Chinese Veteran Writes Book on Japanese InvasionChen Ping, a scholar who was a soldier during World War II, wrote a book on the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in China along the Great Wall.Chen's book unveiled the history of depopulated zones made by the Japanese invaders since 1933 in northeast and north China. According to the pictures and historical documents Chen has collected, the Japanese troops have killed 200,000 Chinese civilians, destroyed 17,000 villages, and burnt 3.8 million rooms,in order to produce the "no man's zone" in order to keep Chinese civilians from anti-Japanese forces. Chen cited two massacres that happened in 1941 and 1942 respectively in north China's Hebei Province. Each of the massacres by Japanese invaders resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 villagers in Panjiayu Village of Fengrun County and Panjiadai Village of Luannan County. Chen started his study about the "no man's zone" in 1962. He has visited archives and libraries in most parts of China. Chen finished his first paper on the "no man's zone," which few people know about, after he became irritated about the distortion of history being recorded in Japanese textbooks in 1982. He has spent four years visiting 26 counties in the former "no man's zone" after retirement in 1984. He has drawn China's first map on the depopulated zones along the Great Wall. Chen warned that a small group of people in Japan have never given up their attempt to rewrite the history and embellish the aggression. Only when more people come to realize the danger of Japanese militarism, can people cherish more the hard-won peace. |
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