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In the village of Chongshan, one third of the inhabitants died of plague in 1942. All of their names are engraved on this memorial. Ten years ago, they initiated a lawsuit against the Japanese government.
Wang Xuan, whose family is from Chongshan, is a spokeswoman for the victims and has become a celebrity all over China.
Photos: Matthias Ziegler
8. Plague victims and activists in Chongshan
The plague that started with the flea attack on Quzhou raged through the province of Zhejiang. In September 1941, a railway worker brought it from Quzhou to the city of Yiwu, some 150 km further East. Today, Yiwu is known as the "heaven of small goods", a boomtown that produces all kinds of commodities for the world market.
Within a year, plague spread to many nearby villages and killed a total 1,161 people in the Yiwu region. The village that was hit hardest was Chongshan, a comparably big and crowded place with 1,200 inhabitants. Plague claimed 404 of them. Nearly every family was affected, and the plague of 1943 is deeply engraved in their memory. Soon after the war the villagers became increasingly convinced that the Japanese were behind the outbreak.
In 1994, three citizens of Chongshan initiated a petition to the Japanese embassy, in which they demanded compensation for the victims of biological warfare. More than 10,000 people in the Yiwu region signed the petition. In the same year, a group of Japanese peace activists visited Chongshan and offered them to support a lawsuit against the Japanese government. But first they needed watertight evidence to link Japanese biowarfare attacks with individual victims in Chongshan. The inhabitants of Chongshan set up an investigation committee and started to gather all information available, from the old epidemiological records to the memories of villagers.
Crucial to their work was the help of one woman, Wang Xuan of Shanghai. Her family is originally from Chongshan. When the idea of a lawsuit was born, she was living with her husband in Japan. Fluent in Japanese and the local Chongshan dialect, she offered her help. It was an unusual and brave step, considering that at that time, in 1995, the central government in Beijing prohibited any grassroots activities critical of Japan. Today, she is a celebrity in China and was recently elected one of the ten most influential women in the country. She is known all over the country for her relentless efforts to help the victims of biological warfare. It is safe to say that without Wang Xuan, the case of the victims would never have gotten so far, both legally and in terms of publicity. (And, we should add, without Wang Xuan, we would not have been able to visit the victims in Zhejiang and compile this report – she traveled with us through Zhejiang, brokered all contacts, translated and supported us in every possible way. We would like to deeply thank Wang Xuan for all her work and for the help she offered so generously to us.)
In 1995, the citizens of Chongshan started their investigative work with a systematic overview in the village. They prepared a detailed map of Chongshan, with the names of all plague victims and all houses that were burned down in 1943 in an effort to stop the epidemic. Based on the records of the local health authorities, they soon found out that the plague in Chongshan originated in Quzhou.
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