Author Archives: administrator

10,000 Cries for Justice (April 2014)

Posted on by
Reply

About 24 years ago, Mr. Tong Zeng in China started a campaign to try to get compensation from Japan for the numerous Chinese who were forced by the Japanese military to work as slave laborers during the Second Sino-Japanese War.  Once this initiative was reported in the Chinese media, thousands of former Chinese slave laborers or their relatives, as well as Chinese victims of other Japanese atrocities, wrote to him reporting on their experiences.  To his surprise, over the next few years, he received over 10,000 letters from all over China.

Twenty plus years later, he is now thinking of scanning these letters and put them up on the web.  This is such a great plan.  So now there is a small team of people in the U.S. collaborating with Mr. Tong and his associates on this project.  During these 20-plus years, because a lot of Chinese media people and relatives of the letter authors have borrowed and never returned many of those letters, only about 5,000 of these letters remain in Mr. Tong’s possession (copying machines were not very prevalent in China 20+ years ago).

The project has been expanded to include:

  • Scanning the 5,000 letters and envelopes to create an electronic record of each letter and envelope
  • For each letter, manually enter some simple indexing information for classification and to facilitate retrieval.
  • Transcribe each Chinese letter to create a digital file in the electronic database so that searches can be done based on any part of the contents of each Chinese letter.
  • For a representative subset, like 10%, of the letters, translate them into English to create an English digital file for this subset of the letters, so that searches can be done based on any part of the contents of the translated English letter.  Later, remaining letters are also planned to be translated into English.
  • Develop a public website to host these digital files.  The website will be in both Chinese (Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese) and English, to allow the public around the world to read and search these “cries for justice” testimonials from a large number of Chinese victims of Japanese war crimes during WWII.

For those who know Chinese, the following link (http://v.ifeng.com/special/duirisuopei/) provides an excellent 14-minute video of the history of trying to get justice for the victims of Japanese wartime atrocities through lawsuits in Japan, and more recently through lawsuits in Chinese courts.  These “10,000 Cries for Justice“ letters are part of this seeking-justice movement.  If you scroll down the screen of this link, you can also see some sample letters.

Controversy over Rising Sun Symbol at UPENN Building (May 2014)

Posted on by
Reply

The University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) in Philadelphia recently finished a major renovation of the Arts, Research and Culture House (ARCH) building making use of a $15M anonymous contribution.  The ARCH building was originally built in 1928 by the Christian Association, which owned the building until 1999 when it was acquired by UPENN.  In the renovation, many stained glass windows with symbols representing foreign lands were kept.  One of these symbols is the Rising Sun symbol which is the military flag of Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_Flag).  This has led to a controversy initiated by Korean students on campus because the Rising Sun symbol is associated with the Japanese military which inflicted massive and inhumane atrocities all over Asia during WWII.  UPENN’s position is that this stained glass symbol was put there in 1928 before WWII.  The opposition’s position is that although the Rising Sun symbol might not be offensive in 1928, it is definitely offensive after 1945, and even more so today because the Japanese government is still denying the existence of those atrocities.  Furthermore, the Japanese military already began its imperialistic aggression toward China and Korea starting in the late 19th century.  The controversy at UPENN is still going on:  http://www.thedp.com/article/2014/03/arch-rising-sun.

Talks and Films about the “Forgotten Atrocity” of WWII, Madison Public Library, NJ, 4/19/14

Posted on by
Reply

Talks and Films about the “Forgotten Atrocity” of WWII at the Madison Public Library:

  • “Brief Overview of the “Forgotten Atrocity” of WWII
    Don M. Tow:  Ph.D. and President of NJ-ALPHA (15 minutes)
  •  “John Magee’s Testament”
    Private film by American missionary John Magee during the Nanking Massacre in 1937 (25 minutes)
  •  “Unit 731 Japanese Human Medical Experiments”
    Part 2 of 5-part program from History Channel – 1998 (10 minutes)
  • “Torn Memories of Nanjing”
    Abridged version of documentary film by Tamaki Matsuoka (13 minutes)
  •  “Good People Facing Atrocities”
    Sharon Dolled:  Special Education Teacher, Memorial Middle School, Howell, and participant of the 2012 Peace & Reconciliation Asia Study Tour (30 minutes)

Click here for the flyer of the event

Free Public Seminar – “Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves”, Princeton University, 5/3/14

Posted on by
Reply

comfort-women-book-cover

A talk by Professor Peipei Qiu, Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Professor of Chinese and Japanese, and Director of Asian Studies Program, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY.  Professor Qiu is the primary author (with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei) of new book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves – Oxford Oral History Series (2014)

“This book is heart-rending and courageous. It gives voice, for the first time in English, to the Chinese women enslaved by the Japanese armies during the invasion and occupation of China. I finished it with a great respect for the victims whose stories are told here and for the historians who have brought them to light.” – Review by Diana Lary, author of The Chinese People at War:  Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945.”

“The individual histories documented in this book are very moving, particularly because they include discussion of the family backgrounds of these women before the war and of their experiences in later life.” – Review by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, author of Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era.

“The stories/illustrations used are very moving and will yield heart-wrenching response from the reader.  This book rebuts the deniers’ arguments with facts and figures as well as survivors’ testimonies, but not in a Japan bashing way.  This is the first English book on this subject matter using Chinese, Japanese, and English sources.”  –  Review by Thekla Lit, President of British Columbia ALPHA in Canada

The event is sponsored by the NJ Alliance for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA) and the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Princeton University (ACSSPU).

Click her for the flyer of the event

2014 Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour: July 12-24, 2014

Posted on by
2

The 2014 Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour took place July 12-24, 2014.  The tour visited Shanghai, Nanjing, and Harbin in China, and Seoul in South Korea.  The 2014 tour was organized by Toronto ALPHA.  There was a total of 19 participants from Canada and the U.S., including teachers, educators, film producers, lawyers, and other professionals.  NJ-ALPHA sent six people to the tour (including two NJ-ALPHA staff members).  Based on the feedback from the participants, the tour was very educational and successful.   From the Study Tour page, you can read the testimonies from the NJ-ALPHA participants from 2014 and earlier years.

Ongoing Event: Fundraising Campaign

Posted on by
Reply

We have an ongoing fundraising campaign soliciting contributions from individuals, foundations, and companies. Our largest expense each year is the fellowships we provide to help sponsor a group of participants to the Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour. The target participants are:

  • High school/middle school/college teachers/educators
  • Reporters/journalists, film makers, lawyers, other professionals
  • Community leaders, activists

The Asia Study Tour is an intensive two-week immersion program to enhance the participants’ understanding of the historical, cultural, and political background of the Asian countries during the Asia-Pacific War 1931-1945. More information about the Asia Study Tour can be found in the “Study Tour” page.

The donations are also used to support a variety of programs that NJ-ALPHA sponsors each year for our schools and our communities. The services of all NJ-ALPHA officers are donated.

We especially encourage donors to seek matching contributions from their employers via programs such as United Way.

We have received donations from many people, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts. A contribution of $3,000 will sponsor one participant for the Asia Study Tour, and the donor can name a fellowship to honor a person or an organization of the donor’s choice for one year. If one contributes $15,000, then the donor can name a fellowship to honor a person or an organization of the donor’s choice for five years. For the 2017 Asia Study Tour, NJ-ALPHA would like to sponsor 15 participants, and that alone would require $45,000.

We have the following categories of donors:

  • Benefactors: $15,000 or more
  • Sponsors: $3,000 – $14,999
  • Diamond Donors: $1,000 – $2,999
  • Platinum Donors: $500 – $999
  • Gold Donors: $300 – $499
  • Silver Donors: $100 – $299
  • Bronze Donors: Any amount up to $99

A receipt will be sent whenever a donation is received.

NJ-ALPHA is an established non-profit educational 501(c)(3) organization duly registered with the U.S. federal government (Federal Tax I.D. # is 73-1734843). We welcome your tax-deductible donations of any amount. Checks should be made payable to NJ-ALPHA, and mailed to:

NJ-ALPHA
P. O. Box 1121
Piscataway, NJ 08855

Editorial: U.S.’s inconsistent policy and unfinished business regarding biological and chemical weapons

Posted on by
1

On August 26, 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said “The use of chemical weapons in attacks on civilians in Syria last week was undeniable and that the Obama administration would hold the Syrian government accountable for a ‘moral obscenity’ that has shocked the world’s conscience.” But on the much greater ‘moral obscenity’ of massive biological and chemical weapons that Japan unleashed on China during WWII, there is much unfinished business involving the U.S. also.

During WWII, the Japanese Imperial Army deployed biological and chemical weapons in China thousands of times in over a dozen provinces, killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese and injuring many more. There are survivors who are still suffering from the damages inflicted on them about 70, 75 years ago, including the rotten-leg-disease victims 1. Biological weapons included anthrax, bubonic plague, cholera, glanders 2. Chemical weapons included mustard gas, cyanide, and other poison gases. All these biological and chemical weapons were prohibited by the Geneva Convention of 1925 which was also signed by Japan. Furthermore, there are still hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons abandoned in China by the Japanese by burying them underground or dumping them into rivers. These chemical weapons are frequently accidentally exploded killing many innocent victims and still waiting to be excavated, a responsibility required of Japan by the United Nations’ 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Sixty eight years have passed since the end of WWII, yet the Japanese government still has not officially acknowledged and apologized for the massive and inhumane atrocities that the Japanese Imperial Army committed in China and other parts of Asia during WWII. As a matter of fact, her political leaders including her prime ministers, have even denied the occurrence of these atrocities, and claimed that they were fabricated by the victims. The U.S., being the country that put Japan back on her feet after the end of WWII, has tremendous influence on Japan, and could have easily persuaded Japan to acknowledge and apologize for their WWII crimes against humanity, as was done by Germany. Not only that the U.S. has turned a blind eye on the actions or inactions of Japan, she has groomed Japan to be her junior partner to pursue her dangerous policy to surround, contain, and weaken China. The U.S. is even willing to go to war by declaring that even though the territorial sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands is unsettled, the Diaoyu Islands are under the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see the article “The U.S.’s Military-Industrial-Academic Complex”: http://www.dontow.com/2013/09/the-u-s-s-military-industrial-academic-complex/.

Turning a blind eye to such moral obscenity actually goes back to the end of WWII. The leaders and top scientists and medical doctors who ran Unit 731, Japan’s massive research center and factory of biological and chemical weapons near Harbin in Northeast China during WWII were never prosecuted. Their crimes against humanity included performing many vivisections on live humans. Why? According to the American doctor and medical historian Dr. Martin Furmanski, who researched this issue and wrote “In a disgraceful agreement with the Japanese biological weapons war criminals, the U.S. offered immunity from war crimes prosecution in exchange for the scientific data the Japanese had collected from murdering Chinese citizens, as well as citizens of other countries, both in their laboratories and in field applications. The official U.S. and Japanese policy became one of denying the existence of the Japanese biological weapons program.” 3

For the U.S. to take the high moral ground to condemn Syria’s use of chemical weapons, she must be consistent and pressure her junior partner Japan to join the rank of civilized countries by acknowledging and apologizing her massive and inhumane atrocities committed during WWII, including the extensive use of biological and chemical weapons.

1 See the article “Japan’s Biological and Chemical Warfare in China during WWII”: http://www.dontow.com/2009/04/japans-biological-and-chemical-warfare-in-china-during-wwii/.
2 See the article “Heroic and Critical Battles in Yunnan During WWII”: http://www.dontow.com/2009/08/heroic-and-critical-battles-in-yunnan-during-wwii/.
3 Dr. Martin Furmanski’s article “An Investigation of the Afflicted Area of Anthrax and Glanders Attacks by Japanese Aggressors” in the book Blood-Weeping Accusations: Records of Anthrax Victims, by Li Xiaofang, 2005.
* Quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Film and Presentation at Monmouth County Library on May 16, 2013

Posted on by
Reply

May 16, 2013
This program, held at the Monmouth County Library in Manalapan and co-sponsored by the Monmouth County Library, consisted of two items:

  • Showing the abridged (13 minutes) version of the documentary “Torn Memories of Nanjing,” a documentary made by the award-winning Japanese teacher and journalist Tamaki Matsuoka who invested 24 years of her life to try to find out what happened during the Nanking Massacre. She interviewed over 250 former Japanese soldiers who were stationed in Nanking in 1937-1938 and over 300 Chinese survivors of the Nanking Massacre. This documentary summarizes the findings of her video-recorded interviews.
  • Ms. Sharon Dolled, a Special Education Teacher at the Memorial Middle School in Howell, spoke on “Good People Facing Atrocities.” Ms. Dolled participated in the 2012 Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour sponsored by NJ-ALPHA, during which she visited China, South Korea, and Hong Kong.