by Kim Sung on 06 Nov 2006 17:00 During what became known as the Pingdingshan (平頂山) or Fushun (撫順) Massacre, in September 1932 Japanese soldiers torched and bombed a number of villages near the industrial city of Fushun, bayoneting and machine-gunning village residents and killing some 3,000 men, women, and children. The assaults were made in retaliation for the anti-Japanese actions of a Chinese militia known as the Red Spears, who had fired on Japanese soldiers as they passed through one village and later had attacked the Japanese garrison in Fushun.
The Red Spears were not from the area, but had merely passed through the villages in order to carry out the raid on Fushun. Yet in tracking the rebels as they fled back through the villages, Japanese soldiers assumed all who were in the vicinity either to be members of the militia or their confederates and punished them by burning homes and summary execution.
Pingdingshan Massacre Memorial
