China-US website highlights Japanese war crimes

BEIJING - Activists from China and the United States co-launched a website on Wednesday highlighting Japanese atrocities during World War II.

The site, www.10000cfj.org, is named "10,000 Cries for Justice" and features letters received by rights activist Tong Zeng from Chinese victims of the Japanese invasion from 1931 to 1945.

It is a joint project led by David T. Chai, former mayor of Holmdel, New Jersey, Don M. Tow, head of the New Jersey Alliance for Preserving WWII History in Asia and Tong, with the aim of preserving and publishing witness accounts of Japanese military crimes in a digital form.

"The website is also aimed at urging the Japanese government to face up to history, solve problems left over by history and promote friendship and peace between China and Japan," said Tow.

Tong, who has long strived to help Chinese war victims get compensation from the Japanese government, said he received nearly 10,000 letters from Chinese victims in the 1990s, which "provided heart-wrenching accounts of the atrocities they or their families suffered at the hands of the Japanese military".

The website has Chinese and English versions, with the Chinese website currently publishing 4,000 letters and the English one translating and publishing 1,000 letters.

The writers' address, the victims' names and the date and place of their suffering are available on the website.

In a letter signed by Shi Shuhua, she wrote that she couldn't forget the shadow of the war even half a century later. "Our whole family were forced to leave hometown to flee from Japanese slaughter. Three of our family members died and the rest survived after going through a lot of pains and difficulties," it read.