A group of ordinary people investigated for more than 20 years and stored evidence for the Lishui germ warfare of the Japanese army invading China

In 2013, Zhuang Qijian (second from left) and colleagues interviewed Huang Kerang (first from left), a victim of germ warfare. Courtesy of respondents

A small fleas, the picture is enlarged and described as terrible. Underneath it, there are six lines of Japanese—six chilling bacterial names: Plague fungus, cholera fungi, paratyphoid fungus, typhoid fungus, dysentery fungus, and anthrax fungus. The background of poisonous insects and evil diseases is the light of the fire that bursts out.

On the left side of this picture is a small screenshot of a Japanese war report with multiple place names: Guangfeng, Yushan, Changshan, Quxian, Lishui... The name of the battle is numbered in Japanese "ホ", and there are several murderous words in the war report: poisoning, dried bacteria, rat-flea-human infection.

The two images are published on the cover of a history of the pain of the War of Resistance. This painful history is the 410,000-word "Germ Warfare of the Japanese Army Invading China in Lishui (1942-1944)" - this is the result of a group of ordinary people in Lishui, Zhejiang Province, who have traveled through the city and countryside and continued to investigate for more than 20 years.

Among them are retired veteran cadres, teachers from party schools in colleges and universities, staff from archives departments, health departments, and news units, and many villagers.

The plague is coming

Lishui, Zhejiang, known as Chuzhou in ancient times, was built in the Sui Dynasty, and was established in 2000, and its urban area accounted for about one-sixth of the land area of Zhejiang Province. Wuyi Mountain extends northeast from Fujian to Zhejiang, transforming into the layers of Xianxia Ridge, Donggong Mountain, and Cangshan Mountain. The mountain streams flow and merge into the Oujiang River, the second largest river in Zhejiang, thus constituting the geographical pattern of "nine mountains, half water and half field" in Lishui. The Ou River runs through the whole of Lishui and flows into the East China Sea in Wenzhou downstream.

Because of the geographical advantages suitable for adherence, after the fall of Hangzhou at the end of 1937, the Zhejiang Provincial Government and its affiliated organs moved to the Lishui area, and many schools in Zhejiang also moved in, such as Zhejiang University, which set up a branch in Longquan County, until the victory of the War of Resistance. At that time, Lishui was the political, economic and military center of the province's War of Resistance, and in April 1939, Zhou Enlai visited Lishui as the deputy director of the Political Department of the Military Commission of the National Government.

Lishui also has a military airfield and is an important air base in China's southeast coastal region. Because of this, Yeosu Castle, surrounded by mountains and rivers, became the target of Japanese attacks. According to the "History of the Crimes of the Japanese Army Invading Zhejiang" compiled by the Party History Research Office of the former Zhejiang Provincial CPC Committee, Lishui is one of the most serious areas in Zhejiang Province that suffered from Japanese aircraft bombing, and according to incomplete statistics, Lishui counties were bombed more than 450 times in the past 8 years, of which Lishui County (where the current urban area is located) was bombed 365 times. From June to August 1942 and from August to September 1944, the Japanese army captured the county seat of Lishui County twice. In the meantime, the Japanese army burned and plundered, and the crimes were too numerous to describe.

The two falls of Yeosu were related to the U.S. offensive in the Pacific. In 1942, the Japanese mainland was attacked by the US Doolittle Air Force, because of the fear that the US military would use multiple airfields in East China to attack Japan again, the Japanese army launched the Zhejiang Gan Campaign, and the invasion of Lishui was a cooperative operation. In 1944, the Japanese army was defeated again and again in the Pacific Theater, resulting in the interruption of the sea communication line between the Japanese mainland and the Japanese army in the South China Sea, for which the Japanese army launched the "No. 1 Operation" in the Yuxianggui Battlefield in an attempt to open up the mainland communication line from Chinese mainland to the Indochina Peninsula, and the invasion of Lishui and Wenzhou was also a cooperative operation.

During the two falls, Lishui not only experienced a rain of bullets and bullets, but also became plagued by evil diseases. The bacteriological warfare units such as the 731st Unit of the Japanese Kwantung Army and the 1644th Unit of the "Central China Dispatch Army" carried out germ warfare in the local area that seriously violated public international law, and plague, anthrax, typhoid fever and other evil plagues were rampant.

The picture of the war report on the cover of "The Japanese Army Invaded China's Germ Warfare in Lishui (1942-1944)" comes from the operational log of Kumao Inoumoto, a combat staff officer of the Japanese "China Dispatch Army" Command. The journal was not discovered by Japanese scholars until 1993. In Volume 9, Inomoto notes the description of germ warfare by Yoshiro Yamamoto, a staff officer of the Kwantung Army, on September 18, 1940: "With the extensive use of diluted ammunition and a small number of scattered concentrations, the latter chose Wenzhou as the target (Taizhou, Wenzhou, Yeosu)..."

The Japanese army carried out germ warfare against Lishui even earlier, at least as far back as 1940, and the local epidemic continued until after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War and before the founding of New China. According to the Historical Research Association of the Victims of Bacterial Warfare of the Japanese Army invading China in Lishui City, from 1942 to 1947, the number of plague casualties in Lishui County (now Liandu District, the main urban area of Lishui City) alone was 1926. In yeosu, at least 15,000 victims of germ warfare have been killed.

Family hatred and hatred of the country

"There are 5 people in my family who have been infected with the plague, my grandmother, aunt, aunt, cousin and cousin, only my aunt was cured by my uncle." Zhuang Qijian, editor-in-chief of "The Japanese Invasion of China's Germ Warfare in Lishui (1942-1944)" and a villager in Liguang Village, Liandu District, Lishui City, told reporters, "When I was a child, I went to the grave, and my father often told me about that period of history. ”

Zhuang Qijian, born in early 1948, was a high school graduate of Lishui Middle School in 1966, and after the outbreak of the "Cultural Revolution", he returned to his hometown to work as a farmer, and in his words, "there were still ten days to go to the college entrance examination." His uncle Zhuang Yuqing was a chinese scholar who practiced medicine in Ningbo, Hangzhou and Shanghai for a long time, and taught at a medical university in Shanghai.

"In the spring of 1945, my cousin Zhuang Qixing died of the plague. On August 29, 1946, Grandma Zhuang Daishi was in the room with the soles of her shoes, when suddenly a mouse ran by her feet, and then found that she had been stung by a flea on her thigh, and soon had a high fever. The uncle diagnosed it as plague and first gave his grandmother Chinese medicine and then a serum injection, but the next evening, grandma died. My great aunt came to visit the sick, and she was also infected, but fortunately she was healed by my uncle. ”

"My family lived in Taipingfang in the center of Yeosu City, where there was an 'old man's corner'. In the 1980s, the elderly people talked about how vicious the Japanese were, and they would also say that the plague that was prevalent at that time was caused by the Japanese. So when I was doing business in Yiwu in 1997, when I heard that a plaintiff group for the Chinese victims of the Japanese germ warfare had been established locally, I immediately thought of the situation in Lishui. ”

In 1997, Zhuang Qijian met Xu Junlong, a junior high school classmate working in the local foreign affairs department, on the street. Xu Junlong told him that a group of Japanese friendly people would come to investigate the historical facts of the Japanese army's germ warfare, and Zhuang Qijian volunteered to participate in the preliminary historical investigation work.

"I remember the first stop was to go to Baiqian Village in Liancheng Town. There is an old man named Zhan Bingliang, who is 84 years old and used to be the principal of the local Baishan Primary School. Shortly after the school started in the autumn of 1940, an outbreak broke out in the school, and two sons of the school teacher Lu Youtong fell ill at the same time, and both died a week later. The person who went to buy the first coffin had not yet arrived at the store, and the person behind him caught up with him and said that he would buy another one..."

To this day, Zhuang Qijian still remembers the small grave of the pair of bitter little brothers, and the tombstone still has the words "Chaojun Chaolin (Republic of China) Twenty-nine Years autumn standing". "Lao Zhan told me that the father of the two brothers did not take long to return to his hometown of Jinyunhu Town, and he never came back later."

On December 25, 1997, 8 members of the Japanese people's non-governmental peace organization "Japanese Germ Warfare History Disclosure Meeting" came to Lishui, and Zhuang Qijian participated in the discussion as the victim's family and investigator and provided investigation materials. At the same time, the "Association of Victims of Bacterial Warfare of the Japanese Army Invading China" began to be established. "Seeing the information provided by Japanese friendly people, we know that the Japanese army has carried out germ warfare against Lishui twice, and we also understand why the Japanese in the memory of those old people are so vicious."

Zhuang Qijian said: When the old people heard that they wanted to talk about the Japanese invasion, they were afraid. They would think of air raid sirens and aircraft bombings, saying they didn't know if they could survive. Whenever I recall, everyone will stroke their chests and sigh: "Scared to death, scared to death..."

Remember history

From mid-December 1998 to early January of the following year, the photo exhibition of "Germ Warfare Crimes of unit 731 of the Japanese army invading China" caused a sensation in Lishui, and many villagers rushed from the countryside to the city to watch. In winter, it is dark early, and everyone says a word to me in front of the exhibition board, and it is delayed.

"In 1998, we got in touch with the Yiwu Rebel Group of Chinese Victims of Japanese Germ Warfare, and in November, we went to Yiwu to participate in mourning activities. At the meeting, I proposed that the bacterial war crimes exhibition board of Unit 731 sent overseas could be brought to the Lishui exhibition. Zhuang Qijian recalled.

"Lao Zhuang is very serious and can also do writing work, so in 2000, the representatives of the plaintiffs in various places unanimously decided to invite him to serve as the deputy secretary general of the plaintiffs' group." Wang Xuan, then head of the plaintiffs' group and president of the Anti-Japanese War History Research Branch of the Zhejiang Historical Society, recalled that Yiwu and Changde had formed a group of plaintiffs in 1997, and lishui could not catch up with the lawsuit. ”

In 1999, the victims and families of germ warfare in Lishui, the old cadres of the New Fourth Army Research Association in Lishui Area, and local volunteers formed an investigation meeting and traveled all over the city and countryside of Lishui. Since August 2013, the Lishui Municipal Archives Bureau and other departments have initiated the work of oral documentation for nearly 200 survivors of germ warfare in the city. In 2015, the Historical Research Association of the Victims of Bacterial Warfare of the Japanese Army Invading China in Lishui City was established with the approval of the civil affairs department.

"At that time, many volunteers were already elderly, but they did not hesitate to go door to door to investigate." Zhuang Qijian remembers a series of names, when he went to Fuling Township to find Liu Lantu; when he went to Bihu Town, he could contact Tang Yiyou; the old man Yan Jinwen, a veteran of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Chengguan Town, was over 100 years old and still worried about the investigation work; the retired teacher Hu Leixiang, who personally experienced the Little Watergate plague during the War of Resistance, found the original residents who had relocated after the transformation of the old city...

"There are also some rural volunteers who are descendants of the victims, and every time they receive a notice, they immediately put down their farm work and come to the city for a meeting, and the travel expenses are self-paid." They went through the village associations for the elderly to investigate, and the results were very good. Zhuang Qijian said that the investigation work at that time was thanks to this group of native volunteers, and there were many volunteers on the editorial board of this book. Wang Xuan also said that the most valuable thing is the folk history survey in the book.

"Our investigation is very solid." Zhuang Qijian's bookshelf was filled with history books and investigation materials, and he pulled out a volume of "Compilation of Questionnaires for Survivors of germ warfare in the Japanese invasion of China in Lishui City": Each questionnaire was affixed with photos of survivors, and they had to fill in the age, gender, education level, ID card number, address, contact person, as well as the infection situation, medical treatment, sequelae at that time, as well as the simultaneous infection of family members, relatives, neighbors, and others, as well as the signatures and fingerprints of survivors..." We also videotaped survivors at that time. I hope that when they are alive, they will be able to preserve their personal experience. ”

The first draft of "Bacteriological Warfare of the Japanese Invasion of China in Lishui (1942-1944)" was completed in 2002 and published by zhejiang ancient books publishing house this year, with more than 100 oral histories of witnesses and survivors included in the book. Zhuang Qijian said that the publication cycle is so long, on the one hand, it is necessary to constantly enrich the historical materials, and many historical materials are collected outside the city, outside the province and even in Japan, and on the other hand, they are also raising funds. "Later, Wang Xuan brokered a bridge and contacted the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army invading China and the National Institute of Memory and International Peace, and they funded a part of the publication funds."

"In fact, behind our investigation work, there are also many people who are supporting, many Chinese and Japanese scholars have come to Lishui to investigate with us, and there are many university student volunteers." Everyone hopes to put down this tragic historical record and show future generations. At the end of "The Japanese Invasion of China's Germ Warfare in Lishui (1942-1944)", a detailed account of the civil investigation work from 1997 to 2020, Zhuang Qijian said, this is also a piece of history.

Today, Zhuang Qijian is the president of the Historical Research Association of the Victims of the Germ Warfare of the Japanese Army invading China in Lishui City. As his hair grew whiter, his biggest wish was that more young forces could join the investigation. (Reporter Feng Yuan)

Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph