A small group of Japanese veterans have trekked overseas to Jinan almost every year for a decade, visiting a war monument as repentance for their crimes during the second world war. But this year, they found it was gone.
“The land has been sold. And developers removed it because it does not look good,” said Xu Yuquan, former deputy director of a factory close to the site.
Pipa Mountain was the site of brutal killings of Chinese people by the Japanese military during the second world war. Villagers found the grave site and reported it to the authorities in 1954. Based on the accounts of Japanese war criminals, Japanese ideological criminals were also killed at the site, the newspaper said.
Since ties between China and Japan were re-establised in 1972, Jinan factory employees have noticed groups of Japanese elderly arriving every year to burn joss sticks and pay their respects at the monument.
“They were veteran Japanese soldiers conducting penance and asking for forgiveness from those who had died,” a Chinese guide once told factory employees.
Now developers are planning to build residential buildings and stores on the site, Xu said.