One Speaks for the Voiceless and One Is the Conscience of Japan

Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931–1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25–30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, the country that did all of this still has not acknowledged what it did and has been trying to rewrite this part of history. We are reaching the time when all of the people who experienced this tragedy first hand will have passed away. However, many people of different nationalities around the world have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from this part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated any where else in this world.

Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. This article provides a short summary of these two people, Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.

Tong Zeng (童增) — Who Speaks for the Voiceless: Although millions of Chinese people suffered great atrocities under the Japanese military in the form of massacres, rapes and kidnapped comfort women, slave laborers, biological and chemical weapon attacks, vivisection as POWs. The instigators never admitted to their guilt and basically never punished. The victims never received any apology and were never financially compensated for their sufferings.

When China and Japan established diplomatic relationship on September 29, 1972, in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese people, China, as a gesture of good will, renounced its demand for war reparation from Japan, i.e., the Chinese government no longer required the Japanese government to pay reparation for the damages it did to China during WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

As a young man studying for a masters degree in law, Tong Zeng investigated various international legal cases and issues regarding compensation related to atrocities committed during a war by one country on the citizens of another country. He concluded that there are “war reparations” and “damage compensations.” The former, “war reparations,” are compensations for the losses that the defeated countries launching the war caused to the countries they invaded. The latter, “damage compensations” are compensations for the sufferings and losses of the people of the invaded countries caused by acts of the invading militaries violating the laws of war and humanitarian principles.

In July 1990 he wrote a White Paper “China Demands Japan to Compensate Atrocity Victims.” [1] Although initially he received no interest in any newspaper on the contents of his White Paper, on March 31, 1991 he got the newspaper Ming Bao in Hong Kong to post a short article about it. Then a couple of days later, he distributed copies of his White Paper to various delegates on their way to attend the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing. Several delegates showed interest in his proposal. Although it was too late to discuss this in the 1991 NPC, it was taken up as a topic of discussion in the 1992 NPC. When news of this discussion was reported in the mass media, it ignited a brush fire across the whole country.

Seeking compensation for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military was a long-overdue item for seeking justice and closure that has been buried in the hearts and souls of thousands and thousands of Chinese atrocity victims and their relatives. During the next few years, thousands of people wrote to Tong Zeng endorsing and thanking him for his proposal and wrote to him providing details of the atrocities that they or their family members had experienced. Within a few years, he had received about 10,000 such letters. [2] This became an archive of letters of historical significance that document the atrocities experienced by the victims and written by the victims or their close relatives.

Here are excerpts of a few sample letters that were sent to Tong Zeng starting in the 1990s [3].

• Written on 12/15/1992 by Tang Qiangshen of Zhejiang Province, with the first part of the quote referring to air bombing: “More than 8,000 people died from being buried alive, burning to death, freezing, boiling with hot water, cramming pepper water, poisoning, attacking by hounds, starving, body splitting by horses (all kinds), hanging, skinning, mutilation, (gang) raping, live targets of shooting and flesh carving. … After the Japanese army retreated in May 1945, 25 shoulder pole loads of human bones were excavated, more than 2,700 skeletons were discovered across the area. … 18 women were raped (gang raped) before death, over 500 women were raped by brutal force; these women were stripped and raped in broad daylight, and “teased” before being raped, some even died from splitting the body with knife.”
• Written on 11/20/1992 by Tang Qingyu of Kunming, Yunnan Province: “In 1941 when the Japanese Army invaded Western Yunnan, after Baoshan was conquered, large crowds of residents living in Baoshan and other places in Western Yunnan swarmed to Kunming to avoid slaughter by the Japanese Army. Immediately afterwards cholera broke out in Kunming. At first people thought it was epidemic plague, but soon it spread to the whole city. Those contracted cholera first would have symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, and soon they died in less than one day. On the streets one could see dead people each day. Back then at the biggest and most famous coffin shop (the boss was surnamed Zhao) on Wenmiao Street in Kunming, all the coffins were sold out. … The Japanese army spread cholera bacteria in Western Yunnan, therefore the fleeing people of all social circles brought the cholera bacteria to Kunming and spread it around. … As mentioned above, the number of civilians suffering direct or indirect damage from the Japanese Army runs to thousands and millions. Newspapers published at that time all carried the story.”
• Writtten on 3/18/1993 by Zhou Zhenqiu of Changsha City, Hunan Province: In June 1944, the Japanese army invaded Changsha for the third time. On the afternoon of lunar July 13, when my mother, along with a group of women, was returning home from the countryside, they were captured by the Japanese army, stripped off with hands tied on the back and then bayoneted to death. My mother was bayoneted for eight times and thrown into Xiang River. An old widow was also thrown into the river after being bayoneted to death. As nobody came to collect her corpse, the corpse was pushed to the river bank by waves and eaten by crows bit by bit in the hot weather, with bones dragged away by dogs.”
• Written on 7/6/1944 by Wang Genyou, describing the experience of his deceased uncle Wang Jinsheng as a slave laborer in Japan for four years: “In January 1942, many people including my uncle were captured by the invading Japanese army during a raid in northern Daqinghe, Hebei and sent to Tanggu Camp. Later they were sent to Japan to labor for 4 years in a ravine 3 km southern of the railway station. They dug a cave every day, which was over 15 km long from east to west and used for hydraulic power generation. They did heavy work every day but ate pig feed and they were always starved. Instead of being provided with warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, they were only given a crotch cloth in a year to work naked. The Japanese foremen often beat the Chinese laborers with sticks and whips and called them morons. My uncle saw with his eyes that many Chinese laborers were beaten to death by the Japanese foremen. The life was inhuman and intolerable. Some laborers committed suicide and some escaped and were caught back, bitten to death by foreign dogs. The Japanese foremen said, ‘You Chinese people cannot run away. You are just food of Japanese dogs.’ Many Chinese laborers died there of torturing. Also, many laborers were disabled due to the beating or work and some got blinded. They suffered in Japan until the end of 1945 after Japan surrendered. My uncle and other survivors returned to the Red Cross of Qingdao, China in March 1946 with the help of the American army. Finally, my uncle reunited with the family.”

As the result, Tong Zeng became the leader of the whole grievance and compensation movement in China. For example, he helped to establish and became the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Association for Compensation Against Japan. He gave voice to the thousands and millions of voiceless Chinese atrocity victims and provided an organized force to seek apology, justice, and compensation from the Japanese government, as well as those Japanese companies who were involved in slave laborers.

One of the accomplishments of this organized force is the negotiated settlement between former Chinese slave laborers of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (or Mitsubishi for short) and Mitsubishi that was reached on 6/1/2016. The negotiated agreement included:

• Mitsubishi (or its predecessor Mitsubishi Mining Corporation) admits that during the war they had deployed 3,765 Chinese slave laborers of which 722 died during their deployment.
• Mitsubishi admits that the human rights of these Chinese laborers were violated for which Mitsubishi expresses deep remorse. Mitsubishi accepts the historical responsibility and sincerely apologizes.
• Mitsubishi will compensate each of these slave laborers (or their inheritors) 100,000 RMB (or roughly $15,000 U.S.).
• Mitsubishi will set aside 100 million yen (or roughly $1 million U.S.) to build a memorial for these slave laborers.
• Mitsubishi will set aside 200 million yen (or roughly $2 million U.S.) to help locate any of the 3,765 Chinese slave laborers whose locations are currently unknown.
• Mitsubishi will pay 250,000 yen (or roughly $2,500 U.S. to each slave laborer or one of his inheritors to attend the Memorial Service.

More than 70 years after the war ended, a portion of the atrocity victims finally received justice and compensation. However, this is only a small portion of the millions of atrocity victims. Much more hard work remains in the years ahead.

The thousands of letters that Tong Zeng received from atrocity victims were accumulated and kept in many boxes in his office.

Thousands of Tong Zeng’s Letters Kept in His Office

When years and years have gone by and there was still no apology and compensation from Japan, Tong Zeng was worried such important archives could be lost from history with a theft or fire. So he tried to find a method of safe-keeping these letters. In early 2014 when a couple of Chinese Americans in the U.S. heard of this dilemma, they offered to work with Tong Zeng to develop a website to keep and post all the letters, including digitizing all these letters and translating a subset of the letters into English. This led to a joint collaborative project between a small Chinese team, led by Tong Zeng and his able assistant Meng Huizhong (孟惠忠), and a small Chinese American team of volunteers. After almost two years of hard work working almost days and nights, the initial website called “10,000 Cries for Justice” was completed, and this important historical archive has been posted in a bi-lingual website www.10000cfj.org. This important historical archive is now safe from loss due to thefts or fires. This website (the current address of this website is now “https://2018.10000cfj.org) is still being worked on, as only a small percentage of the letters have been translated into English. The goal is to eventually translate all these letters into Japanese also.

Because of the political climate at that time when China was still trying to establish diplomatic relations or build up its friendship with many countries, Tong Zeng did not always have the support of the Chinese government in what he was doing. As a matter of fact, when certain important visitors, e.g., Japan’s Prime Minister, were visiting Beijing, Tong Zeng’s employer, the National Committee on Aging, would arrange an out-of-town business trip for him so that he was not around Beijing just in case he would cause trouble.

As stated earlier, the whole compensation movement is far from completed, Tong Zeng and many other similar leaders will continue to work hard to restore justice and seek compensation for millions of other atrocity victims, so that all the voiceless victims can be heard and rest in peace.

Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) -The Conscience of Japan: One of the largest atrocities that the Japanese military inflicted on China was the Nanking Massacre which occurred for approximately six weeks starting from December. 13, 1937 to near the end of January 1938. During these six weeks, approximately 300,000 Chinese, most of them civilians and many were women and children, were slaughtered, and over 20,000 Chinese females (women, girls, and even very young girls and great grandmothers) were raped, and one third of the city of Nanking was burned to the ground.

Tamaki Matsuoka was born in Japan in 1947, and was an elementary school teacher. As she was growing up and as a young adult, she was taught and heard many different versions about the Nanking Massacre, including that it was fake and fabricated by the Chinese. So starting in the mid 1980s, she decided that she was going to find out for herself what really happened during the Nanking Massacre.

She did and spent more than 30 years of her adult life to find out just exactly what happened in Nanking during those six weeks. An ambitious and formidable task even for a person working full-time on such a project. But Tamaki had to earn a living working full-time as an elementary school teacher, and also together with her husband raising a family with two sons. She was able to work on this project only during the summers, school holidays, or weekends. Initially she only had herself to work on this project, and she had to pay for any incurred expenses (e.g., travel expenses between Japan and China). Furthermore, she endured a lot of criticisms and attacks from the Japanese right wing, including death threats.

But she endured this difficult, challenging, and dangerous journey. The journey was not easy at all. She exhibited courage, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice to achieve her objective. Among other accomplishments, she interviewed over 250 former Japanese soldiers who participated in the Nanking Massacre and over 300 Chinese survivors of the Nanking Massacre.

Even after establishing some initial contacts with former Japanese WWII veterans after posting an announcement in Japanese newspapers, she had to overcome significant cultural and political reluctance to talk about this sensitive subject. Again it took months or even years of building friendship with these veterans and gaining their trusts in the importance of the project that the veterans were willing to open up and discuss these long-held memories which they had not discussed with anyone else (including their immediate family members) for over half a century. Similarly, she had to overcome significant reluctance for the survivors to revisit the long suppressed terrifying dark memories of the past, including cultural reluctance to discuss being raped, and political reluctance to discuss atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers when at times the Chinese government was trying to establish friendlier relationship with the Japanese government.

By comparing notes of the perpetrators and victims, Tamaki matched up records and compiled testimonies of the mass slaughter, rape, arson, destruction, plunder and other unimaginable violence committed to the Nanking residents including women, elderly and children. Her work produced numerous presentations, research articles, films and several books, including winning the “Japan Congress of Journalists Prize” in 2003. A summary of her life-long project is summarized in the English book Torn Memories of Nanking [4], which should be a must-read book for everyone.

Thanks to her and others [5], the true picture of Nanking Massacre is gradually being revealed to the world with irrefutable evidence. Through these testimonies, there is an undeniable case for the existence of the Nanking Massacre as one of the most horrific atrocities in the history of humankind.

The best way to get a good sense of the Nanking Massacre is from interview statements that Tamaki recorded from Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers. Here is a small sampling from her published English book.

• Qiu Xiuying (7 year-old Chinese female survivor): “There were lots of bodies lying around Yijiang Gate. It was a truly horrific sight, with bodies piled up to a height of more than one metre and there were more bodies lying in front of the gates and along the city walls. There were more bodies at Zhongshan Wharf. It was so terrifying that I couldn’t look at the bodies, but I recall that most of them were wearing civilian clothing rather than military uniforms. There were even naked corpses. Just like the bodies at the city gate, some were bound up and others were naked. It was truly terrifying.”
• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier): “The day that Nanjing (Nanjing is another spelling for Nanking) fell, there were mountains of dead bodies piled up outside the walls of the city. I felt something soft beneath my feet. Lighting a match to see what I was stepping on, I realized that the entire surface under my feet was like a carpet of dead bodies. There were dead bodies everywhere. I don’t know which unit was responsible, but they had all been killed by bayonets. There were women and children, but no soldiers.”
• Yang Mingzhen (7 years old Chinese female survivor): “Japanese soldiers came back again that afternoon while my mother and I were lying on the kitchen floor. My father was so weak that he was just lying there. A Japanese soldier came up to my father, opened his eyes with his fingers and thrust a knife into his mouth. Then he came up to my mother and pulled her trousers down. As he wiped the soot from my mother’s face, she bit his hand. Livid, the Japanese soldier hit my mother’s face again and again and then raped her. After that, he started taunting her, twisting the barrel of his gun around inside her vagina. The other Japanese soldier pulled my trousers down and started taunting me, prizing open my still-firm vagina with his fingers. At any rate, they were prepubescent genitals, the genitals of a six or seven-year-old. I screamed out in pain. The Japanese soldier forcibly raped me. He was a beast. The two of them took turns raping my mother and me Blood flowed in torrents, and it was so painful that I couldn’t even walk afterwards. My genitals became swollen and continued to bleed. Urine would dribble out uncontrollably and flow into my wounds, causing unbearable pain. I still suffer incontinence to this day and am unable to urinate normally. Even now, I still have to use diapers. My parents were killed.”
• Teramoto Juhei (24 year-old Japanese soldier): In the case of girls who were virgins, they would start frothing at the mouth and pass out as three or five men hold them down. I did it as well, and nothing good came of it. Soldiers from all over Japan did this kind of thing all the time. It’s just a case of whether they admit to having done so or not.”
• Yang Shaorong (25 year-old Chinese male survivor): “The Japanese practice was to make each group of three (prisoners) advance toward the river and then shoot them. As the bodies steadily started to pile up, Japanese soldiers would then douse the bodies in gasoline and set them alight. Gradually, my turn approached. Since we knew that we were going to die in any case, our group moved forward on its own. As gunfire rang out and the people in front of us were killed, we fell forward on our own accord. However, although we had avoided being shot, we were worried about being burnt alive if we remained where we had fallen. As my hands were bound, I used all of the strength in my legs to crawl to the edge of the Yangtze River, a short distance at a time. Thinking that I could avoid being burnt to death by entering the river, I slowly submerged myself in the water. Under my feet and above my head, there were bodies everywhere. My stomach was touching the shore and there were bodies above my head, so I was able to avoid being discovered. Finally, my fear of being burnt alive faded away.”
• Tanaka Jiro (29 year-old Japanese soldier): “We dragged all of them (Chinese prisoners) out of the freight train hangar and made them sit down facing the shore. When the command was given, they were sprayed with bullets at point blank range from machine guns that had been hidden in nearby trenches. They fell down, one by one, like dominoes. Blood-soaked, smoking pieces of flesh and clothing flew up into the air. Light machine guns that had been set up on the wharf took care of the several dozen or so of them who had jumped into the river. The muddy waters were soaked red with blood. What a miserable scene! Will such a wretched scene ever be seen again in this world?”
• Tokuda Ichitaro (23 year-old Japanese soldier): At Xiaguan (the district in Nanking that is next to the Yangtze River), I saw a large number of bodies floating on the Yangtze River. Corpses were continuously being tossed into the river until the water was full of them. While transporting the corpses, we noticed that there were so many corpses on the road that automobiles could not drive through. Basically, it was a road made of dead bodies.
• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier): “What the newspapers often refer to as the ‘Nanjing Massacre’ is an indisputible fact, and people who deny this are lying.”
• Teramoto Juhei (24 year-old Japanese soldier): “The Nanking Massacre happened. I saw it with my own eyes.”
• Zhang Xiuying (23 year-old Chinese female survivor): “I saw those things with my own eyes. On no account am I telling lies. I hear that there are people and politicians in Japan who say that the Nanking Massacre is a fabrication, but I [honestly] suffered these kinds of horrendous experiences, even having my daughter burnt to death. How can Japanese people still say that the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication?”

How could humans use such atrocious treatments toward other humans? Although a complete explanation may not be found from the interview statements, they do mention some of the reasons.

• Matsumura Yoshiharu (24 year-old Japanese soldier): “Back then, we did not think of the Chinese as human.”
• Zhang Xiuying (23 year-old Chinese female survivor): “The Japanese didn’t consider the Chinese as human beings.”
• Itsuki Makio (22 year-old Japanese soldier): “At that time, the Japanese thought of themselves as superior and did not treat the Chinese as human beings.” … “I heard that our company commander had issued an order saying, ‘Once you’re in Nanjing, robbery, rape, and murder are allowed.’”
• Wang Jinfu (10 year-old Chinese female survivor): “The Japanese killed us like insects.”

I want to end this section on the Nanking Massacre with a quote of Mitani Sho, an 18 year old Japanese soldier whom Tamaki interviewed: “Until now, I had no opportunity to tell my story. After sixty years, I can finally give my testimony. I am extremely grateful. As a Japanese, I often reflect deeply on this episode. Today, however, many Japanese deny that the Nanjing Massacre or military sexual slavery took place. What kind of people are they? These people are trying to find an excuse to slowly change the interpretation of the Japanese constitution. Today, they are establishing a large military, and completely revamping the armed forces. In addition, they are trying to place the Japanese Army under U.S. command as an allied army that is prepared to fight American wars. Under a new security treaty and guidelines, Japan would be automatically pulled into any wars that the U.S. started. If such a situation were to arise, it is possible that events like the Nanjing Massacre could happen again. If we do not clearly state the historical truth and admit to this truth, we will not be able to establish a peaceful world for ourselves and our families.”

That is why Tamaki Matsuoka is known as “The Conscience of Japan.” [6]

Ending Remarks: Seventy fives years have transpired since the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945. We must acknowledge what happened during that war, we must learn from that painful experience, so that that painful experience will not have to be endured by anyone else in this world in the future.

We must, like Tong Zeng, continue to speak for the voiceless. We must, like Tamaki Matsuoka, continue to spark the conscience of Japan.

I hope the following comments will be used to guide us in the future:

• From Zhang Xiuhong, a Chinese female survivor (then 11 years old) of the Nanking Massacre: “We are all brothers, whether Japanese or Chinese. Please don’t do bad things like the Japanese Army did before. Japan and China want to cooperate in a spirit of friendship. I want young people in each country to come together, to study, to work, and to build peaceful nations. Please don’t do anything bad.”
• Remark from Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito on February 23, 2015: “It is important today, when memories of the war are fading, to look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without direct knowledge.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

[1] You can find this White Paper (both English and Chinese versions) at “An Archive of Historic Cries for Justice Letters”: http://www.dontow.com/2015/09/an-archive-of-historic-cries-for-justice-letters/

[2] In the early 1990s when the majority of these letters were sent to Tong Zeng, many relatives and Chinese media personnel borrowed many of these letters. Because at that time copying machines were not readily available to Tong Zeng and other people in China, many of these letters were borrowed and unfortunately, most of them were never returned. That is why Tong Zeng now has only about 5,000 letters.

[3] For more sample letters from Tong Zeng’s collection, see “Sample Letters from Tong Zeng’s Collection of “10,000 Cries for Justice”: http://www.dontow.com/2018/03/sample-letters-from-tong-zengs-collection-of-10000-cries-for-justice/

[4] Torn Memories of Nanking, by Tamaki Matsuoka, ALPHA Education, 2016, ISBN 978–0–9920550-I-1 (paperback). Parts of this English book, plus other material, have previously been published in several other books in Japanese and Chinese by Tamaki Matsuoka.

[5] The most notable contributor was the late Iris Chang, who authored the best-selling book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Basic Books, 1997.

[6] For more information about Tamaki Matsuoka, see “Torn Memories of Nanking — A Must Read”: http://www.dontow.com/2016/06/torn-memories-of-nanking-a-must-read/