The Nanshitou massacre (simplified Chinese: 南石头大屠杀; traditional Chinese: 南石頭大屠殺) was large-scale unnatural deaths among the refugees detained by the Imperial Japanese Army and Wang Jingwei regime at the Nanshitou Refugee Camp in Guangzhou, China, between 1942 and 1945. The event was triggered by the Japanese expulsion of Chinese residents from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in 1942, which resulted in refugees crowding into the city of Guangzhou by ferry along the Pearl River. They were stopped at Nanshitou for physical examinations. A former soldier of Unit 8604 stated that the unit was instructed to poison Chinese refugees with the pathogens of typhoid and paratyphoid, which they put into the thin porridge and drinking water prepared for the refugees, causing a large number of deaths. Additionally, survivors claimed that the Japanese used detainees for human experimentation. In the 1950s and 1980s, Guangzhou Paper Mill found a massive amount of human skeletons and bones during construction projects, which were believed to be victims of the refugee camp. Chinese scholar Tan Yuanheng asserts that at least 100,000 died in the refugee camp.
Background
Expelling of Chinese from Hong Kong
In October 1938, following the Japanese occupation of Guangzhou, 100,000 to 200,000 Guangzhou residents fled Hong Kong due to the historical ties between the two cities. The Japanese took British Hong Kong in December 1941, following its attack on the Pearl Harbor. The Japanese military authorities considered the massive Chinese population in Hong Kong could be a burden to the city and soon began expelling Chinese from the city. By 19 February 1942, 554,000 individuals had been repatriated. Subsequently, a governor's office was established in Hong Kong, overseeing the expulsion of another 419,000 people by the end of September 1943. It is estimated that a significant portion of refugees returning to Guangzhou by sea numbered at least 150,000 or more. In April 1944, the Hong Kong Occupied Territories Government halted rice distribution to the general population. The surge in repatriates prompted the cessation of encouraged evacuation in July. By the time of Japan's surrender, Hong Kong's population had dwindled to 600,000.
Nanshitou refugee camp
The refugee camp at Nanshitou was a prison in the south suburb of Guangzhou, which had a dock upon the Pearl River. It was turned into a refugee camp, with the surge of refugees arriving from Hong Kong until the Japanese surrender in 1945. As the number of refugees was far above the capacity of the camp, ferries carrying refugees were anchored on the Pearl River near Nanshitou. The refugees were prohibited from leaving Nanshitou and forced them to work for the Japanese or Wang Jingwei authorities.
Unit 8604 By the end of 1939, the Imperial Japanese Army in Guangzhou had organised Unit 8604, purportedly tasked with providing epidemic prevention water supply for the Japanese army. However, its actual activities involved bacteriological research and bacteriological warfare. While the refugee camp was run by the Guangdong Provincial Government under the Wang Jingwei regime, Unit 8604 took control of the epidemic prevention in the camp, where the unit secretly murdered refugees with bacteriological weapons and experimentations.
Refugee camp
Quarantine processes According to eyewitness accounts, the quarantine process roughly proceeded as follows: Upon anchoring the ships, quarantine procedures were conducted, whereby individuals suspected of being infected were isolated and taken away, while the rest were driven back onto the ships. Quarantine inspections sometimes took place on board, at other times at the Yuehai Customs Harbor Quarantine Office, and occasionally on the riverbanks or flat ground ashore. The so-called quarantine procedure involved "men, women, old, and young being forced to strip naked, exposing their buttocks upwards," followed by rectal examinations using glass rods. However, in Japanese military records, there is no detailed documentation regarding the specific quarantine procedures for refugees in the so-called "refugee camps on board ships." Furthermore, if thermometers were used, this step alone would not accurately detect infectious diseases. If sampling probes were used, questions arose regarding whether there were registration numbers, and how large quantities of samples were stored and tested, among other issues. It is unlikely that standard quarantine procedures would lead to the destruction of relevant documentation. Due to the limited capacity of the Nanshitou Refugee Camp, which could accommodate only about 5,000 people at most, many refugees were initially placed on refugee ships awaiting processing. Once the camp reached full capacity, refugees were transferred to the camp, and this cycle repeated as needed.
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