by Xinhua writers Zheng Keyi and Liu Ziyi
HANGZHOU, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) — In a museum in japanese China, the photographs concerning the tribulation of Chinese folks converse louder than phrases.
In September 2025, William Ross Kantenberger, grandson of a U.S. airman from the 1942 Doolittle Raid, stood earlier than a collection of black-and-white portraits on the Yuandao Museum in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province. The pictures present aged Chinese civilians who survived Japan’s organic warfare throughout World War II (WWII).
The photographs have been taken by Han Qiang, a former Chinese fighter pilot turned documentary photographer. For Han, the encounter mirrored the convergence of two wartime histories — considered one of civilian struggling, the opposite of cross-border rescue — linked by a shared previous that continues to form lives many years later.
Han retired from the air power in 1997. In 2011, he picked up a digital camera with a selected goal: to doc historic truths earlier than they vanish with the final witnesses.
That mission got here into sharp focus in Quzhou, a metropolis deeply scarred by Japan’s organic warfare through the warfare. Between 1940 and 1944, Japanese forces carried out three aerial assaults, releasing micro organism together with plague, cholera and anthrax within the area. According to Chinese information, greater than 300,000 folks have been contaminated and over 50,000 died, and lots of survivors left with lifelong sicknesses, recognized domestically as “rotten leg disease.”
In 2012, at a museum commemorating victims of Japan’s organic assaults in Quzhou, Han photographed Yang Dafang, then head of a neighborhood victims’ affiliation, as he denounced the atrocities. The picture, later titled “Accusation,” captures Yang mid-gesture — bent with age, arms raised, mouth open — confronting a criminal offense dedicated many years earlier.
That similar day, Han adopted Yang to go to survivor Hong Fufu, who contracted the illness as a youngster and was by no means in a position to stroll once more. In a dim, earthen-floored room, Hong sat immobile on a wood stool, his legs swollen, ulcerated and blackened. Stunned by what he noticed, Han raised his digital camera, capturing a close-up of the legs.
“The war ended, but for the victims, the pain never did,” Han stated. “If this history isn’t recorded, it will fade.”
That conviction grew right into a mission spanning greater than a decade. Han documented survivors till their deaths, photographing empty stools, deserted canes and silent houses. The photographs, he stated, are usually not solely portraits, however proof.
Before his demise in 2017, Yang informed Han that he lived so others would bear in mind the victims of organic warfare. Han promised the aged man that he would proceed telling their tales.
He has since taken tens of 1000’s of pictures, donating them to public archives in Quzhou and Yiwu, a close-by metropolis in Zhejiang. His work has appeared in exhibitions at dwelling and overseas.
In 2018, “Accusation” was shortlisted on the a hundred and twenty fifth Toronto International Salon of Photography, a recognition Han believed mattered much less for status than for worldwide acknowledgment of a little-known chapter of the warfare.
Han’s lens in 2014 turned to a different wartime narrative, the “Doolittle Raid” and the Chinese civilians who rescued American airmen after their planes crash-landed in 1942. Of the 75 U.S. crew members, most survived with native assist, whereas Chinese communities paid a devastating value in Japanese reprisals, as many locals suspected of sheltering the Americans have been tortured or slaughtered by Japanese forces.
“For Americans, it’s a heroic mission,” Han stated. “But the Chinese cost is rarely remembered.”
Working with Zheng Weiyong, a financial institution worker with a long-standing curiosity in uncovering the historical past of the “Doolittle Raid,” Han traced crash websites, interviewed aged villagers and documented commemorations.
His pictures seize moments of remembrance like American descendants visiting villages, amassing soil from touchdown websites, and embracing households whose dad and mom as soon as took care of overseas airmen. These photographs, now utilized in people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States, inform “a friendship forged in war.”
Han sees pictures as a type of historic testimony. At exhibitions, he usually quizzes guests about that historical past. Most reply vaguely. He responds by pointing to the pictures.
“These images are evidence,” he stated.
Looking forward, Han plans to doc tales alongside the WWII “Hump Route,” the Himalayan air hall used to provide China through the warfare, the place tons of of plane have been misplaced.
“Each crash hides untold stories of Chinese villagers rescuing American crews,” he stated. “This history is fragmented. I want to piece it together, using my knowledge of flight to unearth these overlooked details.”
As the world marks 80 years because the finish of WWII, Han continues his work, satisfied that pictures can protect what time erodes, capturing each struggling and sacrifice in addition to the bonds that join folks throughout borders.