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New Find of Japanese War Bonds in China
Huang Wensai, a 63-year-old man in this capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, today made public his collection of war bonds and stocks issued by the Japanese government and companies during its war of aggression in China.
Huang's documents, all of which are about his age, include four war bonds and 14 stock certificates, many of which are the first of their kind to be revealed in China.
Huang told Xinhua today that his father, who was a grocery owner in Changchun City of northeast China's Jilin Province, was forced by the Japanese to buy the stocks and bonds in 1938.
At that time, the three northeast China provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning were occupied by Japanese invaders, who sold large amounts of compulsory stocks and bonds to local Chinese.
The white-haired Huang said that his father had to sell his business and all of his belongings to pay for his bond quotient. The stocks, each worth 70,000 yen and amounting to 1,411 shares at the time, were from the Nissan, Hitachi, and companies involved in petroleum, engineering, mining, chemical, offshore fishing, agriculture and forestry industries.
With clear watermarks and seal prints of cherry blossoms, the stock certificates were made of special paper used exclusively by the then Japanese Ministry of Finance, according to experts with the Guangxi regional museum.
One of the bonds has a par value of 1,000 yen and is clearly marked as a "State Pan-East Asia War Bond" issued by the Japanese government in 1944. Three other bonds issued by Japan's Kangyo Bank are valued at between 20-50 yen each.
Printed on the government bond is a striking design of Fuji-san, a Japanese warship carrying the Japanese national flag, as well as airplanes and tanks.
"The securities are proof of the crimes of Japanese militarists in China. They prove that the Japanese were charging the Chinese people to feed the aggression in China," said Zhang Peisheng, a renowned Chinese economist, after seeing Huang's telltale papers. Huang said that he has refused to sell his collection for some high offers, holding firmly that the Japanese should repay their debt to him.
He remembers, with sadness, how thin his father was after he walked thousands of miles from northeast China to return to his hometown in Guangxi.
"At his deathbed in 1976, my father handed me the key to a wooden box, in which he kept the papers," Huang said, tears welling in his eyes.
He said he may resort to legal action to get compensation from the Japanese government.
It is learned that Japanese war bonds were also found in Tianjin, Wuhan and other Chinese cities in the past few years.
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