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Comrade Tong Zeng:

　　How have you been?

　　You have made our long-held desire come true by submitting a proposal claiming civilian compensation from Japan to the People’s Congress for those Chinese people who suffered from the crimes of the Japanese army. I read the article about your efforts in the Baoding Newspaper on June 7, 1992, so I am writing to you and ask you to sign my name to the petition.

　　I am Hu Ruiyun, male, 72 and live at No. 2, Xingfu Street, Baoding, Hebei. In March of 1943 I was captured by enemy soldiers, including Sergeant Kasai, from the Matsuda Team of the Japanese A 1417 Troop and held by the Matsuda Team. To protect my family, I changed my name to Hu Keji.
　　I was sent to the Japanese A 1417 Troop of Shijiazhuang (located at Labor Training House, Xiumen, Shijiazhuang) in April 1943. In May 1943, in the evening of the day after the Japanese soldiers suppressed and massacred escapees, they reorganized 250 people, including me, into two teams and named us the Koa Construction Corps. At about 8 a.m. of the next day, we were escorted to Tanggu New Port by the Japanese A 1417 Troop and stayed there for three or four days.
　　Then, Li Wanfu reported me for organizing the Chinese people to escape. I was taken to a Japanese transport steamer that night and reached Shimonoseki, Japan seven days later. At one p.m. of the day of arrival, I was taken on a tram by the Japanese police and staff from the Kamijyou Company and the Kanamura Company, and then on a train, and reached Hiraoka, Ina, Nagano, Japan at dark. After getting out of the train, the team name was changed to the Kanamura Team and we were escorted to Mitsushima, where the Kanamura Company was located.
　　In October 1943 we were escorted to Fukushima to work and then back to Mitsushima three months later to work there. . In May or June of 1944, our team name was changed to the Kamijyou Team as we were sent to work for the Kamijyou Company. Every day, we got up at 4 a.m., escorted to the construction site at Hiraoka at 5 a.m. and got back to our camp at 8 p.m.
　　During April and May 1945, we were sent by the Kamijyou Company to the lakeside Yamane Camp near the Dance Academy in Gifuken, Japan. We were held there, along with two other teams to dig tunnels, repair planes, and construct a winding taxiway around the foot of a mountain. After the allied planes bombed Gifuken, the Japanese army was more eager to complete the project. They extended our working time and punished and beat us more cruelly.
　　Although we didn’t know about Japan’s surrender on August 15, we could tell from the bombing of Gifuken that Japan would fall soon. To save our strength and avoid suffering, we continued working. We were not liberated until the UN (American) army reached the Dance Academy and took over the airport. By that time the Kanamura Company, Kamijyou Company and Japanese police officials had fled the area.
　　After Japan’s surrender, we knew that there were other Chinese people laboring on construction sites near the Dance Academy. A war prisoner committee was organized and representatives were sent to make a petition to the UN agency in Tokyo, Japan and demand our return to homeland. Shang Zhen, the representative of the Chinese Nationalist Party at the UN agency helped the Japanese by saying that we were Communist Party members that came to Japan for construction of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and that he would decide how to handle us through a judicial trial after the Chinese army came to Japan.
　　After we presented our petition, Major General “Wang” (full name not known) , a Major General of the Chinese Nationalist Party came to the Dance Academy and told us that the UN had ordered the Japanese government to provide us with food and clothes and arrange transportation to send us back to our country, etc. (at that time, the soldiers of the Chinese Nationalist Party and those from the UK and US, etc. had returned to their own country) At 7 p.m. on a day in October 1945, over 3,000 Chinese people who stayed at the Dance Academy took a train at the station to the Sasebo Port, Kyushu., They stayed there for 7 days and then took an American navy transport ship to return to China.
　　My group, however, was left behind. We were still inhumanly treated in Japan, where we ate oak powder and rice bran and never had any vegetables. Over 70% of us developed night blindness. We were starved, cursed and tortured, physically and mentally. Dozens of people died. The Japanese called us “men without a country”.
　　The teenager Yang Changni (Lingshou, Heibei)’s parents were killed by the Japanese army and her seven-year-old sister was held at the Labor Training House of Shijiazhuang, so the yonger sister suffered mentally and got sick soon after she arrived in Japan. The Japanese army gave her an injection in the name of curing her disease, but she bled from her seven orifices and she died immediately. After that, when we were sick, many of us refused treatment by the Japanese in order not to suffer the same fate.
　　Some Chinese people organized a strike in Fukushima as a response to the Japanese army’s brutally beatings and the rotten food we provided. In retaliation many were badly tortured by the local police and suffered broken bones that disabled them.
　　To facilitate supervision and rule, the Japanese army numbered us on our body. My number was 173. To escape responsibility, the Japanese army changed the Chinese prisoner list to the Chinese laborer list in July of 1945. The Japanese army must pay this debt. It’s reasonable and just to demand compensation against Japan. I firmly support you and ask you to sign the petition letter on behalf of me.

Yours faithfully,

Hu Ruiyun
Address: No. 2, Xingfu Street, Baoding, Hebei