Destruction of parts of a World War II concentration camp in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, built by Japanese invaders to house Allied prisoners of war, has raised an angry outcry from local residents and historians.
Some 1,497 prisoners, most of them Americans, were held in the Shenyang Camp in northeast China from November 1942 to August 1945. More than 40 percent of the prisoners incarcerated there died in the three-year period, according to a report from Xinhua News Agency.
The Shenyang Camp -- a subcamp of Hoten Camp, in what was then known as Mukden -- is considered to have great historical significance as evidence of Japanese war crimes. It is located in the Dadong District of Shenyang, where it has largely retained its original appearance.
But a 100-meter-long southern retaining wall at the camp was demolished last weekend.
"We were just implementing the city government's plans to remove illegal construction," said Li Qing, an official from the local district government in Dadong. He indicated that there were many illegal structures outside the wall and the government planned to turn the area into a new green belt.
"All we were doing is to better protect the site," said Li.
He said the local Dadong District planned to develop a new tourism area, which would include the camp.
Vice chief of the Shenyang Cultural Department Zhang Ying said he and the Dadong District jointly worked out a plan to protect the site and improve the living conditions of local residents.
"The structures at the camp are scattered over a large area. So what we can do is to protect several buildings such as the dorms for POWs and the hospital, but not the entire area," said Zhang.
Li also stated that the wall that was demolished was not the original one by the Japanese invaders. He said a factory had built the wall in the 1950s.
But 68-year-old Deng Yongquan, who lives beside the camp, said the wall was the original. Deng is retired from a factory that once used one of the camp buildings as a dormitory, where he lived at the time.
"A cultural relic is not a set of walls or one building. It is a complete compound, which includes every building inside. I strongly disagree with their idea of protecting the representative ones," said Zhang Yibo, chairman of the September 18 War Research Center, an academic body that is researching the Japanese invasion of China.
Zhang believes it was correct to demolish the illegal construction outside the area, but not the wall itself.
"This is the proof of what Japan did historically. We should set up a museum here to record the past and remind people of the price of the war," he said.
Dozens of the former prisoners and their relatives have visited the site and held memorial ceremonies.
(China Daily January 18, 2005)
