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Unit 6—Handout 6
Survivor Testimony of Jiang Lizhong, Biological Warfare Survivor,
77 years old—Interviewed on July 14, 2008, Changde, China
Jing’s family was fairly well off. His father carved seals (chops). In April of 1938, when he was six years
old, the Japanese began bombing Changde. They bombed the airport, and the bodies were carried to the
center of the city; Jiang saw this. From the age of six, he knew what the Japanese were doing to China and
the Chinese people.
In 1941, Changde was bombed with germs. That same year the Nationalist government put out notices
letting people know that there was a germ attack and. Their family was in the prosperous part of town
which was in the affected area. Jiang’s two brothers, two and fi ve-years-old, and the maid who take of them
contracted the plague. His grandmother was very concerned and felt their heads for fever. Both his brothers
had high fevers and began to have seizures. The family asked a Chinese doctor to examine the boys, and they
sent the maid home.
The second day the two boys had dry mouths, thirst, and high fevers. Then they died. In the beginning
bodies were being buried. The family tried to smuggle the little bodies out; covered with quilts and under the
cover of an air raid, they took the bodies outside. It was the custom to have regular burials in the ground.
The family did not want the boys’ bodies burnt. In order to keep their secret, the family suppressed their
crying—they felt that they were “crying blood” over these two little brothers. They buried Jiang’s brothers
in the same pit. If the government discovered that they had buried the bodies, they would have asked them
to excavate the bodies and burn them. The family would have had to pay for the wood—200km of wood.
In September 1941, his grandfather died. He had been living in a suburb of the city, an area also affected
by plague. So four people in his family died during the plague and four died in the war. In 1939, the Japanese
had used incendiary bombs, and their home was burned.
In 1943, the nanny, who was in her forties, did not want to fl ee when the family fl ed from the violence
during the siege of Changde. They found her naked, raped, with a stake through her vagina. His grandmother
died because her two grandchildren died; she was broken-hearted and died.
His mother, two brothers, and he escaped. When they came back, their father had lost his mind and was
no longer able to function. Within a year, Jiang’s father was dead.
After this the family was in bad shape. His older brother tried to continue chop carving [seals]. Jiang
moved onto a boat with another relative and tried to survive by rowing the boat. The boat was used to get
merchandise across the river. He was thirteen; the younger, twelve-years-old. The elder brother had died.
When they left, he was alone and depressed. He died. The deceased maid’ family came and tried to get
money. Her mother said, “What did you do to my daughter?”
During the war, Mr. Jiang was hurt by the bombing. From 1945-1949, he didn’t receive treatment because
he was wandering with the ship, working. In 1949, he was healed and from then led a normal life. In 1952,
he received some education.
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