War interns back at camp
18/8/2005 7:31
Seventy-year-old David Birch never imagined he could return to the former
concentration camp where he lived as a kid some 60 years ago. And he never
thought he would meet his old friends from the camp.
"I prayed to God that
someday before I die I could come back to China, and here I am," the retired
cinema doorman said. "My heart is full."
Yesterday, nearly 70 elderly
survivors of the Weishien concentration camp and their family gathered at the
former camp site in Weifang City, eastern Shandong Province, to celebrate the
60th anniversary of the camp's liberation.
The site is now in the compound of
a local middle school and a hospital nearby. Most of the internees' dormitories
have been torn down, and only a handful of Japanese officials' buildings
remain.
It used to be a missionary compound named "The Courtyard of the Happy
Way" before the Japanese army turned it into a concentration camp, where 2,008
men, women, and children were herded together by the intruders between 1942 and
1945.
Most of the adult internees have since died, including R Jaegher,
former adviser to KMT president Chiang Kai-shek, Eric Linddell, the 400-meter
champion at the 1924 Olympics, and Arthur Hummel, who was the American
ambassador to China in the 1980s.
All the survivors returning to Weifang were
children internees at the time. Many of them brought their family members,
hoping that their special experience can pass down for generations.
"I
remember on August 17, 1945, the American flights came and rescued us," David
said. "That was the most exciting day in my life. We were all dancing and
singing, running out of the camp."
"I remember that day; we were all crazy,"
said 77-year-old Australian writer Joyce Bradbury. She was moved to tears when
she saw the former camp building and the hundreds of middle school students
lining up along the road, applauding their return.
Joyce said she was nine
when the Japanese brought her to the camp. They were crammed in small houses,
given scarce food, and forced to do labor when they reached 14.
"One time a
horse died and the Japanese guards let it decompose until worms grew on it and
then fed us with its meat," she shuddered.
But most of the internees said the
guards treated them carefully, without the savagery that they showed to the
Chinese. No one knew exactly how many people died in the camp but the number was
small, they said.
Xinhua
|
