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Crowds of anti-Japan demonstrators staged a rally in Hong Kong on Thursday, demandingJapan to "get out of Diaoyu Island", "respect history", "exchange Japanese military yen" and "abandon militarism".
The protest was made to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the Japanese defeat.
Ip Kwok-him, Deputy chairman of Demoncratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong, one of the political parties taking part in the rally, said that during World War II, the Imperial Japanese government issued military currency and imposed them on Hong Kong citizens.
Under the ruling of Japan, citizens were compelled to exchange all their money into "military yen". After Japan's surrender in 1945, "military yen" became invalid. In other words, Hong Kong people's lifetime savings turned into zilch.
86-year-old Hongkonger Lam Yin-bun went through this dark period as a teenager. He recalledthat the exchange rate between Hong Kong dollars and military yen was 2:1 at the outset, but soon changed to 4:1 in about a month. Those who were found to keep Hong Kong dollars would be punished, if not battered by the Japanese soldiers.
Talking about other traumatic memories, he said,"Every day, I saw three or four dead bodies in the alley, as they were all starved the death," he recalled. "Foods were allocated by the Japanese. Each person had only less than 200 grams of rice every day,which was nowhere near enough."
Given the insufficiency of foods, some Japanese soldiers even dragged Hong Kong people onto boats, took them to remote islands and leave them their unattended, in order to ease the pressure of food supplies, said Lam.
Demonstrators also stopped outside the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, a Japanese based bank, demanding the resumption of exchangeability from military yen to Hong Kong dollars, but the bank made no response.
Director of Hong Kong Reparation Association, Addy Mak, said his father was a former member of his current association. Mak's father had a tortured life under the military currency policy laid down by the Imperial Japanese Government. Hoping to strive for justice, he joined Hong Kong Reparation Association, where he devoted himself wholeheartedly and reclaim what they lost from the evil acts of Japan.
"That's why I became a member also-- to fulfil my father's wish," he claimed firmly.
The demonstrators also requested Japan to face to the history, admit their wrongdoings during world war II, and stop rightist acts, such as worshipping controversial Yasukuni Shrine, and return the sovereignty of Diaoyu islets to China.
