NE China exhibits new proof of Japanese atrocity during WWII

Newly discovered proof documenting Japanese cruelty against Chinese miners forced into labor during WWII was put on exhibition at a war museum in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Wednesday.

While excavating incinerators used to burn the bodies of Chinese miners in May, a 2.5-meter brick pit believed to be used by Japanese soldiers to cool and sort cremated ashes was found, Zhang Guiqin, head of the museum in Jixi City, said.

During the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s, troops coerced Chinese people into mining in coal-rich parts of the country. Many miners were killed due to an absence of protective measures or from intense labor.

After Japanese troops invaded Jixi in 1933 until they were defeated 1945, the city had an estimated 20 million tonnes of coal robbed by the invaders.

Zhang said the invaders built five incinerators to burn the bodies of the miners. Bodies were also abandoned in valleys, forming mass graves. Endi