Date of Letter:1993-01-30
Address of Author:Beijing City
Date of Event:1939
Location of Event:Yancheng City, Shandong Province
Name of Author:Jiang Yuke
Name(s) of victim(s):Jiang Xianting（Jiang Yuke’s father）, Jiang Yuke’s grandfather
Type of atrocity:Murders, Others（MU, OT）
Other Details:My father was out of work because he refused to work for the Japanese, losing the only source of income. In the summer of 1939, the Japanese soldiers caught my grandfather, hung him up and beat him for three days and three nights. They forced him to tell why he had helped the guerrillas, but failed to get any result. At last, the Japanese solders chained those captured together, cut their Achilles tendons and buried them alive. My family was ruined by the Japanese invaders. I want to ask Mr. Tong the lawyer what is the procedure for claim.
Lawyer Tong Zeng,
Please accept my belated wishes for a Happy Spring Festival. I’ve received your reply before the festival, but failed to promptly reply to you due to illness. Sorry for the delay. I’ll describe the suffering of my family below. Please review.
My family originally lived in Haiyang County, Shandong Province. My grandparents fled from famine to Yantai City when they were young, where my grandfather became a docker. Later, my father worked on a fishing boat to barely support the whole family and my study. After occupying Yantai, the Japanese army confiscated the fishing boat (I was then too young to remember the name of the boat) my father worked for. So my father (Jiang Xianting) became unemployed as he refused to work for the Japanese. Thus, my whole family lost the sole source of living. I dropped out of school and begged for a living. My grandparents got sick due to the old age, but couldn’t get treatment because of no money. We sold our property to buy very poor quality flour and the whole family suffered from edema after eating it. After our property was sold out, my grandfather died of illness, and my mother remarried, taking my younger brother with her and sold my younger sister to another family, and we have lost contact with her so far. My grandmother and I escaped from the Japanese to our hometown (a liberated area) and survived. My father went to Shanghai to make a living and his whereabouts are unknown so far. My grandfather on my mother’s side (Zhong Baoting) is an honest farmer in Xizhongjia Village, Fushan County who has lived on farming and breaking stones. He had only one child, my mother. In summer 1939, he was captured by the invading Japanese army and held in a temple in Chengxi Mountain where he was hung up and beaten for 3 days and forced to answer why he helped the guerrillas. The Japanese soldiers didn’t get any information from him despite torture. So they tied all the people they captured together with wires, cut their heel cords and buried them alive. My grandmother on my mother’s side suffered from a foot disease, couldn’t be cured and died although we sold all of our house property. At her deathbed, she called me forward and said, “You are the oldest child. Our family will count on you to seek the revenge for the injustice our family suffered!”
The above is the tragedy of how Japanese invaders tore my family apart. In this case, how do I submit a complaint and demand compensation? Lawyer Tong, please give me some instructions. Thank you!
Best regards,
Jiang Yuke
January 30, 1993
