A+Chinese+civilian+living+in+Hong+Kong+Block+A

Name: xia liu Age: 40 years old in 1938, and now, I am 82 years old, 1980. The picture below is my current picture. Gender: Male Occupation: I used to be a wealthy farmer, but as you will see in my journal, I had to sell half of my property to bail my daughter out. . Now, I have only the half of the land I used to have. I was a farmer who grows rice and grains, and I used to supply it to the Japanese army. Appearance: A weathered skin, big hand, big shoulders, tied back black hair, higher than average height around 178cm Location: I am in china, and my journal is happening in China. Personality/Quirks/Unique Personality Traits: I really love my family. I will do anything for my family. I think that it is such an honor to fight in the army against the Japanes for my country! I am very bold, and my son Lung is also very brave. I sent him to fight against the Japanese during the Pacific war. Family: Yang Liu Daughter Lung Liu Son Ling Liu Wife

Education : I only graduated high school in Manchu, but I am very eager at education, and I sent my daughter and son to Tokyo to study before the war started.

Languages you speak: Chinese, and English (taught myself)

Your main concerns at this time and in life: The war broke out. My daughter is missing. My son is in the army. My father passed away. My country is in the war. Japan suddenly declared a pacific war, and started the forced labor policy! I have to go work every single day for Japanese army, eventhough my son is the Nationalist Party of Manchu. Japanese are hurting my family, and my country. Every thing is a concern to me right now.

Portrait (an image that you and we can live with): Due: by the end of the class in which this is assigned

Diary Entry #1.

September 7th, 1937

Before I start my journal... As a Chinese civilian, I am trying to record what have happened to my family and my people, hoping that my future generation would read this diary, and spread the words of the pain and sufferings that Chinese had to go through. However, I taught myself English while my free time, and for that reason, I won’t be able to compose perfect grammar English. Therefore, please be considerate of this old man’s English, and hope my full intention convey to the readers. Now, I will start my story.

 I am currently 40 years old in age. I was born in GiLinSheng of China, and moved to Hongkong. In the past, back in 1931, on September, (its exactly seven years ago), the Japanese (Kwangtong army) caused an explosion on one of the rails of South Manchuria Railways Corporation. The South Manchuria Railway corporation was already being owned by the Japanese, and we had even no right to be involved in the SMRC’s business even though it was running on my country. I am 100% sure that the Japanese blowed their railways on purpose, so that they can cause a war against us. This is the truth, and the Chinese are innocent on that incident. However, of course, the Japanese started to act as if the chinese blew their railways, and proposed a war against us! Then in one year, the Japanese occupied three cities, which were Jirin, Liaoning, and Heirungjang and turned it into a country and named it “Manchukuo”. Internationally, it was called the Manchu State. The Manchu State was all controlled and governed by the Japanese. It was a total puppet state. At the time, I was 35.  My job at the time was selling rice and grains that we cultivated on my land to the Japanese soldiers, and therefore, me and my family members were able to maintain a rich life without any kinds of monetary problems. My son ,Lung, graduated high school in Manchu, and I sent him off to Tokyo and told him to not come back home until he gets into Japanese college. Unluckily at the time, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the war slowly grew in scale. I sent Lung a letter to come back home immediately as soon as he reads the letter. And my only daughter, Yang Liu, was attending the only-girl high school in Tokyo, and also was in Japan when the war got bigger in scale as Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor. One day at her school, she accidentally talked about Manchu State’s required independence to her Chinese friends, and a mean Japanese girl heard Yang talking to her friends. Then the Japanese girl told the police about Yang’s inappropriate chat with her friends, and Yang got into prison in Japan! Me and my wife cried days and night for it. Then I sent the money to the Japan with a lawyer to bail her out. I sold half of my lands that I owned. Therefore, she was able to get out of the jail, but the treatment she received in Jail from the evil guards hurt her mentally very severely, and she started to live a voluptuous life. One day, she just left us, and disappeared. My old father, who he really cared and loved Yang, heard about her, and passed away with sadness. The Japanese are ruining my life suddenly. I want to revenge.

Diary entry #2.

December 8th, 1941

 The western people call this month, the month of Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and is considered a national holiday in the western life. Maybe, even in other Asian countries where Christianity has spread might consider this month a peaceful month. However, as you have expected, I am not in the peaceful state. We can’t be. My country is in a mess right now. We are in a war.  After Lung heard what have happened to her beloved sister, Lung was absolutely possessed in the spirit of revenge. Same for me, I was really into revenge at the time. I thought it would be an honor if I die for my country fighting against the Japanese. My son, Lung, was thinking the same thought with me. He wanted to join the Chinese army for the independence of Manchu. He wanted peace back to his country, and he wanted to revenge for her sister. Therefore, he asked me if he could join the army. Even though it was a hard decision for me and my wife, we decided to let him join the army. As I have said, it would be an honorable action if he dies in the army fighting for his country against the Japanese. Even my ancestors will honor him with the red crown at the end.  Lung joined the “Kuomintnatng”, the Nationalist Party. Even though he was young, he was brave and had this “spirit” for China. This is why he got accepted to the party. I am sure the members of the Chinese Nationalist Party could see his “spirit”. I sometimes heard him through the letters, and was able to relief myself every time the letter arrived. According to his last letter, my son’s main job was putting Japanese soldier’s barracks on fire, and running away at night. Lung said, it requires agility and carefulness, because if he gets caught, there is a huge chance he might get killed. One day, a letter came from the Nationalist Party’s hospital. As soon as I saw where the letter was from, I crashed to the floor, and couldn’t wake up. I slowly closed my eyes.  I woke up, and as soon as I woke up, I asked my wife what have happened to Lung. She then put her fake smile on her face, and relived me with her calm voice. She gave me the letter, and the letter said my son was hurt. As I read the letter, the tears fell down my cheek. He was running away as usual after putting the Japanese soldier’s barracks on fire, and he got caught. He was caught by an officer in the Japanese Imperial army. However, luckily, he managed to escape the Japanese soldiers, the officer in the army shot my son. I still remember his name. In the letter, it clearly stated the one who shot my son's name. His name was Uchiha Itachi. Lung got shot in his left shoulders and in the right knee. However, he was alive. This is a good news. That relieved my pain by a lot. However, I was still not fully healed enough to work. These days, since the Japanese declared the pacific war and created the forced labor policy in their colonies, I had to get back up quickly and start working. Otherwise, they will hurt my remaining wife, and my old mother. After I close this journal, I am going to get changed and go to work. I will revenge the Japanese at the end. They will see!

Diary Entry #3

January 17th, 1942

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Since 1937 December 13th to 1938 February, for about 6 weeks, 300,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese army. We called this the “Nanjing Massacre”. Since I was at Hong Kong, I wasn’t able to visit Nanking, but still heard it was in a total mess. According to what I heard, there were bloods everywhere on the street, and the orphans were on the road, crying next to their dead parents. Most of the houses were burnt, and it was full of smell of burning fleshes. The flagrant Japanese even decided to conduct the human experimentation with random Chinese civilians! <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Later, I heard from my neighbors that U.S tried to help us by requesting Japan to stop invading foreign countries. However, Japanese never accepted U.S’ request, and as a result, U.S stopped all the ongoing exports of underground resources to Japan. This brought Japan a huge loss on making war weapons, because without importing resources from U.S, Japan will never be able to make enough war weapons for their ongoing wars. Due to this fact, Japan invaded France’s colony, Indochina, to get their own underground resources, and pulled France out from Indochina. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> At this time of the year, I was living in Hong Kong. My family was pretty rich until the Japanese took all my estates. All I had left was my house. Then about few month later, once again, the Japanese started to plunder my property. They took all the silver-wares that they could find from my house. And then I realized something. As soon as the Japanese soldiers left my house, I realized keenly the necessity of earning a constant income. I couldn’t just sit around and spend all my money. It was too stupid of me to depend on my money, because the Japanese can take it whenever they want! <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> At the end of the month, I sold my house in a really cheap price, and bought a small store in a busy Market. Then my wife and I started selling dumplings in the market, and we could earn enough to conduct our daily lives. Even though my wife and I couldn’t enjoy the luxurious life we had before, we were still very happy. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> One day, someone came to our store. I still remember the date he came. It was January 17th, 1938. He was speaking a little Chinese, and suddenly started to speak Japanese. Then I thought it was one of the Japanese officers pretending to make fun of us. We started to yell at him. “Hey, what do you want?” Then he repeated the word, Eric, with an innocent face, and showed me a letter. It was a letter from my old Canadian white friend!

<span style="background-color: #fffd00; color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 170%;">Diary Entry #4

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">August 16th 1945

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> The wrinkled letter was from my old friend. The yellow paper showed me the letter was written a long time ago. Then I started reading the letter :

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Dear my old friend, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">I came and visited China in 1937. Then suddenly, the Sino-Japanese war have started. Therefore, me and my friend Eric came to Nanjing, and we are currently staying at one of my friends house. I am writing this letter in order to inform you that Eric is a good friend of mine, and please let him stay at your house in case something happens to me, and he is left all by himself. Eric followed me to China, and I am responsible for Eric’s life. Eric can’t speak good Chinese, but he can speak good English and a little Japanese. The most thing Eric wants to do now is going back to Canada. If you could help him, please do so. And, please don’t worry about me, my friend... //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> your old friend, //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> December, 1, 1937. //

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> After I finished reading the letter, I started to worry about what might have happened to my old friend. I still remembered when we first met. He asked me bunch of questions about my traditional Chinese clothes, and when he was all done with his questions, he suggested me a cold drink. Since then, we became friends, and he and I continued to exchange letters sometimes in Chinese. Now that he is probably dead, I will take care of Eric, and send him back to Canada safely.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> As I sat down with Eric inside my dumpling store, Eric started to express his anger about Japan’s brutality towards Chinese civilians in his poor Chinese. He said he took many pictures that vividly expressed the brutality of Japanese soldiers, and sent it to the U.S government. We chatted for few hours, and finally decided what we were going to do. Eric wanted to keep learning about China,thus he needed a place to stay. Therefore, I have let Eric work and live with me for seven years, since 1938. Through that time, Eric was able to learn as well as speak fluent Chinese, and earn the money that will send him back to Canada.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Then finally, me and Eric left my store and went to Huizhou port yesterday. I was going to send him to Canada via Japan, because it was the cheapest among the other tickets to Canada. Then I remembered the letter from a friend of my son, living in Tokyo. According to the letter, the aspects of the Pacific War were changing from time to time. But mostly, Japan prevailed the pacific war, and in order to stop Japan’s expansion, U.S put more efforts on the pacific war. As the War continued, U.S started to prevail suddenly as they achieved victory in the naval of Guadalcanal and the naval of Midway. It seemed to me that U.S won the pacific war. More, about a week ago in august 9th, U.S dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (where my son’s friend used to live), and the U.S finally won the Pacific War.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Eric and I talked about the war, and we found out that Korea had earned an Independence from Japan yesterday! That’s it! Korea will be the safe place for Eric to stop by and transfer to the Canadian ship. Then I got Eric the second cheapest ship ticket to Vancouver via Korea. Few hours later, Eric got on the ship.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> As I was waving my hand to Eric, I could finally feel the real happiness of the end of the Pacific War. This crazy war finally ended. Now, I will just wait for my son to return, and hopefully purchase a new house. I heard Hong Kong will soon become England’s colony. Since there are so many English men walking around the Hong Kong street today (I know this because they buy my dumplings), I feel like Hong Kong will become a better place to live. Now, I am going to drive back home to the new land of opportunity (Hong Kong). My Journal will end at this point. Whoever reads my journal shall pass it on to their posterity in order to inform them the truth about what have truly happened in China during the Pacific War. Who knows? The history you learned might not be the truth.