Created by @mrsbyarshistory
China's Chonqing Remembers its World War II past and lives lost
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CHONGQING, China — When the air-raid alarms sounded in Chongqing, people hid in bomb shelters. They ran for the caves dug into the mountains. There were never enough hiding places from the Japanese bombs.
On May 4, 1939, 7-year-old Chen was huddled inside a crowded cave in Chongqing. Bombs fell outside. Small bits of metal flew everywhere, wounding Chen and killing both of her parents.
Now 83 years old, Chen cried as she remembered being alone. Chongqing is in southwest China, which is in Asia. Chongqing was the capital of China during World War II.
Chen's wounds can still be seen on her face and arm.
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Wang Xifu, now 80, made the journey with his parents. The family fled Shanghai during the Japanese invasion in 1937. Wang said that his family walked for 20 days to Wuhan, and then waited for days before getting on a boat to Chongqing.
On May 3, 1939, Japanese planes started bombing Chongqing. Wang’s family ran to a nearby sawmill and hid between stacked boards. Bombs destroyed the sawmill, killing Wang’s mother and father. Wang was just 4 years old at the time.
Wang became homeless at age 9. He earned money by looking for lost tools and coins. “One way I was able to eat was by offering to fan people in restaurants, in exchange for eating their leftovers,” he said.
After Chen's parents died, she lived in a tent and collected leftover coal to sell. Chen found a job in a factory, got married, and became a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
Then after the war ended, Chongqing was forgotten.
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Co-workers of her parents buried them in a garden. “I was an orphan," she said. "I was crying every day calling for my parents.”
In 1937, Japan invaded China, terrifying millions of people. No Chinese city was bombed as hard as Chongqing.
From 1938 to 1941, Japanese warplanes bombed Chongqing more than 200 times. Nearly 12,000 people were killed. Thousands of them were killed on the worst two days of the bombing, on May 3 and 4, 1939.
For many years, histories of World War II did not really talk about what Chongqing went through. In recent years, that has changed, as China gets ready to remember the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1945. Finally, Chongqing's suffering is being recognized.
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Historian Rana Mitter wrote “Forgotten Ally” about China during World War II. The book describes how Chongqing and China fought back against Japan. About 14 million Chinese people died.
“For the people of Chongqing, it was terrifying,” Mitter said. “Very few cities worldwide had before been bombed like that, for such a long period.”
Chongqing is on the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. For modern visitors, it is hard to imagine that this city was once nearly destroyed. Full of tall buildings, Chongqing now has a population of 29 million.
After Japan invaded the country, Chinese refugees streamed into cities in the heart of China. Its government fled to Chongqing, bringing thousands of refugees and soldiers with them.
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