Heaps of Crimes Committed by Japanese Puppet Army in "Laborer's Training Base" Revealed

After numerous investigations and studies on the two former "Laborers' Training Bureaus", historians of Qingdao has recently affirmed that the "Laborer's Training Bureau" run by Japanese puppet army played the role of a lackey-dog and a henchman for Japanese Army, the cruelest of its kind in plundering Chinese laborers.

During the war of Japanese invasion of China, the Japanese imperialists seized thousands upon thousands of laborers through its "Dadong Company", "Manchuria Labor Union", "North China Labor Union" and "Laborer's Training Bureau" and forced them to do laborious jobs in North-east China and Inner Mongolia. Some of them were even transported to Japan to do donkeywork. It is a premeditated, long-schemed and criminal plan jointly worked out by Japanese government, the military and enterprise circles.

According to the investigation, during Japanese invasion of China, the Japanese imperialists urged its bogus regime in North China to establish four "Laborer's Training Bureaus" in Jinan, Shijiazhuang, Qingdao and Tanggu. Among them the "Laborer's Training Bureau" in Jinan alone had locked up over 30,000 anti-Japanese Chinese soldiers between March 1943 and August 1945 with 15,000 of them being fired. The rest were sent to North China or Japan to do hard labor. According to the newly discovered "General Provisions on the Organization of Qingdao Laborer's Training Bureau for North China Labor Union" and "Detailed Rules on the Operation of Qingdao Laborer's Training Bureau" (in Japanese), workers had to give their clothes and personal property to the guards for "safekeeping" after being locked up in the Bureau. Then they were ordered to wear old military uniforms in order to prevent them from escaping. After interrogations by Japanese guards, they would be sent to North China and Japan for hard work.

To resist merciless persecutions inflicted by the Japanese Army, laborers in Qingdao lockup raised many a time insurgence. As noted in the archives of Japanese puppet army there had been four times of labor riots in the "First Laborer's Training Bureau" in Qingdao from October 1944 to March 1945. The biggest insurgence took place on January 16, 1945 with over 280 laborers joining in it. To suppress policemen and Japanese puppet army fired at the laborers, resulting 24 being killed and many wounded.

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