Son of miner recounts Japan's wartime atrocities

SHENYANG - Gao Duoxian, 83, son of a miner forced to work for the Japanese during World War II in northeast China's Liaoning province, can still recall the scene when his father was taken away.

Gao told Xinhua on Sunday that he was a child when his father, Gao Qingqi, and two uncles were taken away by the Japanese in 1944 to work as miners at the Taiping Mine in Fuxin City.

"The Japanese had come to our village and took photos of every household," Gao said.

Later, they learned that the Japanese used the photos to identify and seize the families of miners who escaped from forced labor.

The Japanese opened a mining company on Oct. 1, 1936 in Fuxin, which produced about 25.3 million tonnes of coal. Hundreds of thousands of workers died while working in the mine. More than 70,000 remains were found in mass graves in Fuxin, according to Li Binggang, an expert on the history of Japan's invasion of China with the Party School of the Communist Party of China's Liaoning Provincial Committee.

"Indifferent to the miners' lives and safety, the Japanese invaders only longed for more coal," Li said. "These miners had to work while risking deadly accidents such as coal mine floods and gas explosions."

Gao Duoxian said his father described the experience of being a miner for the Japanese as a "nightmare." They lived in damp shelters and suffered from starvation while working more than ten hours a day in the coal mine, Gao said, adding that they would be whipped if they did not work fast enough.

Gao's father was seriously wounded on his waist in an accident in the coal mine, preventing him from continuing to work. The Japanese refused to offer him medical treatment and sent him to do chores at a Japanese apartment at the mine.

Gao said his father told him that he saw the Japanese carry many dead bodies of miners by horse-drawn carts to throw into a nearby ravine and bury them.

Some of them were still alive when they were buried, Gao said.

Gao Qingqi and his two brothers escaped from the coal mine in February 1945.

From 1936 to 1945, more than 500,000 people had been forcibly recruited to work as miners in Fuxin, said Li. About 100,000 of them died of starvation, injuries, illness, accidents and other causes, he added.

Construction of a new memorial hall for the dead miners in Fuxin was completed this year and opened to the public on August 15.