A Chinese photographer's quest to preserve WWII histories

HANGZHOU, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- In a museum in eastern China, the photos about the tribulation of Chinese people speak louder than words.

In September 2025, William Ross Kantenberger, grandson of a U.S. airman from the 1942 Doolittle Raid, stood before a series of black-and-white portraits at the Yuandao Museum in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province. The photographs show elderly Chinese civilians who survived Japan's biological warfare during World War II (WWII).

The images were taken by Han Qiang, a former Chinese fighter pilot turned documentary photographer. For Han, the encounter reflected the convergence of two wartime histories -- one of civilian suffering, the other of cross-border rescue -- linked by a shared past that continues to shape lives decades later.

Han retired from the air force in 1997. In 2011, he picked up a camera with a specific aim: to document historical truths before they vanish with the last witnesses.

That mission came into sharp focus in Quzhou, a city deeply scarred by Japan's biological warfare during the war. Between 1940 and 1944, Japanese forces carried out three aerial attacks, releasing bacteria including plague, cholera and anthrax in the region. According to Chinese records, more than 300,000 people were infected and over 50,000 died, and many survivors left with lifelong illnesses, known locally as "rotten leg disease."

In 2012, at a museum commemorating victims of Japan's biological attacks in Quzhou, Han photographed Yang Dafang, then head of a local victims' association, as he denounced the atrocities. The image, later titled "Accusation," captures Yang mid-gesture -- bent with age, arms raised, mouth open -- confronting a crime committed decades earlier.

That same day, Han followed Yang to visit survivor Hong Fufu, who contracted the disease as a teenager and was never able to walk again. In a dim, earthen-floored room, Hong sat motionless on a wooden stool, his legs swollen, ulcerated and blackened. Stunned by what he saw, Han raised his camera, capturing a close-up of the legs.

"The war ended, but for the victims, the pain never did," Han said. "If this history isn't recorded, it will fade."

That conviction grew into a project spanning more than a decade. Han documented survivors until their deaths, photographing empty stools, abandoned canes and silent homes. The images, he said, are not only portraits, but evidence.

Before his death in 2017, Yang told Han that he lived so others would remember the victims of biological warfare. Han promised the elderly man that he would continue telling their stories.

He has since taken tens of thousands of photographs, donating them to public archives in Quzhou and Yiwu, a nearby city in Zhejiang. His work has appeared in exhibitions at home and abroad.

In 2018, "Accusation" was shortlisted at the 125th Toronto International Salon of Photography, a recognition Han believed mattered less for prestige than for international acknowledgment of a little-known chapter of the war.

Han's lens in 2014 turned to another wartime narrative, the "Doolittle Raid" and the Chinese civilians who rescued American airmen after their planes crash-landed in 1942. Of the 75 U.S. crew members, most survived with local help, while Chinese communities paid a devastating price in Japanese reprisals, as many locals suspected of sheltering the Americans were tortured or slaughtered by Japanese forces.

"For Americans, it's a heroic mission," Han said. "But the Chinese cost is rarely remembered."

Working with Zheng Weiyong, a bank employee with a long-standing interest in uncovering the history of the "Doolittle Raid," Han traced crash sites, interviewed elderly villagers and documented commemorations.

His photographs capture moments of remembrance like American descendants visiting villages, collecting soil from landing sites, and embracing families whose parents once took care of foreign airmen. These images, now used in people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States, tell "a friendship forged in war."

Han sees photography as a form of historical testimony. At exhibitions, he often quizzes visitors about that history. Most answer vaguely. He responds by pointing to the images.

"These images are evidence," he said.

Looking ahead, Han plans to document stories along the WWII "Hump Route," the Himalayan air corridor used to supply China during the war, where hundreds of aircraft were lost.

"Each crash hides untold stories of Chinese villagers rescuing American crews," he said. "This history is fragmented. I want to piece it together, using my knowledge of flight to unearth these overlooked details."

As the world marks 80 years since the end of WWII, Han continues his work, convinced that photographs can preserve what time erodes, capturing both suffering and sacrifice as well as the bonds that connect people across borders.