Sixty college students in east China will soon begin collecting oral evidence from victims of germ warfare launched by Japanese troops during World War II (WWII), which may be used in future lawsuits against the Japanese government.

 

The students, from Hangzhou University of Electronic Science and Technology, will visit 208 households in Yiwu City in Zhejiang Province where more than 1,200 people died of the plague which was deliberately spread by Japanese troops between 1931 and 1945.

 

The surviving victims' stories need to be written down before it is too late, says Wang Xuan, a lawyer representing people who suffered in the atrocity.

 

"Many of the victims have died or become aged, but few of them or their families have recorded the brutal facts from that period in any form," said Wang.

 

The students will spend their upcoming winter vacation interviewing the elderly victims. The victims' stories will be compiled and form part of the collection of a local museum.

 

Historians say at least 270,000 Chinese in Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces were victims of Japanese warfare which was mainly conducted by the notorious Unit 731 based in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

 

In the city of Quzhou in western Zhejiang, more than 50,000 people were killed by Japanese troops using germ warfare, according to Chinese scholars. In August 1997, a team of 108 Chinese germ warfare victims launched the first lawsuit in a Tokyo District Court demanding an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. They lost the case and their appeal was rejected.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2007)