Members of the Japanese Lawyers League pay their respects to those who died in the Chongqing air raid campaign during a visit to the city on Jan 3. ZHONG XIN/CHINA DAILY

Unshakable memories

Documents in the city archives show that during the air raids, the bombers didn't differentiate between military and civilian targets. The policy resulted in a huge loss of life and massive economic damage, as residential and business areas, schools and hospitals, were among the main targets.

Although seven decades have passed since the end of WWII, Su still clearly remembers running from the raids.

"On August 19, 1940, the air raid siren sounded and we all ran to the bomb shelter. When the attack was over and we went back home, we found our three-story house had been razed to the ground. The only possessions we had left was a set of blankets," he recalled.

"We had nowhere to go. We used some wooden boards and doors that hadn't been too badly damaged to build a temporary shelter," he added.

More than a year later, on June 5, 1941, another raid targeted the area where the Su family lived. When the air raid siren sounded, the family ran to a nearby bomb shelter. They were among the first to arrive, but as more people poured through the door, Su's family was pushed deeper and deeper into the tunnel.

"It was very stuffy at the closed end of the shelter, so we tried to move nearer the entrance. I got separated from my parents by the crowds," he said.

"Because of the lack of oxygen and fatigue, I squatted down and fell asleep," Su said of the attack, which lasted more than five hours.

More than 10,000 people tried to cram into a few bomb shelters that only had enough space for half that number, leading to the deaths of more than 2,000 people either in the crush or from suffocation.

Su, who had been pushed to the back of the tunnel and hemmed in by the legs of the adults around him, was discovered by a group of people collecting bodies the day after the attack.

"When I woke up, I saw many people lying on the ground. I thought they were asleep, so I pushed several of them and tried to wake them, but none of them stood up again," he said. "The sides of the road to my house were piled with corpses. I felt frightened and just started running."

When he arrived at the family home, Su found his mother in tears, and his father lying on the bed nursing the injuries he received in the crush of the bomb shelter. They told Su that both his sisters had been killed in the attack.

He said his only clear memories of childhood are of air raid sirens, bombings, moving home, and crying.

However, Su may be considered lucky compared with Ju Tianfu, a member of the Chongqing Bombing Survivors' Litigation Group, who was orphaned by the air raids, which killed his entire family and destroyed every piece of their property.

On May 3rd every year, the 83-year-old formally honors his family. It was on that date in 1939 that the Japanese carried out the first bombing of civilians in Chongqing. Ju's family home was hit directly by a bomb, killing his grandfather, cousin, and uncle on the spot. Shortly afterward, his parents died of a "combination of disease, injury and sadness".

"The bombing was concentrated on the Yuzhong district. At the time I was in the Nan'an district, and that helped me escape death. The districts stand directly opposite each other across the river. I saw the Yuzhong district become a sea of flames," he said.

Every member of the litigation group has a story to tell. Jiang Wanxi, 84, deputy director of the group, lost his father, elder brother and sister-in-law in the bombing campaign. "People really suffered a lot during those years, but no one gave up hope, or surrendered to the Japanese," he said.