Persecuted veterans finally vindicated
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"I didn't hear it directly from him, but he knew about what I had been doing in the last few years and one day when my sister and he were chatting about what I was doing he broke down and told her about his own experiences of those years."
As belated recognition gathered steam, an online charity campaign was launched in November to enable veterans to make a wish.
Campaign founder Sun Chunlong said they had gathered more than 40 veterans' wishes and a quarter had been fulfilled.
"There are really a lot of things we need to do," Sun said. "These are veterans' last wishes, which are not actually that hard to fulfill.
"Some veterans hope to go home, some for a grave marked with their army insignia.
"Some just want more furniture. These are not hard. It just depends on whether people are willing to help."
The wish campaign paid for Cai Linsen, 91, to travel and see his long-lost brothers Cai Yunhui and Cai Shouxin in Shanghai.
The Cai family had split up in 1940 when the military sent Cai Linsen to Yunnan to build a railway. The war prevented that project from being completed, but it also forced Cai Linsen to settle in the southwestern province.
The reunion came just in time as Cai Yunhui suffered a heart attack a few days later, dying on December 31.
"Our trip to Shanghai attracted a lot of media coverage in China," He Xiaoyan said. "After reporting what we were doing, many people stood up and said they also wanted to sponsor these veterans and many young people even wanted autographs from the veterans."
A long-delayed re-examination of a few hard historical truths has paid off handsomely for Yang Jianming.
"These veterans may never have thought they would have been asked for an autograph," he said, "but to be accepted by the public and perhaps praised for what they did for their country is what they have been waiting for their whole lives."
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