover up the nation's past wrongdoings by saying there was no evidence.

"We have evidence, and we also have witnesses,"said Kim, who organized the demonstration against Abe at Harvard.

"We invited a survivor of the 'comfort women', Yong-soo Lee, to join us,"she said. "We want to send out a clear message that the Japanese government should face the past and history, acknowledge what they did and teach the current and future generation the true history."

The 86-year-old woman was also expected to appear with more than 300 demonstrators at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where Abe was to attend a luncheon organized by the Asia Society, Kim said.

Abe began his visit to the US on April 26, meeting with Obama on Wednesday. He also is scheduled to speak at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, on Thursday.

"We have mobilized at least six people by now to put signs on their cars and drive around the campus on that day,"Ho told China Daily.

Liu Xiaoxian in Washington and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com