Nanshitou massacre
Second Sino-Japanese War Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups The Nashitou massacre (simplified Chinese: 南石头大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 南石頭大屠殺) was large-scale unnatural deaths among the refugees detained by the Imperial Japanese Army and Wang Jingwei regime at the Nanshitou Refugee Camp in Guangzhou, China, between 1942 and 1945.
The event was triggered by the Japanese expulsion of Chinese residents from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942, which resulted in refugees crowding into the city of Guangzhou by ferry along the Pearl River.
[5] In the 1950s and 1980s, Guangzhou Paper Mill found a massive amount of human skeletons and bones during construction projects, which were believed to be victims of the refugee camp.
The so-called quarantine procedure involved "men, women, old, and young being forced to strip naked, exposing their buttocks upwards," followed by rectal examinations using glass rods.
Some refugees couldn't endure the waiting period and died on the ships, mostly due to starvation or disease, with some potentially being caused by the spread of pathogens.
According to records from the Japanese hospital, Hong Kong refugees were generally in a state of starvation, with 90.1% suffering from malnutrition, which was the leading cause of death.
[8]: 99–102 Trapped bird, dreams of skies so vast, Struggles to soar, held fast, Rejects bland gruel, hunger gnaws within, Pains in belly, no remedy to win,
Inevitably to perish, in bone's abyss.Japanese records show that Unit 8604 allegedly contacted the Army Military School in Tokyo for the disposal of the refugees.
[7]: 93 According to a former soldier of the unit, they brought a strain of intestinal salmonella from the Army Medical School in Tokyo and chose to delay the soup supply during breakfast time when provincial government officials were not yet on duty.
They took advantage of the refugees' unfamiliarity with the routine and chaotic conditions to secretly release the bacteria while avoiding the destruction of salmonella due to high temperatures.
These bacteria, when ingested through contaminated water sources, dust, etc., enter the human body via the digestive tract and can rapidly cause severe infection.
[7]: 107 The Customs Quarantine Station located in the west of Nanshitou served as a live testing ground for the Japanese bacteriological weapons.
[5] The provincial government of the Wang Jingwei regime was responsible for burying the deceased, employing the method of on-site burial where bodies were stacked together.
[7]: 104–105 Japanese records only mentioned the deaths of over 300 people and revealed that the outbreak of cholera led to a significant reduction in population, necessitating the commencement of cremation and the use of two large pools to allow natural decay of the bodies.
[7]: 102 Zhong Ruirong, an elderly resident of Nanshitou, pointed out that there were two huge pools in the refugee camp at that time to handle the bodies.
[5] Feng Qi, a survivor of the refugee camp, noted that after the pools were filled with bodies, they were sealed with additional liquid, emitting a foul smell.
[5] According to Xiao Zheng, a retired worker from the Guangzhou Paper Group and a victim of bacteriological warfare, his father witnessed both pools in the refugee camp being filled with skeletal remains, and it took six grave diggers several months to clear them.
In 2012, the Haizhu District Government named the unit the "Former Site of the South China Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department of the Invading Japanese Army."
[8]: 22–23 In 1953, during the construction of worker housing projects in Nanshitou by the Guangzhou Paper Mill, numerous uncoffined bones were discovered along both sides of Nanji Road, buried less than 0.5 meters deep.
Shen Shisheng, the former head of the Guangzhou Paper Mill's construction office, mentioned that besides the foundation pits, the exact number of bodies beneath the dormitory building was unknown.
