'I pretended to be dead': massacre survivor

87-year-old Pan Shouli is one of the survivors of the Panjiayu Massacre in which more than 1,000 villagers were killed. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

When he spoke about the massacre, 87-year-old Pan Shouli became so angry that he beat the ground with his walking stick in fury.

"If I hadn't been pinned down by the corpses and pretended to be dead, I wouldn't have survived. As I lay there, I saw a Japanese solider holding my young cousin by the legs, one in each hand. He ripped the child apart as if he were tearing cloth and then threw him against a wall. The boy was only 4 years old," he said.

"The massacre lasted from the morning until the afternoon. To ensure that no one was still alive, the Japanese soldiers bayoneted the bodies. I was stabbed in my left leg, but I held my breath and ignored the pain. I didn't move and kept on pretending to be dead," Pan said, rolling up his pant leg to show the scar.

"So many people were killed. The corpses were badly burned, which made it hard to identify them. The survivors and other people that came to help after the massacre dug four large graves. Some of them contain the bodies of men, women and kids, and some just hold body parts.

"Even though more than 70 years have passed, I dare not enter the ancestral land where the graves are located. The images of the torn child, burned corpses, and even the smell of burning flesh would come back as though it were all happening in front of me again. Whenever I visited the area before, I had nightmares for about a month afterward," he said.

"After the massacre, the Japanese army designated the village and surrounding area as a 'no man's land'. We had nowhere to go, so we built a small shelter to live in. The Japanese army usually came to mop up at night, so no one dared stay at home for the two or three years that followed.

"It was a really painful experience, but despite the difficulties, we didn't give in. The young men who survived and those who returned from other places organized an army of revenge. They made a huge contribution to the region's liberation by fighting the Japanese. Along with the other survivors, I will appeal for compensation for as long as I live," he said.