After a four-day investigation that ended on Sunday, a Japanese historian has found more evidence of germ warfare used by the Japanese in the 1940s in Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang Province.

 

"The Japanese germ warfare has damaged the social structure in the Chinese countryside and even family ties," said Makoto Ueda, a 49-year-old professor of history with the Rikkyo University in Tokyo, who plans to write a book based on 47 family genealogies from Chongshan Village.

 

According to his findings, 404 villagers, or a third of the village's population then, were killed by the plague in the autumn of 1942. 23 families were wiped out altogether.

 

"Chinese society was composed of clans," said Ueda, noting that most people in a village share a common ancestor and surname. Germ warfare almost annihilated four generations from a 1,000-year-old family line, he added.

 

It also affected the confidence and kinship among family members. "Some of the Wang people escaped to other places and lost their family ties."

 

Studies by Chinese and foreign scholars have shown that between 1931 and 1945, some 270,000 Chinese people fell victim to Japanese germ warfare.

 

Ueda, who has spent over 20 years studying the history of rural China, plans to title his new book, "Plague and Village". He intends to publish it in the first half of next year.

 

He hopes that the book would help more Japanese understand Chinese culture and boost mutual understanding and friendship between the two nations.

 

Ueda's last piece of writing on the subject in 1998 was based on a visit to Chongshan Village and has been included in Japanese middle school textbooks.

 

On November 15, 2000, Ueda testified before a grand jury for Chinese germ warfare victims and the relatives of those deceased.

 

(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2006)