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Shang Baode
(Shang Baode, the retired worker of the Benxi coal mine,
the survivor of the fire damp explosion. the material is cleared
up basing on the oral datum, august, 1999 )
I
am Shang Baode, born on the February
20th,1927. My native place is in the Xiaoshangjia village of the
Leling county in the Shandong province, and my parents are
peasants. In the spring of 1941, the Benxi coal iron company
incurred the labor in Tianjin, For the extremely poor life, after
hearing about the news, my parents took my younger sister and I to
Tianjin. The hiring site located at the Big stage of Tianjin. The
man in charge of the admission said that when we worker there we
would live in buildings, eat delicious food, enjoy the service of
electrical lamps and phones and earn money easily when we got to
Benxi. So my father had me enrolled, moreover, the man lent us 300
yuan. My young sister was lost in Tianjin and we haven't found her
from then on. My parents and I and the other workers arrived at
Benxi by train all together. After the arrival, there are
buildings and electrical lamps, but we can't enjoy them, we are
the labors in the coal mine. My father was assigned to the plunk
group, living in the big house; I was in the carrying group leaded
by Mishougui. My
mother and I lived in the labors' houses. During that period, my
father could earn less than 1 yuan per day. As
to me, only tens of cents. The poor salary was not enough
to buy food. Sometimes we had to eat the flour of acorn or borrowed food from the
leader, and pay off when we get the salary. The family lived a
very insufficient life.
One
year later, the coal mine encountered a big gas explosion. I was
the survivor of the event. In the afternoon of April 26th
1942, I was working in the entrance of the Liutang Mine with other
four miners. Because there were not tracks and it began to rain,
we then entered the
hole. When we made our way to some 100 metres, there was a big
bang suddenly, the great current pushed us out of the entrance,
and I dropped out more than 100 metres far away. Then, I lost the
consciousness, when I came to my sense, I heard an old man
said:" whose child is this, why he is here?" With the
words, he loosened the iron strings twining around my body. I
stood up and check myself and found that my waist,legs,face and
one ear were hurt. Later,
I think the current might push me to the wire and then drop down,
so that I didn't bump into hard items. I was at loss when I waked
up, look back at the entrance, the black fume with flare shoot up
highly. Someone cried out :" Mine! Mine! Fire!" I even
forgot to thank the old man and run to the hospital. I was the
first injured man in the hospital, and didn't hurt much. I was
able to work before long. I didn't die in this incident
fortunately, but my companions were all dead. It was said that Ma
dropped at the cement pillar of the shelf in the winch, Xiao
dropped on the rail, Zhang and Ding drop on the ground 50 metres
away from the entrance.
After
the incident brook out, the Japanese gendarmes set up a electrical
current through the grid around the mine, closed the gate and
refused the family member and other miners to approach to the
entrance, and seal the entry to prevent the miners underground
come out. There were all the bodies of the miners around the
entrance of Si mine as well as the Liutang Mine.80 percent of the
dead miners in this incident were people from Zhuanghe or the
captured "special workers". At that time, the Japanese
invaders dared not report the truth. In fact, there might be three
or four thousand miners died in this explosion. Later 1945, when
we clear up the mine to resume production, we found large deal of
bone which filled 20 tracks, how could they say only 1000 workers
died? The bodies had been torn up, so we have to fill the coffins
with the mixed pieces of bodies. The coffins
clamped up for 5 layers in form of a large circle, later,
we filed the bodies in the center directly without coffin. The
remaining bone was buried in the Taiping pit. Recalling this, I
get a feeling of hating
their guts.
Zai Weihua
(Zai
Wenhua, the retired worker in Benxi Mine, survivor of the big
explosion, the material is rearranged on the oral statement by
Zai)
My
name is Zai Wenhua, I am 86 this year, In the April 1941, I was
captured in a battle against Japanese troop in Zhongtiao mountain
in Shanxi province. There were some 600 captives altogether who
were sent to the Pingyao prison camp of Shanxi. There once was
another passel of captives in front of our, but they were all
executed because one of them escaped and one suicide in a well. We
were closed in Pingyao for while and carried to Tianjin in a tank
track where there was a temporary concentrate camp. Thousands of
captives were in this camp and 20 of them died for insufficient
food everyday. One month later, we were divided into small group
by every 70 persons, and carried in tank tracks to Benxi Mine.
Each person got a pie before setting off but without water,
therefore someone died during the trip. I was allocated to the gangmaster
Feng Ziyi in the mine and lived in No.31 house with other 70
workers.
There
were guards in both ends of the house, and it is rarely to fire to
warm the kang(the bed). Above the kang was a hung bed. In order to
prevent us from escaping, they remove the ladders after we going
to bed. We were forbidden to dress up even when we go to toilet at
the night. The bolster was made of wood and what covered us were
our clothes. The food were pie made of oak powder, in winter were
the porridge of broomcorn and frozen potatoes. Some guys sent us
to the entrance of the mine in the morning and back to the big
house when the work finished. We had no freedom, lived a inhuman
life with extreme ignoble treatment. We dig coal under the mine
with pickaxes, and had to lay down to dig in some narrow places.
AS long as the speed slowed down, the Japanese would beat us, and
many workmates encountered such experience including me. Once a
worker named Wang was closed and died only for some dissatisfied
words, and Jin Yue, origin in Shandong, was force to eat muck for
some unknown reason.
On
the day of the big explosion in April in 1942, I happen to have
disease in my stomach, but the Gangmaster forced me to work in the
mine, however, I had no strength to move, so one of my countryman
took the place of me. He forgot to take the cover of the lamp, and
when he come back to fetch it, the track had gone to the mine. At
the same time, the explosion happened. Fortunately, we two didn't
die. Many person in my house were dead. The
remaining miners in No. 31 house and 32 lived together
later, but there was still vacancy
in the house.
After
the explosion, I was assigned to the excavation group. There were
all kinds of incidents everyday for the lack of the protecting
measures. Once I was in my night shift, we five workers were
pushing the track when the track slip down suddenly, the other
four died leaving me survived. Another time when my worker was
pressed under the coal, his folded arm made him crying loudly, but
the Japanese headman did not manage to rescue him, but beat him
with the big gripper until he couldn't move. Facing the cruel
action, we abhor the Japanese.
They
didn't care the sick miners. Those who really can't move were sent
to the so-called hospital, eating the porridge of broomcorn, which
was even less than for the normal workers. Once I get sick and was
taken to the hospital. I didn't recover until half a month later,
but the leader forced me to work. There was a 240-metre-long air
passage under the mine, I couldn't walk, and had to crawl all the
way. Having a lot of trouble, I got to the surface of area to
work. Such a life was even worse than ox or horse. People's dying
of illness is common, especially in 1943 when the epidemic of
Huolila prevailed, countless of workers lost their lives. In the
small hospital of the mine, some sick people were thrown out even
before they died. During winter days, the bodies could not be
buried, so they were piled up. When it was enough for a truck, the
bodies would be pulled away and thrown into the mass grave in
South-Sky Gate.
In
a word, during the period of Japan's invading, the suffering of
Chinese is too much to finish telling. A batch of workers
persecuted by invaders died, another batch were captured. So the
labors lived in the big house were changing frequently, until the
surrender of Japan. Now the thumbs in my hands are different
because one of them had been fractured. The deformations of my
knee joints and lags were caused by sleeping on the cold kang and
marinating in the water for a long time. All of this as well as
the scars on my body are all the evidence of the crime of the
Japanese invaders.
Li Yongpu
(Li
Yongpu, retired worker of Benxi coal mine, beholder of the gas
explosion. this material is rearranged basing on the oral
statement )
My name is
Li Yongpu, I am 81 this year. I entered the mine when I was 19.
When the explosion broke out, I was in the mine. I witnessed the
miserable scene.
It
was raining all that day without stop. I heard the sound of the
explosion in the afternoon and know it must be an incident. I ran
to the mine in a hurry, but the Japanese had enclosed the entrance
and did not let us be near. I ran back to home immediately for my
brother was just work in the mine. Before long someone told me
that he was safe because then he rose up for some problems to
a turn, after a while, it blew up underground! How fluky my
brother was to be safe!
Then, in
order to keep the mine, the invaders seal the exit of the mine
tightly regardless of the lives of miners, somebody who couldn't
escape were sealed underground. Next day, when the fire
extinguished, we began to clear up the mine. Recalling now, the
horrible scene in the pit really comes clearly into view. A lot of
trucks and crates were used to carry the bodies out, and the work
kept on for 7 or 8 days. There were more than 3000 dead people in
preliminary statistics. Then I had chance to keep in touch with
the leaders, and heard about the statistics from them.
At
that time, working area were full of the bodies. At the
end of the working off, the corpses got rotten. 10
days later, though the bodies were carry out, there were
still many bodies left inside the coal. The rot smell was so hard
that we can't work anymore. Though later on the Japanese ordered us to splash the pit with wine, but it seemed do not work.
There were really countless people died in the big explosion. Most
of the corpses were buried in the mass grave of Sikengkou. This
mass grave is kept intact now, and Japanese made a tablet there
yet. Though their inscription on the tablet conceals the crime for
themselves, the fact can't be denied.
Most
bodies in the mass grave in
Nantianmen were miners died of the epidemic of dysentery and
"Houlila". Because too many people lived together in the
big house and the beds had two layers, the epidemic expanded very
fast and the number of dead people was very large. Near the door
of the house for "special workers", some living people
were waiting to be thrown in the hill either. More than ten
corpses were pulled to the Nantianmen per day. I remember that
more than 30 carriages were used to carry the bodies, let alone
those carried manually. There was a small path in Nantianmen, near
where was the mass grave. At the night, you might often step on
the corpses carelessly, which was a horrible experience. There
once were so many bodies that dogs dislike to eat them. The dead
people were not less than the dead miners in the big explosion.
Living workers are
suffering more pain. Specials worker in every big house eat young
sorghums of rubber, sometimes was the congee of kaoliang(高粱米粥)
or a handful of salt beans. In winter, the big house is deadly
cold, and in summer, there were groups of flies. The Japanese
leaders beat us with the haft of pickax willfully, sometimes they
change several new haft in a day. There is no safe protection in
the pit, so the traffic accident, roof fall, gas explosion took
place frequently. Miners' lives were even worse than death. I once
made the gangmaster angry, the Japanese intended to throw me into
the pen of dogs. Later , they enclosed me in a wood house. Seeing
the workmate give me food, the Japanese said that: "you have
enough, dog eat you then." Several days later, till I was
going to die, they let me free and I kept myself alive until now.
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