At midnight on June 30th 1945, everything seemed as usual in a
forced-labor camp in the northern Japanese town of Hanaoka. But
suddenly, 20 well-chosen Chinese slave laborers broke into the
guard house and killed four guards with sticks and
rods.??
Driven by arduous labor, torture and humiliation, about 800
Chinese laborers staged an uprising against the Hanaoka copper mine
office, which was run by Kajima Gumi, a leading Japanese
engineering company. The uprising was led by Geng Zhun, who was
transported to Hanaoka after being captured by Japanese invaders in
May 1944 as a company commander from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang
army.
"We didn't know the terrain near the camp except that Hanaoka
was surrounded by the sea. So the uprising was tantamount to
suicide, but we had no choice," Geng told Xinhua in his modest home
in Xiangcheng County, about 150 miles southeast of Luoyang City,
where he was captured by Japanese invaders in 1944. During the
battle, a bullet hit his belly, and when he woke up from a coma, he
became a prisoner of war.
Wearing a small white goatee, Geng now turns 91 years old. He
joined the Kuomintang army in 1932 at the age of 18. He is one of
the most famous living soldiers of World War II. He is widely
respected as one of the bravest men in fighting against Japanese
militarism, both in the past and in the present.
"Our plan was to kill guards and escape to the seaside. If there
were boats, we would go to Hokkaido, a big northern Japanese
island. If we found no boats there, we would jump into the sea. We
prefer to die like men," said Geng, who still has the dignity of a
soldier.
But the plan went awry when four guards escaped and sounded the
alarm. The prisoners escaped to the nearby rugged mountains, which
were then encircled by some 20,000 military police and local
villagers.
Thus began the tragedy that would become known as the Hanaoka
Incident. Only one prisoner went missing while the others,
including Geng, whose attempt to commit suicide was stopped by the
Japanese, were recaptured.
Those recaptured were taken to a square in Hanaoka village.
There they were beaten and forced to kneel for three days and three
nights on the gravel with their hands bound behind their backs.
Battered and lacking water or food under the blazing sun, more than
130 men died, Geng recalls.
Geng, as the leader of the uprising, was among those who were
tortured by Japanese. But he survived, with a life imprisonment
sentence handed by Japanese court.
In early October 1945, almost two months after Japan's
surrender, American troops discovered the site of the Kajima camp.
It was a little bit late about 418 of the 986 Chinese slave
laborers at Hanaoka had died.
Among the 986 were soldiers like Geng, farmers, merchants,
school teachers and even teenagers. The youngest was a boy of
15.
They worked up to 15 hours a day in the freezing winter of
northern Japan, with straw sandals on their feet and little more
than buns and soup in their stomachs. Some dug trenches in frigid
water to divert a river that flowed over a valuable copper-mining
operation. Others struggled up steep slopes with 50-kg bags of
cement on their backs. They had no days off.
In addition to back-breaking labor, the slave laborers faced
widespread abuse and humiliation. The beating-to-death of a
23-year-old man called Xue Tongdao by Japanese guards with a
pizzle, inflamed Chinese prisoners and ignited the revolt, says
Geng.
With hard, indisputable evidence of atrocities at the camp, an
Allied war crimes tribunal in Yokohama sentenced Ise Chitoku,
commander of the Kajima camp, and two camp guards to hang in
1948.
Geng Zhun returned to China after the defeat of Japan. Although
he had nightmares over his suffering in his seven-day sea voyage to
Japan, during which some Chinese died in front of him, and then at
Hanaoka, he did nothing until 1989.
That year, about 50 survivors, including Geng, and 250 relatives
of victims demanded from Kajima a formal apology, compensation and
construction of two memorials in Beijing and Hanaoka in honor of
those dead. This is the first case ever for Chinese on the mainland
to fight for compensation and apologies from a Japanese company for
its wartime atrocities.
"It is a blood debt. We must fight to win compensation for our
418 dead companions and the suffering that we all endured there,"
says Geng, with a steady and calm voice. "More than that, we want
people in the world to know clearly what happened in Hanaoka."
Talks between Geng's group and the company fell apart in 1995,
however. Geng, then aged 82, and another 10 survivors, all in their
70's and 80's, had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Kajima
in a Japanese court.
The Japanese court moved slowly, as Kajima did. Kajima could
probably outwait the Chinese plaintiffs since they are very old. In
fact, one of the 11 plaintiff members died soon after the trial
began.
In the meantime, lawyers of Geng's group began to lose patience
and persuade their plaintiffs to work out an amicable settlement
with the company. Later, Geng's group, with total trust, went
further to give carte blanche to its lawyers and returned to China
in 1998 to await final results.
"We thought they truly had sincerity and responsibility, so we
signed a carte blanche," says Geng. "Besides, we are so old that we
can't make too much travel between China and Japan."
Just like the uprising in 1945, the suit went awry. Japanese
lawyers on behalf of Geng's group reached an amicable settlement
with Kajima, without prior consultations with Geng's group.
The settlement, after a 13-year trial, fell far short of
expectations and requirements of Geng and the other plaintiffs. No
apology, no compensation, or memorial. Kajima only agreed to give a
sum of 500 million yen (about US$4.7 million) as a donation for
China, which the company claimed in the settlement was not for
compensation.
"We have been cheated and betrayed," says Geng, who was so angry
that he fell into a three-day coma after being told the result.
Geng and the other survivors refused to sign their names on the
reconciliation settlement.
"As the chief plaintiff, I oppose such a verdict. On this
special occasion, I want to tell the world that we reserve the
right to continue our charges against Kajima," says Geng, referring
to the upcoming 60th anniversary of Hanaoka Incident.
"The result hurts me very much, particularly regarding Kajima's
refusal to recognize the past," says Geng. "Its attitude makes me
unbearably angry."
Kajima is not the only thing that makes Geng angry.
More recently, there were worse irritants, including Japanese
leaders' continual visits to the Yasukuni shrine, Japan's attempts
to gloss over its wartime record in new school textbooks and its
bid to pursue a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
"I feel angry to see no sincere repentance in Japan over its
wartime atrocities. Its prime minister visits the Yasukuni Shrine
every year," says Geng, referring to Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi.
Koizumi's visits to the shrine, in Tokyo's center, since he took
office in 2001 have angered most of people in neighboring
countries, mainly China and the Republic of Korea. The Shinto
sanctuary honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14
convicted WWII Class-A war criminals.
The other thing that makes Geng feel angry is Japan's
unscrupulous endeavor to expand its military capabilities. "While
denying its wartime past, as evidenced by its distortion of
history, Japan is moving to revive militarism. That is very
dangerous," says Geng.
Geng says his only wish now is to win his last battle against
Kajima in the court and oblige the company to apologize and
compensate for its past atrocities. But based on words and deeds by
the Japanese governments and companies, Geng seems to have taken an
impossible mission.
(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2005)