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Comrade Tong Zeng:
　　
　　Hello!

　　I am Yan Zizhen, 69, male, born on August 24, 1926, member of the Communist Party of China, now living at No. 4, 17F, Xinhua Building, Tangjiazhuang, Guye District, Tangshan City, Hebei Province, native place at Yian Village, Yian Town, Luan County, Tangshan City, formerly worked at Guizhou Province Guiyang City Lindong Mineral Affairs Bureau. In the winter of 1985 I retired and returned to hometown Tangshan for retirement through out-of-town relocation. Recently, I read from some newspapers that, you bravely shouldered the heavy burden of “The Pioneer of Chinese civilian compensation claim against Japan”, in order to demand Japan to pay back the debt of blood for us dead and living laborers captured and sent to Japan during the WWII.Over the past ten years you worked tirelessly, overcame all kinds of difficulties, appealed to all social circles to drum up support, traveled far and wide, investigated and obtained evidences from surviving laborers and relatives of dead laborers who were captured and sent to Japan, and delivered “China’s demand for victim compensation by Japan with no delay” with signature of 10000 people to the National People’s Congress, formulated the “Proposal to Demand Damage Compensation from Japan” and formally submitted to the Fifth Session of the Seventh NPC. For the first time you distinguished “war compensation” from “civilian compensation”, and straightened out the fundamental difference between “war compensation money”, which was between countries and was abandoned by the Chinese government in 1972 at the time of setup of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relation, and “damage compensation”, which must be paid by the government of the defeat country to civilian victims of the victory country as beneficiary. In March 1992, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered speech to point out “civilian victims of Sino-Japanese War can directly demand Japan to compensate for loss.” In April that year, before visiting Japan General Secretary Jiang Zemin clearly indicated when answering reporter questions that: “China abandoned the national right to demand Japan to offer war damage compensation, but there is no limit on civilian compensation claim”. The clear-cut attitude of national leaders on the subject of civilian compensation is directly related to your earnest appeals and untiring efforts over the recent ten years, your meritorious deeds could never be obliterated. In particular, the “Open letter from 10000 Chinese citizens to the Japanese National Diet” drafted by you awakened Chinese people who remained silent for nearly half a century 46 years after the end of the WWII, which loudly declared the justified rights as war victims on the basis of international law to demand the Japanese government to give compensation to victims, spoke out the inner voices long pent up in the heart of laborers being captured and sent to Japan for so many years, which aired grievances for us captured laborers, all commoners, all Chinese citizens and the Chinese people who suffered painfully during the war. Here, first I want to express my appreciation for you! Thank you for your painstaking efforts in overcoming numerous difficulties to consistently demand justice for Chinese laborers sent to Japan! In the text below, I will tell you my painful experience of being captured by the Japanese invaders and sent to Japan, I tasted imprisonment and torture to the full, experienced the purgatory of life and death, I hope you can relay my info to relevant parties at appropriate time and disclose it to the public, in order to demand payment of the debt of blood from the Japanese invaders:

　　It was on November 27, 1943, in that year I was 17, I was captured by the Military Police of the Japanese Army stationed in Guye District,Tangshan City, Hebei Province. After about one month time traveling from Tanggu District, Tianjin, to Lvshunkou, Dalian in Liaoning, the Yellow Sea and the Pacific Ocean high sea, we arrived at a port named “Moji” in Japan, where we were loaded onto a box car and travelled for a night to reach Kagoshima, then to a placed called “Omuta ” in Fukuoka Prefecture, where we were imprisoned in Japan “Mitsuii Miike Inc Manda Coal Mine Chinese Laborer Dormitory”. We entered mine there and dug coal for two years. On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, in December that year, more than 1700 surviving laborers boarded a few big American ships at Nagasaki in Japan, after sailing four days and four nights we retuned to Tanggu Port in Tianjin of the motherland, and rode train to return to Tianjin, later I returned to my home in Luan County, Hebei, the time then was January 1946. Later I heard that our group of 4000-plus laborers was the third batch being captured and sent to Japan. Within a matter of two years, over 2300 people died, and only about 1700 people retuned alive.

　　Within the nearly 3 years time from capture till Japanese surrender and my return to home, I suffered brutal persecution and severe affliction and beatings by the Japanese invaders, meanwhile I also witnessed barbaric ravage by the Japanese invaders toward Chinese laborers:

　　——Severe torture after capture.
　　After I was captured, what impressed me most is severe torture: Especially during the 28 days being detained in the Guye Puppet Police Station and Tangshan Japanese General Military Police, I received torture almost every day, in which for four times I was escorted to the Japanese Military Police to receive torture “trial” by the Japanese invaders, each time I was burned with red hot searing iron and splashed with boiling water, which left behind more than ten stabbing burning scars visible even today. Although 50 years have passed since then, today whenever there is rainy weather, the scars will twitch and ache beyond tolerance. In particular the second time torture was especially tragic, which was too painful to be recalled, till today I can still remember the experience vividly as if it happened only yesterday:
　　Back then it was December on the lunar calendar, it was snowing heavily, there was a western stove with a girth of about 600 cm burning in the house, leader of the Japanese Military Police Sato and an interpreter surnamed Shi tortured me. They asked me in which regiment, which battalion, and division I served for the Eighth Route Amy? In the north of Zaoyuan Village, Guye District, how many landmines I had laid to kill Japanese soldiers? When I answered ‘I don’t know’ to all the questions, the Japanese invaders stripped me naked, first they forced me to kneel in front of the big stove to become totally sweaty, then they used red hot two-finger thick searing iron to stab and burn on my back, buttocks, thighs, and knees, the whole room was immersed in the smell of burning flesh. Afterwards, the old Japanese savage Sato pour a pot of boiling water onto my back which had just received stabbing and burning, for several times I was thrown into anguish and rolled over under the eight-immortal table in the room corner. After being pulled out, I again received more than ten stabbing which made me lose consciousness instantly. Afterwards, the Japanese savages dragged me into the yard, and forced me to kneel in the heavy snow in the middle of winter for more than two hours before asking two policemen to drag me back to the Guye Puppet Police Station. After returning to the detention house, I lay in deep coma for nine days, with pus and blood all over the body, fellow prisoners (Mao Huan of Maoshan Village, Guye District ; Wang Yuzhu of the former Zaoyuan Village) helped me to tear away the shirt piece by piece while wiping clean the pus and blood to slowly “remove” the clothing (throughout the past 50 years, today there were still 10 cm long big scar and 5 cm size big stab wound scars on the right back where I received stabbing and burning injury. Whenever there is change in weather, or on rainy days, the scars still ache intolerably, the right back will feel extremely painful; when the weather turned cool, the deep end of right thigh and knee will become painful to affect walking, since they received the deepest burning and stabbing wounds from the Japanese savages). Throughout the several transfer from Guye to Tangshan then to New Tanggu in Tianjin, I was extremely weak, my feet were bloated to resemble a big loaf of bread, when boarding or disembarking the train, my feet were bound into one by fellow laborers so that they could “drag” me up or down the train.
　　——Brutal abuse in transit
　　In Tanggu, Tianjin, every laborer was given a small wedge of Shanxi-made wheat oil flour cake, which almost certainly would lead to loose bowel, plus non acclimatization due to the sea side location, some laborers died and were thrown into the road-side ditch. Some laborers tried to escape during the journey and were shot to death by the Japanese invaders, or gnawed to death by hounds; the big ditch was crammed with laborer bodies. On the ship bound for Japan, due to extreme hunger I secretly squeezed out some acorn flour from the gunny sack, for which I received a heavy beating from the Japanese invaders, if it were not for begging and pleading by older laborers, I nearly met the fate of being thrown into the sea by the Japanese invaders! The coal-holding bottom of the cargo ship half immersed in sea water was chilly to the bone, coal water was frozen to ice, several thousand laborers were thrown onto cargo holds paved with rotten straw mats, just like pigs or dogs in the cold and hunger. Three day after departure from Lvshun, when the ship entered the open sea, a successive number of laborers fell ill and died due to freezing, hunger, and homesickness, after death they were bundled by the Japanese invaders with straw ropes and thrown into the sea at black water (deep water) places to feed fish. The remaining laborers were crammed into the lower cargo hold for loading coal and barely lived till reaching Japan. Nonetheless, after over one month of tumbling on the sea, severely afflicted y freezing, hunger, and illness, every laborer felt very weak physically, all looked sick, and stumbled in walking. If one didn’t take care, one would very possibly collapse to the ground after being boxed in the ear by the Japanese invaders, and would never get up again, a lot of people also died in this way.
　　
　　——Endless torture in Japan

　　The “Chinese laborer dormitory” in Japan was in a compound guarded by the Japanese savages and hounds and surrounded by electrified barbed wire on four sides, inside the compound there were eight rows of large houses boarded with corrugated siding boards and roofed with linoleum. Each house accommodated 70~80 labors in large wide bed, everyone has only two chi width of space, bricks were used as pillows. The big barrel at the end of every wide bed served as toilet. As for meals, everyone was given a small bowl of (about 100 g) of brown rice, which was far from enough, we could only pluck some weeds in the compound to ease hunger. Sometimes when the supply of brown rice ran out, we were given uncooked wheat kernels plus a small bowl of soup floating with several radish stems, which caused indigestion, and diarrhea. Coupled with non-acclimatization, those old and weak among the laborers soon experienced large number of illnesses and deaths. When one fell ill, if being sent into the so-called “clinic” was equivalent to death, for no one returned. Even if one was still alive, he would be nailed inside a small wooden box by the Japanese invaders barbarically to die of suffocation. Wang Guanqing, who was captured together with myself, was persecuted to death even less than one month after arriving in Japan in this way. In April 1944 I was bony skin due to hunger and illness (only 32kg at 18), and I felt I could no longer make it, three persons including fellow laborer and team leader Zhao Zipei, plus my fellow laborer Shan Xuntian, and Zhang Baotian insisted on helping me to go to and back from the mine, as it turned out I toughed it out and avoided the “clinic”, which saved my life. After arriving in Japan, the Japanese savages forced the laborers to say some simple Japanese phrases, we would receive beating if we failed to understand or learn. Once when I was working in the mine, I failed to understand one sentence said by the Japanese foreman, then I was hit by hammer on the right forehead, till today there is a big conspicuous swelling. Despite the passage of time for 50 years, because of this big swelling, my right eye sight deteriorated, and went nearly blind; there is also a walnut size hydrocele focus inside the right brain.

　　Comrade Tong Zeng, after returning to China, I immediately continued my participation in work arranged by the Party organization, near the end of the 1950’s in response to the call of the Party, I obeyed organization arrangement to leave for Guizhou to support coal industry construction. After retirement till today I stayed at home. Although I’m 69, my mind is still clear, and my body is healthy, I can still clearly recount all the crimes of the Japanese in their abuse and persecution of laborers, even today there are still more than a dozen scars on my body plus the big swelling on the head after being hit by the Japanese foreman with hammer, I can clearly remember this segment of bitter experience with fresh vivid memory, if you need testimony, I can recollect to denounce the crimes of the Japanese savages; if you need more detailed info about other fellow laborers who were forced to work in Japan, I can supply and search for necessary clues; I can also go to the place of persecution in Japan to give direct on-the-spot testimony, in order to denounce the towering crimes committed by the Japanese savages. I want to avenge for fellow laborers who died innocently in Japan, and demand justice for the Chinese people! I will live on healthily, I look forward to seeing the day when all laborers can receive compensation for the debt of blood from Japan, the Japanese government openly offers apology, and the Japanese enterprises give compensation to debt of blood before my death.

　　Thank you!

Victim: Yan Zizhen (handprint)

Writer: Yan Min (handprint)
July 18, 1995
Contact address of Yan Min: Cadre Section of Organization Department,
CPC Tangshan City Lunan District Committee