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Comrade Tong Zeng:

I’ve read your article Pursuing Justice Against Japan from Weekly Digest of February 3 launched by Sichuan Daily. You are winning honor for our country and helping the surviving Chinese civilians who were taken to Japan to be forced laborers during the war. Thank you. I am a surviving laborer. In October 1944, I was captured to the Commander in the north of Zhengding County, then sent to the Japanese No. 1417 Troops in the east of Zhengdong Street, Shimen (now Shijiazhuang), and then to the Japanese southern camp in the south of Xiumen Village, Shishi. Laborers from other counties were all sent to the camp and we waited there to be sent to Japan. Countless Chinese laborers died at the camp. Each day, we were given some cold sorghum rice to eat; we were always hungry. We slept next to each other with lice. It’s common to find the one sleeping next to me die of infectious diseases in the morning although he’s not ill yesterday night. The dead laborers would be pulled by a cart to the south of Xiumen Village and buried in a pit. The Chinese people in charge of the matter would take off the good clothes of the dead and wrap them in a mat. They would pass through where we lived; I saw it with my eyes. The southern camp was surrounded by high walls with iron fences on them high blockhouses at each corner. There was a blockhouse at the gate with armed Japanese soldiers standing guard. That was the outer layer. Inside the gate was a ditch guarded by Chinese guards holding sticks. There was one time that Chinese laborers planned an escape at dark after supper. When they were running out and shouting, the Chinese guards whistled, so the Japanese soldiers at the outer layer came. They shot the laborers with machine guns and many people died that time. In the morning, countless corpses laid in the ditch outside where we lived. We failed to escape mainly because the lack of experience, organization and discipline. The corpses were pulled to the south of the village and buried in a pit. I lived in the house at the back and couldn’t squeeze out when I heard the whistling signal for escaping because so many people were trying to get out, so I survived. In October 1944, the Japanese escorted strong, healthy Chinese men to a train boarding for Tanggu, Tianjin. The place was surrounded with iron fences. We waited for the ship there. Several days later, each of us was given a cloth card reading Mitsui-Ashibetsu. We didn’t know what that meant. Then, 500 of us were escorted on a ship which took us to Shimonoseki, Japan more than half a month later. Then, the Pacific War broke out. There were American planes shooting from the sky, so Japanese ships dared not travel in the daytime. They only travelled at night. The Chinese laborers who died on the ship would be thrown into the sea. We took a train from Shimonoseki to MitsuiAshibetu Shin-a, Hokkaido. We started working at dawn every day after eating two small steamed breads. We took 3 breads with us while working in the coal mine and after we came back at night, we ate 2 breads and drank some pumpkin and rotten fish soup. We were numbered in the Mitsui-Ashibetsu Coal Mine. Before work, the Japanese would call each of our numbers, translated by an interpreter surnamed Li. My number was 224. After our numbers were called, each of us was given a headlamp, shouted the slogan of “we will work hard to increase coal production to fight the U.S.A and UK” and then went down the mine under the guide of the Japanese. Apart from Chinese laborers, there were also Koreans and American soldiers captured in the Pacific War. But the American soldiers only watched outside the mine. After Japan’s surrender, American planes flew to Hokkaido to find American soldiers and drop parachutes. American soldiers signaled to us with fingers. They gave Chinese laborers a thumb up and put up the middle finger towards the Japanese. We returned to China in November 1945.

Please help us handle the matter. I don’t know which government department is responsible for handling the matter. Will you give us some instruction? Please tell us in the reply letter.

Yan Fengchi
No. 27, Nansitiao, Lizhong Street, Renli, Shijiazhuang