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On July 14-27, 2017, a group of 17 people participated in a two-week immersion program to study WWII history in Asia.  Ten are from the U.S., six are from Canada, and one is a Canadian citizen currently living in Hong Kong.  WWII history in Asia is seldom taught in American or Canadian high schools with the result that Americans and Canadians in general know very little about that part of WWII history.  The purpose of the Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour is to increase the knowledge of the participants of WWII history in Asia, especially with respect to the massive and inhumane atrocities committed by the Japanese military on China, Korea, and other countries in Asia.  Hopefully upon their return, they would help with the movement to establish peace and reconciliation by seeking justice for these atrocities.  The purpose then is to learn about that part of history to help prevent those happenings from occurring again in the future anywhere on earth.  The Asia Study Tour is sponsored by the non-profit educational organization New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA).  This article describes the highlights of the 2017 Asia Study Tour.

The participants come from a range of professions:  teachers and educators, film makers, historians and researchers, lawyers, college students, community leaders, and activists.  We visited five cities (Shanghai, Quzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, and Harbin) in China and one city (Seoul) in South Korea.  We learned about the major atrocities of WWII in Asia:  Sex slaves (or euphemistically called Comfort Women by Japan), Nanking Massacre, slave labor, and biological/chemical warfare (including human experimentation and vivisection).  The highlights of the study tour were:

• Hearing testimonies from germ warfare victims, Nanking Massacre survivors, former slave laborers, and former sex slaves
• Visiting several heart-wrenching museums
• Inspirations gained from observing the life-long efforts of many activists who dedicated their lives to the peace and reconciliation movement.

This article describes these highlights.

Survivor Testimonies:  One of the most horrific atrocities of WWII in Asia was the use of biological (germ) warfare on civilian population.  One consequence of such germ warfare is rotten leg disease as a result of bacteria infection from anthrax or glanders.  A rotten leg disease victim endures unimaginable suffering of painful and itching skin and flesh problems and extremely foul smell that continues for a lifetime.

You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.

We met several of these victims in our one-day excursion to Quzhou (a city of about 2 million in Zhejiang Province and a 2.5 hour high-speed train ride southwest of  Shanghai).  Our host in Quzhou was Mr. Wu Jianping (吳建平), who lost several of his  family members and the President of the Quzhou Germ Warfare Victims Association;. [1]  At the Quzhou Minquon Hospital (:衢州民康医院) we met the husband-wife couple Fang Cai Pei (方加倍, 86) and Ye Sai Chou (叶赛舟, 89), who recalled the tragic experiences in the early 1940s when they were young children.  Both of them also lost many family members when Japan unleashed on Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces a series of germ warfare attacks in retaliation to  the Doolittle Raid [2].  Mr. Fang also got infected with the rotten leg disease.  Fortunately, his was a minor infection, and his rotten leg disease was cured in the 1960s.

At another hospital in Quzhou, the Zhejiang Quhua Hospital (浙江衢化医院) we met another rotten leg disease victim Chen Chunhua (陈春花, 80) who told us that in order to save their lives, many rotten leg victims had to have their legs amputated, and that for some the suffering was so unbearable that it drove them to commit suicides.  It was at this hospital we heard of the good news that in the last few years this hospital and another hospital in Shanghai (No. 9 Shanghai People’s Hospital, 上海第九人民医院) have successfully treated 118 rotten leg disease victims.  This hospital has now treated successfully 79 rotten leg victims, with another 39 by the hospital in Shanghai.  The treatment method was developed in the last few years by Chinese doctors and medical researchers based on the “Vacuum Sealing Drainage” procedure first developed in the West in the 1990s.  The treatment method could be very expensive, costing more than $10,000 U.S. per patient in the more serious cases, but they were all paid for by government medical insurance and by contributions.

Chen Chunhua’s legs before and after treatment (photo from Scott Masters)

At the Nanking Massacre Museum, we heard another sobering and unforgettable testimony from the Nanking Massacre (NM) survivor Ai Yi-Ying (艾义英).  She is 89 years old, and was nine at the time of the NM.  She courageously recalled that her father, three cousins, and many other relatives were killed during the NM, how she together with her 2-year-old brother, and her almost full-term pregnant mother escaped by hiding in the mountains.  Shortly after, her mother gave birth to a baby girl, but the baby froze to death.  When they did receive some food from some kind passer by, the mother would always give the food to her 2-year-old brother and her.  Her brother would eat the food, but she always shared her food with her mother.  She said that there were always dead people around her, and she would have nightmares of these dead people.  She never forgets the advice from her mother:  You should not be afraid of the dead people, but should be afraid of the living people looking for girls to rape and boys to kill.  They finally found safety when they were able to reach one of the refugee camps of the International Safety Zone.

Present in the session with Ai Yi-Ying was also Tamaki Matsuoka, known as the “Conscience of Japan.”  Tamaki lives in Osaka, Japan, and was an elementary school teacher, and has spent the last 30 years of her life trying to find out what happened during the NM.  She has interviewed more than 250 former Japanese soldiers who were stationed in Nanking and more than 300 Chinese NM survivors.  She found that the recollections of the Japanese soldiers and the Chinese survivors correlate very well in terms of  where, when, and what happened.  Tamaki has written several books (in Japanese, Chinese, and English), and has made several documentaries, and has given numerous talks and shown her documentaries in Japan.  We heard from Tamaki on that afternoon and saw her documentary “Torn Memories of Nanjing.”  Tamaki also visits Ai Yi-Ying and other NM survivors on a regular basis.

Tamaki Matsuoka, translator Shelby Song, Ai Yi-Ying

One of the sessions in Beijing was with Mr. Tong Zeng (童增), the President of the Non-Government-Organization (NGO) “Chinese Federation of Civil Claims Against Japan” (中國民間對日索賠聯合會). He was the one who in 1990 initiated the campaign that Chinese citizens have the right to sue the Japanese government and corporations for compensation due to various atrocities suffered by the Chinese people even though the Chinese government as a sign of friendship had waived the right for wartime damage compensation when China and Japan established diplomatic relationship in 1972.  At this meeting, several Chinese victims shared their experiences with us.

Mr. Li Liangjie (李良杰), President of the Chinese Slave Laborer Association (中國奴隸勞工協會會長) told us that as slave laborers, they worked extremely long hours.  They were treated cruelly and inhumanely.  The Japanese didn’t care for their health; if they die, they die.  However, he also said that it is a characteristic of the Japanese that if you are strong, they will respect you, but if you are weak, they will oppress you even more.  So on several occasions they went on strike, and then received slightly better treatment because the Japanese who ruled over them were afraid of their superiors’ reactions if they found out that the Chinese slave laborers were not working.

Mr. Gao Xiongfei (高熊飞), a victim of Japanese bombing when both his mother and he at age 4 lost their right arms.  He was the first Chinese atrocity victim to sue Japan for compensation and has been the most persistent person in this endeavor over the last 20+ years.  At first the lawsuits were filed in Japanese courts, but eventually they all failed.  Starting a few years ago, lawsuits are beginning to be filed in Chinese courts.  There is hope that there will be some success here.  Furthermore, partially because of these lawsuits being filed in Chinese courts, some Japanese companies, like Mitsubishi, are more willing to sign acknwledgment/apology/compensation agreement with some of the Chinese slave laborers. [3]

In Seoul, on a day three days after the death of Kim Kun-ja, a former Korean CW and the day that she was buried, we visited the House of Sharing outside of Seoul where Kim (and several other CW) lived.  It was a day of mourning, but also a day to remember the unfinished business to seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of former CW worldwide who experienced unimaginable sufferings as young girls more than 70 years ago; we also especially remember that there are still several dozen living CW around the world.  On that day (7/25/2017) we had the privilege to meet and hear Lee Yong Soo (李容洙), 88, who was forced to become a CW in 1943 when she was only 14.  Her experience included suffering electrical torture, beatings, and cuttings by knives.  When she returned home after the war, she was not accepted by her family.  Her coming out in public in 1992 gave her life a true purpose.   She has been a most persistent advocate of the CW cause, giving testimonies in front of the U.S. Congress in 2007, in San Francisco in 2015, in Tokyo in 2016, as well as in many other places.  We gain inspirations from people like her.

Museum Highlights:  Our first stop was the Chinese Comfort Women Research Center at the Shanghai Normal University in Shanghai.  Here Professor Zhiliang Su and his wife Professor Chen Lifei have been doing research on CW for more than 25 years [4].  Their research have documented numerous Comfort Stations all over China (as well as in other parts of Asia), with the first one established in Shanghai in 1932.  They have found evidence for a huge number of Chinese CW, including many who are still living and have come out in the open.  Their research has shown that the number of CW worldwide is approximately 400,000, about twice the previous commonly mentioned number, because most of the Chinese CW were not accounted for in the previous figure.  We also saw the first CW Memorial in China which shows a Korean CW, a Chinese CW, and an empty chair for a 3nd CW representing CWs of other countries.

New CW Memorial in Shanghai

The Comfort Women cause was reinforced again when we visited the “War and Women’s Human Rights Museum” in Seoul. Here we learn about the horrible sufferings of the CW, which the Koreans prefer to refer to these elderly women as “halmoni” which is grandmother in English, and also about hope for the future from the justice seeking movement and the world’s longest demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul which has occurred weekly since the beginning of 1992, and attended by hundreds of young students.

At the Nanking Massacre Museum in Nanjing, one always asks the question “How can a nation be so barbarious that it killed 300,000 people in six weeks, with most of them being civilians, including women and children, and raped over 20,000 women and girls?”  Unfortunately, numerous eyewitnesses, including Japanese, confirmed that it did happen.  The museum provides ample evidence on the reality of the Nanking Massacre.  When the Japanese government still denies the existence of the Nanking Massacre and does not educate their young people about it, and often making remarks that it was fabricated by the Chinese, it is everyone’s responsibility to press Japan to own up to her deeds so that that kind of atrocity will not be repeated again in the future in any place in the world. [5]

Perhaps the most sobering part of our study tour was visiting the “The Museum of War Crime Evidence by Japanese Army Unit 731” (also known as the Unit 731 Museum).  Here we learn of the horrifying biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction developed and deployed by Japan all over China.  The germ warfare weapons resulted in deadly diseases like cholera, bubonic plague, and typhoid, as well as life-long horrible diseases like the previously discussed rotten leg disease.  The Japanese military also engaged in completely inhumane and deadly experimentation like exposing human limbs and bodies to freezing temperatures and vivisection with live humans (including American POWs), like operating on live humans without anesthesia to determine their bodily response to various bacteria infections.  If it were not true, one would think that this is just science fiction.  Unfortunately, it is all documented here in this museum, including American declassified documents.

Inspirations from Life-Long Activists:  A most uplifting part of the study tour is to hear and see the life-long commitments of many activists who have dedicated their lives to seek justice for all these atrocity victims.  We had the fortune to meet and discuss with many of these life-long activists. We mention a few examples below:

• Wu Jianping (吳建平), as President of the Quzhou Germ Warfare Victims Association, has helped to establish the Quzhou Museum on Japanese Germ Warfare in China (侵华日军细菌战衢州展览馆), organize medical treatments for the rotten leg victims, and organize the victims for lawsuits against Japan.
• Wang Xuan (王选) has been China’s leading advocate for more than 20 years for the germ warfare victims.  She has been involved in almost all aspects, from lawsuits in Japan, research on germ warfare consequences, seeking medical treatments for the victims, and raising funds to pay for the successful treatments of dozens of rotten leg victims.
• Tamaka Matsuoka (松岡環) is a Japanese activist who has dedicated almost 30 years of her adult life to find out and document her findings on the Nanking Massacre.  By interviewing over 250 Japanese soldiers who were stationed in Nanking and confirming their recollections with those of the Chinese victims removes any doubt on the authenticity of the Nanking Massacre.  She is especially applauded because she faces a very hostile environment in Japan, and when she began doing this she also worked as a full-time school teacher.
• Kang Jian (康健) is China’s leading lawyer on lawsuits against Japan for the sex slave and slave labor victims.  She started on this in 1995 with lawsuits in Japan and has continued with lawsuits in China, often providing pro bono services to her clients.
• Tong Zeng (童增) was the first to argue that Chinese citizens have the legal rights to sue Japan for compensation in spite of the fact that the Chinese government as an expression of friendship waived the right to request compensation from Japan for wartime damages when the two countries established diplomatic relationship in 1972.  He first advocated this idea in 1990 with his white paper “China Demands Japan to Compensate Atrocity Victims” 《中国要求日本”受害赔偿”刻不容缓》.  This led to “10,000 cries for justice,” a collection of letters written by atrocity victims in the early 1990s. [6]  He has continued for more than 25 years in leading the campaign to seek acknowledgment, apology, and compensation for various atrocity victims.
• Lee Yong Soo (李容洙) has spoken in public on numerous occasions around the world ever since she came out in the open in 1992 about being a sex slave.  Her testimonies helped the audience to understand the sufferings of sex slaves and open their hearts to want to seek justice for this atrocity.

Sample Testimonials from 2017 Asia Study Tour participants:

• “To listen to a witness is to BECOME a witness”
• “This once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about World War II in Asia”
• “On this journey, I learned so much about the history of World War II in Asia that I never knew I never knew!”
• ‘’I did not know that the senior scientists and doctors returned to Japan and many became foremost scientists and doctors of premier universities and hospitals in Japan with apparently little notice given to their participation in the horrific experiments that killed thousands of persons.”
• “We can no longer say we don’t know about the atrocities after we had the chance to meet with the sexual slavery, germ warfare, Nanking Massacre, and slave labor survivors and listened to their authentic first-hand account of the crimes against humanity committed by the Imperial Japanese soldiers that had left them scarred forever.”
• “How to actually achieve the “Peace and Reconciliation” that is rightfully demanded, by so many people on so many fronts. It seems that so much work in this regard must be done in Japan itself, where it is resisted, repelled, and denied, and also in the U.S. as well, to discontinue her complicity.”

For the complete testimonials of all the participants, see http://nj-alpha.org/study-tour/.

[1] Our excursion to Quzhou was suggested to us by Ms. Wang Xuan (王选), China’s leading advocate for seeking justice for the Chinese germ warfare victims.  She also introduced us to Mr. Wu Jianping.  I also want to thank Mr. Zheng Wei Yong (郑伟勇) who helped us to make all the arrangements with Mr. Wu.

[2] In April 1942, the American government launched the famous Doolittle Raid by bombing several cities in Japan.  The planes were launched from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and landed or crashed landed along the coast of Zhejiang Province, when many Chinese civilians risked their lives to harbor several dozen American pilots and their team members.  Although the bombings did little damage to Japan, it did raise the morale of the American people and government.  To retaliate against the Chinese providing support to the Americans, Japan unleashed her furor by repeatedly using biological weapons of mass destruction and other retaliation measures on the Chinese people.  This resulted in about 250,000 deaths in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

[3] See, e.g., http://www.10000cfj.org/en/?page_id=5483.

[4] When we visited their research center, Professor Su was actually in the U.S.  So we met with Professor Chen only.

[5] Please read and sign the new Nanking Massacre Petition.  This link contains both the English petition and the Chinese translation.

[6] For more information on the 10,000 Cries for Justice, see http://www.10000cfj.org/en/.