Blog

简体中文

My correspondence address: Liu Shaojie, Building 12, Air Force Sanatorium for Retired Cadres, Zhuodaoquan, Hongshan District, Wuhan　
Tel: 703961　To Zhuodaoquan Sanatorium for Retired Cadres, ask for my home

Comrades Tong Zeng, Chen Jian, Tang Yi, Li Chengyi, Tang Xingwu:

　　When I read the article “History Has Not Forgotten”——”Report on Demanding Damage Compensation from Japan by Chinese Nationals” by Li Peiyu published on Issue 92 of Readers’ Digest, I was deeply moved. As a witness of history, I shared the same feeling with you. All of you, especially Comrade Tong Zeng, have done a good deed for the Chinese victims. This is a great cause. You have taken a good lead. Very good! Very good indeed! Wonderful.

This year I’m seventy four, I joined the Anti-Japanese forces on September 2, 1937. During the eight years of Anti-Japanese war, I followed the Eighth Route Army to fight in North China and Northwest China for eight full years. I worked as Team Leader and Instructor of the Armed Working Team twice. From what I saw and what heard, there were so many cases of burning, killing, and looting by the Japanese invaders. The hatred concealing in my heart for several dozen years is indeed abysmal. After China resumed diplomatic relation with Japan, each time when I saw the Japanese flag in Beijing, I would have the strong urge to climb up and rip it to pieces. For the sake of the overall situation, I repressed my emotion. On August 18, 1988, when the Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita visited China, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs I forwarded a letter to him demanding compensation from Japan. This year, on April 18, 1992, when I read Foreign Minister Watanabe said: “Compensation could not be negotiated”, I again wrote a letter to Watanabe, yet it was not sent due to my poor health at that time, here I copied the manuscript of these two letters to you for your reference.

　　My suggestion is that do not stop at the level of the above-mentioned signature solicitation activity, instead we should set up a nationwide unified private organization, which will lead the nationwide claim activity, and establish branches in all provinces, cities, and counties, begin actual investigation and set up file to collect massive convincing materials, and set up cases and summarize statistics, so as to create a surging furor of uproar demanding compensation from hundreds of millions of Chinese population. The only way that we can succeed in one stroke of demanding compensation from Japan is to follow international law and international practice. This nationally unified private organization must have record-keeping at the State Council. Please instruct whether or not it’s appropriate. Wishing you success.

Handwritten by Liu Shaojie
October 20, 1992

Mr. Watanabe forwarding to Your Excellency Prime Minister Miyazawa

　　On August 18, 1988, I entrusted the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the People’s Republic of China to forward a letter to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, have you received it? This year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relation between China and Japan, and it’s high time that the problem I raised should be settled. However, recently I learned that Mr. Watanabe reiterated that “Japan’s compensation for invasion into China could not be negotiated” according to the “Sino-Japanese Joint Statement” in 1972 which has covered this issue. Mr. Watanabe, you are wrong. Please read the history. Article Five of the “Second Hague Peace Conferences Convention & Declaration 1907” stipulated provisions on the rights and obligations of neutral people, neutral people must receive protection. Addressing the “Treatment of Prisoner of War”, the “Geneva Convention of 1929” was signed by 48 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Italy, in which Article Two stipulated that “Prisoners of war should be given humanitarian treatment, and should be protected, without abuse or insult”. “All retaliatory methods are forbidden to be used on captives”. Article Three stipulated “Prisoners of war enjoy the right of respecting their dignity and honor. Women should be given treatment suitable for women” etc. According to international law there are strict rules on the treatment of prisoner of war, of which Mr. Watanabe should not be oblivious! Nevertheless, in the eight years of war in China, your Japanese Imperialism had not only treated war prisoners barbarically, but also barbarically treated common people. You had captured common civilians and forced them work as hard laborers, who were fed with swill instead of decent meal. Countless people were beaten or starved to death. Just calculate how many Chinese laborers died on your land, and how many died in mines and railways in North East China. How many Chinese women were raped by your army soldiers! Even more outrageous is that you used Chinese in tests when developing bacterial chemical weapons, which killed countless people. During the war you implemented “Burn All, Kill All, and Loot All” policy. In Inner Mongolia you have created how many no-man’s lands. In Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi you have killed how many innocent people, burned how many villages, raped how many decent women. Your army was devoid of human decency and conscience. You implemented extremely savage policies that even beasts cannot outdo. The unforgivable bitter and abysmal hatred toward atrocities against international laws will forever be concealing deep down the heart of hundreds of millions of descendents of the Chinese nation.

　　I would not repeat the examples I mentioned in the letter to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. After the Anti-Japanese war ended, I returned to my hometown. According to villagers, in 1942 when the Japanese Army implemented “Encirclement of Iron Wall” mopping-up campaign, all villagers of Nantan Village of Dingxian County hid in the caves. When the Japanese army discovered them, they first sealed up the opening of the caves and then choked everyone to death with smoke. After people in the caves died, these beasts entered the cave and looted the belongings of dead villagers. Recently, the “Reference News” has published more than a dozen installments of “Truth of Japanese Comfort Women”, which described the Japanese army’s shameless beastly behaviors. The Japanese Army had raped so many young girls on the Chinese land. My colleague Ms Wang XX was working in Wuji County. When the Japanese Army came, everyone fled. On the road of taking refuge, she fell behind her group, and was captured by the Japanese soldiers. She was then raped by several dozen Japanese soldiers in the roadside ditch in broad daylight, and lost consciousness. Her limbs could not move. After the Japanese army left, rescuers helped her stand up. Her belly was swollen. Female colleagues squeezed her underbelly, and the semen of Japanese beasts flowed out from the vagina, enough to fill several bowls. In 1987 when I returned to Shijiazhuang I heard this victim was still alive. These shocking incidents are countless beyond enumeration. In the winter of 1942, the Japanese invaders suddenly surrounded a village east of Linxian County during a large-scale mopping-up of Northwest Shanxi, they assembled all villages, men and women, old and young, to a square, and used bayonet to force male seniors to stand at the east side, middle aged in the middle, and the young at the west side. They also asked female seniors to stand at the west side, middle aged in the middle, and the young in the east. Then they ordered everyone to undress, and let male and female hug each other, otherwise they would stab anyone who didn’t obey the order with the bayonet, the result was grandfathers hugged granddaughters, fathers hugged daughters. Witnessing the awkward scene, those beasts burst into guffaw, then they gang raped teenager girls. Such examples are too numerous to enumerate.

　　Mr. Watanabe, you recently said the compensation issue could not be negotiated. It seems you still wanted to cover up the criminal acts of the imperialism. Your reason is that in 1972 the “Sino-Japanese Joint Statement”, it said there would be no war compensation from Japan. But outside the war, the Chinese people surely want to settle the towering crime unscrupulously committed by the Japanese soldiers who violated international law. Back then, on behalf of the Chinese government, Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou considered that the invasion war waged by Japanese Imperialism had not only brought intolerable disaster to the Chinese people, but had also created difficulty for the Japanese people. In order to give the Japanese people an environment to recover, they demanded no war compensation from Japan in the “Sino-Japanese Joint Statement”. Based on such assumption, the victims in our country held back their anger for more than 20 years, waiting for your conscience to re-emerge. For the sake of sustaining the friendly relation between China and Japan, it is hoped that you can voluntarily address the deep hatred concealing in the heart of millions of Chinese people. Yet to our surprise, Mr. Watanabe is also a muddle-headed person with tunnel vision. I advise you to see farther into the future, and seriously take good care of the problems among common people in the wake of the Japanese invasion war. This is different from the war compensation that has been waived. Private resentments should be settled; otherwise it’s not enough to pacify widespread indignation. Sino-Japan friendship will not replace the resentment buried in the common population. It is hoped Mr. Watanabe could give it much thought.

Liu Shaojie
April 18, 1992

　　(This letter was not finished due to my poor health)

Your Excellency Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita:

　　Welcome to China for a visit. This visit is for the sake of promoting Sino-Japanese friendship, and making greater contributions than your predecessors.

　　As a veteran from the bloody battles against Japanese Imperialism invasion for a total of eight years, I would like to take this opportunity to have a heart-to-heart talk with you. At the time of establishing Sino-Japanese diplomatic relation, Chairman Mao, on behalf of the Chinese people, considered that the post-war Japanese people were also deeply victimized and impoverished by the imperialism. In order to secure peace for the whole world and the East, back then you were not asked to compensate for the heavy loss brought to Chinese people by the war. Attempting to conquer our nation, Japanese Imperialism implemented the Kill All, Burn all, and Loot All policy in the eight years of invasion war, and killed more than 10 million Chinese people. In the Nanjing Massacre alone you killed over 300,000 Chinese compatriots. In the Central Hebei Plain, in 1942 you implemented the “Encirclement of Iron Wall” mopping up campaign under the Kill All, Burn all, and Loot All policy, which resulted in numerous zones of no man’s land, and burned countless villages. At that time, all villages were shrouded in smoke. All surviving family members wore funeral clothes. Human bodies littered the field. The outcry of wailing shook heaven and earth.

　　My hometown is Peng Village, Wuji County, Hebei Province. My cousin Liu Dianji (also known as Liu Liyou) was weeding in the sorghum field in the south of the village when the Japanese Army came. As a farmer he was afraid, and hurried to flee. But he was spotted by the Japanese soldiers, who used hounds to chase him down. All other villagers were gone. The Japanese Army set fire and burned our village, and escorted Liu Dianji to Nanmulou village, where he was bound to a tree, and beaten to near death before being killed by machine gun. His head was cut off and hung on a tree. His body was cut open and hung upside down on the tree. It was a horrible scene. The Japanese also declared that whoever took the body down would be regarded as a secret agent of the Eight Route Army. His body was eaten up by maggots. my sister-in-law Zhao Ruixiang cried her eyes out. What crime had he committed to deserve such gruesome death? In 1940, the Huoliaogou Village of Linxian County in Shaanxi Province was once the place where our district government was stationed. One day the Japanese Army suddenly surrounded the village in the night. After discovering the district government had been relocated, the Japanese Army set fire to the village, raped women villagers, and killed rebellious people. They took away young women, who were gang raped in their outpost. When I led the Armed Working Team to arrive at the village, the entire village had already been reduced to rubbles. Similar things were numerous in the Japanese army’s occupied zone in China.

　　Today there is a group of people inside Japan who still do not acknowledge ever invaded into China, and repeatedly stirred up incidents to damage the friendship between China and Japan, and even create two China. The Kokaryo Incident is a case in point. Chinese people will not agree. The resentment concealing in the hearts of Chinese people will not be forgotten for thousands of generations to come.

Nowadays, airplane accidents, ship disasters, or train accidents often occur across the world. Family members of the victims all must receive compensation, so as to compensate for their loss, and comfort their souls. The beastly burning, killing and looting by your Japanese Imperialism in the invasion had resulted in the tragic deaths of over 10 million Chinese. To remove the hatred in the hearts of Chinese people, and to counter a handful of lunatics intending to restore imperialism inside Japan, you should offer compensation for the victims. Other methods cannot make up for the loss. Dear Prime Minister, let’s make an analogy: in the Shanghai railway accident, we have satisfied the demand of your country’s victim families. If we follow your logic and say there’s no need to give compensation, the family members of those dead victims will not agree. Compensation is your undeniable responsibility. You can also argue that Japan has no need to make compensation; your Chinese government should give compensation. But for the tragic death of over 10 million people, the government of Chairman Mao at that time was unable to raise the money, please think it over.

　　Wish the Prime Minister’s visit a success

Liu Shaojie
August 18, 1988
Airmail to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
General Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
I wrote a letter to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, contents of the letter are actually words kept deeply in my heart for many years. Since I have retired from actual work many years ago, I may not be familiar with the international situation especially the current diplomatic affairs,.After reading it, if you find it favorable to national diplomatic policy, you can deliver it. Otherwise you can withhold it. Everything shall follow the Party’s guideline and policy. I look forward to receiving your instructions.
　　Regards

Liu Shaojie
August 18, 1988