When Japanese ruled Changchun
Print Edition
Xinmin Avenue, built 82 years ago by invading Japanese, is still a major road in Changchun, the capital of northeast China’s Jilin Province.
The avenue, about 16 meters wide, is flanked by buildings that once housed the State Council, ministries and a court of Manchukuo, the puppet state established in northeast China after the region was taken by the Japanese army.
The buildings are now part of a hospital and a college.
They are not the only legacy left by the Japanese, who also built subways, toilets and gas pipelines in the city.
Liu Qixiang, however, is not grateful. “They did this to colonize,” he said. “So many people died at that time.”
On September 18, 1931, the Japanese blew up the railway near Shenyang, capital of neighboring Liaoning Province, blaming Chinese dissidents for the act. The “September 18 Incident” led to the Japanese invasion of northeast China.
The Japanese established Manchukuo in 1932, with Changchun its capital.
Wang Shengjin, vice president of Jilin University, said Japan was trying to make Changchun its base for further invasion, where it could obtain necessary military resources.
Liu, now 89, remembers being forced to work in a coal mine in 1943 along with his parents and brothers.
“Locked in the Pacific War, Japan was dying to get coal here at any cost,” he said. “Accidents happened every now and then.”
Liu’s father died in a roof collapse, and his 15-year-old younger brother was injured in another. “I sent him to the mine’s hospital, but the Japanese hospital wouldn’t treat him and he died the next day.”
Output at the Xi’an Coal Mine rose from 168,000 tons in 1931 to 2.1 million in 1944, but behind the growth was the death of many miners, who were buried in six mass graves.
At the Liaoyuan Miner’s Tomb Museum, curator Liu Yunlin said the average life expectancy for a miner was just 30 years and six months.
In 1944, near the end of the Pacific War, there was a shortage of aluminum to make aircraft, so Japan looted 57.8 tons of coins.
“It was sheer robbery to take away our currency for the purpose of war,” Wang said.
Xu, a man in his 80s, was in primary school at the time. “Every morning, the first thing we did was bow to the east toward the Japanese emperor.
“We were ordered to learn the Japanese language, as well as the history of Manchuria and Japan,” he said.
Xu said Chinese people were not allowed to eat rice. “It was an ‘economic crime’ to do so,” he said. “We could only eat sorghum and millet at best.”
Zhang Dianguo, 88, said he was asked to grow vegetables for the Japanese on a farm at the age of 17. “It was like a prison, surrounded by barbed wire,” he said. It was at that time he decided to fight the Japanese.
Zhang joined the army in 1944 with more than 120 other teenagers from his hometown. “Better to die with dignity than live in shame,” he said. “I was brave, not afraid of death. To fight is to live.”
When Japan surrendered in August 1945, Zhang was one of only a few of the 120 who survived to see the Japanese leave town.
“We were finally the owners of our land again, at the cost of many lives,” he said.
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