WWII POW camp reopens for remembrance
Source: Xinhua |
June 6, 2013, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AT age 88, Li Lishui still remembers how he risked his own life to help keep an Allied prisoner of war from starving to death almost seven decades ago at a Japanese internment camp in northeast China's Liaoning Province.
It was the 1940s and Li was working at a Japanese factory in a part of China occupied by Japan. One day, he shared several cucumbers he stole from a dining hall cart with starving detainee Neil Gagliano, a forced laborer at the factory.
Now, after six years of renovation, the former POW camp in which Gagliano nearly died has opened to the public.
China spent more than 5 million yuan (US$815,500) in restoring the Mukden Internment Camp to its original appearance, as well as installing a museum and a memorial wall inscribed with the names of over 200 Allies who died there due to severe cold and diseases including malaria and dysentery.
The camp is located in Dadong District in the provincial capital of Shenyang.
While touring the camp before today's 69th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Li said that Gagliano "gave a longing look at the cucumber. So I threw two to him without hesitation, right under the watch of the Japanese guards."
"I didn't know his name then, I just saw his code number, 266," Li said, adding that Chinese workers at the factory were barred from communicating with Allied prisoners.
One of the most strongly protected Japanese camps in Asia, the 50,000-square-meter site encompasses a two-story red-brick building, several bungalows, a hospital and a water tower, according to Jing Xiaoguang, an academic specializing in the history of the Japanese invasion of northeast China, which began in 1931.
Japan had detained more than 2,019 Allied troops at the Mukden camp as of January 1945.
Li was not alone in lending a hand. Chinese worker Gao Dechun helped three American prisoners escape by providing a map of the camp. Another worker, Ge Qingyu, along with American prisoner Roland Nenneth Towery, stole axles and exchanged them for food.
In 2005, the US government awarded the three Chinese the Certificate of Appreciation for their humanitarian aid to POWs at the camp. Li was the only honoree alive to accept the award in person.
Neil Gagliano managed to send a thank-you letter and his photo to his benefactor in 2003. "I'm No. 266. ... It has been such a long time, but it feels like it just happened yesterday," he wrote.
It was the 1940s and Li was working at a Japanese factory in a part of China occupied by Japan. One day, he shared several cucumbers he stole from a dining hall cart with starving detainee Neil Gagliano, a forced laborer at the factory.
Now, after six years of renovation, the former POW camp in which Gagliano nearly died has opened to the public.
China spent more than 5 million yuan (US$815,500) in restoring the Mukden Internment Camp to its original appearance, as well as installing a museum and a memorial wall inscribed with the names of over 200 Allies who died there due to severe cold and diseases including malaria and dysentery.
The camp is located in Dadong District in the provincial capital of Shenyang.
While touring the camp before today's 69th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Li said that Gagliano "gave a longing look at the cucumber. So I threw two to him without hesitation, right under the watch of the Japanese guards."
"I didn't know his name then, I just saw his code number, 266," Li said, adding that Chinese workers at the factory were barred from communicating with Allied prisoners.
One of the most strongly protected Japanese camps in Asia, the 50,000-square-meter site encompasses a two-story red-brick building, several bungalows, a hospital and a water tower, according to Jing Xiaoguang, an academic specializing in the history of the Japanese invasion of northeast China, which began in 1931.
Japan had detained more than 2,019 Allied troops at the Mukden camp as of January 1945.
Li was not alone in lending a hand. Chinese worker Gao Dechun helped three American prisoners escape by providing a map of the camp. Another worker, Ge Qingyu, along with American prisoner Roland Nenneth Towery, stole axles and exchanged them for food.
In 2005, the US government awarded the three Chinese the Certificate of Appreciation for their humanitarian aid to POWs at the camp. Li was the only honoree alive to accept the award in person.
Neil Gagliano managed to send a thank-you letter and his photo to his benefactor in 2003. "I'm No. 266. ... It has been such a long time, but it feels like it just happened yesterday," he wrote.
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