Shanxi to turn WWII camp into museum

Shanxi will turn a World War II Japanese camp, which conducted bacteria experiments on Chinese civilians and war prisoners, into a museum.

Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi Province, has invested about 2 million yuan (322,000 U.S. dollars) into the renovation of the "Taiyuan Camp," a city official told Xinhua.

Built in 1938, the camp imprisoned 100,000 to 120,000 Chinese soldiers, militiamen and civilians, some of whom were made laborers and others were killed in human experiments or "training" in which new Japanese recruits practiced bayonet charges, killing the prisoners.

"Prisoners slept in a dense crowd on the ground. One would find no room for him to sleep after returning from the toilet," said Zhao Ameng, whose father was a Communist soldier and survivor of the camp. Zhao has been lobbying for better protection of the site for years.

Liu Linsheng, whose father formed a secret rebellion inside the camp that helped many prisoners escape, spent 25 yeas in writing a book that described the camp as China's Auschwitz. He said the heroic fights by the prisoners must be remembered.

What remains of the site are two lines of brick buildings used as storerooms for a machinery factory. They will be decorated into a museum after repair, said Song Jianwei, the Taiyuan official. Endi