It's been 65 years since Roy Weaver was taken prisoner and thrown into a Japanese-run POW camp in Shenyang, but the former US Marine can still vividly recall the suffering, hunger and fear of those three long years of his life.

 

"The worst part, I think, was never knowing when you were going to get out," Weaver, 88, said yesterday of the former Mukden POW camp, in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province.

 

 

Roy Weaver (left), 88, and Robert A. Brown, 82, former WWII prisoners held in a Japanese POW camp in Shenyang, outside their Beijing hotel yesterday.

 

He is among nine former American prisoners of war and 47 spouses or family members of deceased soldiers and sponsors currently on a short visit to China that includes a five-day trip to the former campsite.

 

It is the first time such a large POW delegation has ever visited the site. Washington DC-based Truth Council for World War II in Asia organized the trip.

 

Today the site is a museum under construction, dedicated to the memory of those who were incarcerated there, and will officially open in September at a cost of 54 million yuan (US$7 million), funded by the Shenyang, Liaoning and central governments.

 

The remains of the World War II prison camp, located in Northeast China, was where more than 2,000 allied forces, most of them American, were imprisoned between November 1942 and August 1945 by the Japanese. The site was left to deteriorate until a few years ago.

 

Tortured by vicious beatings, "bacteria experiments", hunger and other harsh treatment, hundreds of prisoners died there during those years. Some historians considered the camp one of the Japanese forces' most brutal.

 

Before they checked into Beijing's Grand View Garden Hotel in Xuanwu District yesterday, Weaver managed to keep his emotions in check when asked about his first trip back to the campsite since the war. He recalled how those days between 1942 and 1945 were filled with death, sickness, random beatings and hunger.

 

During the first bitterly cold winter, many men died and couldn't be buried because the ground was frozen, he recalled. In the spring more than 200 bodies were awaiting burial.

 

"The ground was frozen solid. We couldn't dig graves so we couldn't bury anybody," Weaver, of Idaho, said.

 

 

Robert A. Brown (third from left) at the Japanese camp. 

 

"So we put the bodies in a warehouse -- they were frozen -- and we stacked them like wood. And then in the spring time, when we could bury them, we brought them all out at the same time and buried them."

 

Like many others servicemen, Weaver was captured in the Philippines and brought to Shenyang through Korea and Manchuria. And if they didn't die during the trip or fall sick from beriberi, also known as malnutrition, they were forced to work in the camp making tools or treating sick soldiers.

 

Another former prisoner, Robert A. Brown, 82, of California, brought with him on this trip his scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings and fading black and white photographs of him, a few other soldiers in the camp, and one Japanese captain called the "Bull."

 

The captain, both Brown and Weaver recalled, used his sword to command obedience from prisoners who did not follow his orders - willingly or innocently. Keeping the blade sheathed, Bull would use the sword as a beating stick.

 

"If you did something wrong you would get beat up," said Brown, who served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

 

"When we were in formation, if someone at the end of the line did something, he would charge at you and unbuckle his sword while walking. When he got down there the guys would melt like butter. He was big, mean and ugly."

 

Weaver took a few of Bull's blows and now suffers from severe arthritis in one shoulder and even had to undergo surgery to fix the damage of one of Bull's violent rampages.

 

For other visitors, like Janiece Cohen, the trip to the museum site was a chance to learn about a horrible period in the life of a loved one.

 

Cohen, a Continental Airlines flight attendant from Los Angeles, joined the trip to learn about her father's experience - something she couldn't get the former Marine to share with her before he died a few years ago.

 

"I realized there were so many questions that I had," she said about his detention. "My father was very closed up emotionally."

 

One thing he shared with her involved the "medical experiments" of which details remain a mystery even today, as both the Japanese and American governments have been tightlipped about the claims.

 

Her father, Ray Cohen, spoke about Japanese doctors arriving at the camp in white suits and injecting him and other prisoners who later became ill, she said.

 

She has no doubts the Japanese conducted the experiments, she theorized was possible malaria drug testing.

 

"He was injected with something and it made him sick," she said.

 

"He didn't know what it was. And in the camp, doctors would come in with their white robes and watch. So I know it's true."

 

Many group members on this trip, including Cohen, brought old uniforms, postcards and artifacts, which they donated to the new museum. They are also helping museum researchers piece together vital information about the prison camp.

 

The site was first considered as a potential museum more than four years ago following a visit by former American prisoners who lobbied officials to preserve the Shenyang site.

 

Since then, the city government of Shenyang and the provincial government of Liaoning have spearheaded efforts to preserve the original buildings. Plus, the central government has also earmarked additional funds for its renovation.

 

The renovated site will include all the remaining site buildings - a two-storey brick building, three bungalows and a water tower.

 

There will be an outdoor square with two walls inscribed with the names of POWs held there.

 

The Mukden camp site is widely regarded as compelling evidence of Japan's atrocities at the time. In Nanjing (formerly Nanking), another war museum is dedicated to the 1937 massacre that took 300,000 Chinese lives in the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.

 

Many Chinese believe Japan has not adequately apologized for its crimes in the war, to this day some Japanese conservatives still deny.

 

Despite his tender age, Weaver said he wanted to visit China to ensure the camp's history did not fade into history.

 

"Don't ever forget what happened in the POW camps," Weaver said.

 

"People should remember this, so that way, we don't do it over again."

 

(China Daily May 25, 2007)