The stack of files was six pages long, most of them in Japanese. Only one of the pages was translated and copied in Chinese, and it is estimated that this page was sent to the Guangling Local Security Maintenance Association. This means that on November 11, 44, the 10 pits of the Chengjialing Coal Mine will be blown up, and the local maintenance committee will be required to organize 200 strong men to go to the mine on the 12th to help load a batch of materials, and at the same time resettle the 156 miners who have been withdrawn from the mine. But the paper does not mention the reasons for blowing up the mine from beginning to end.

Although the remaining five pages are written in Japanese, fortunately there are a lot of Chinese characters in them, and although the meanings are a little different, even Meng can still guess that you can still see a rough idea. However, a comparison can still reveal a lot of problems.

First of all, the first paper mentions the shortage of workers in the mines, and records the requisition of more than 460 laborers by the Japanese army from several nearby county towns about July 41. In February '42, the mine received two hundred and thirty-seven prisoners to serve as coolies going down the mine, and by September '43, three hundred and seventy-three people were again requisitioned. Although I don't know when the mine was first produced, according to Dai, it should be between 39 and 40 years. Dai also speculated that judging from the size of the mine during the Japanese occupation, the number of laborers was at least six or seven hundred. So a simple calculation, excluding the miners when the mine was first put into operation, in just over three years, the Japanese army recruited more than 1,000 people for the mine. And when it came time to blow up the mine, there were only one hundred and fifty-six miners left.

The loss rate of this miner is a bit appallingly high, even if the miner was treated inhumanely by the Japanese army, the survival rate of less than 10% is extremely abnormal. In my impression, the Japanese garrison regarded the occupied areas at that time as their own country, especially in Hebei and Shanxi, which were occupied earlier, and Japan invested a lot in infrastructure and industrial construction, and they regarded the labor force population in the occupied areas as important as mineral resources and food resources. So what is the cause of the mass death of miners?

On the next page, it is the order of the Japanese North China Garrison Command to the Guangling garrison, from the text, I probably speculate that there is at least one squadron of the Japanese army in Guangling, and its station is not in the county seat, but in the Chengjialing mine, which is obviously a deliberate arrangement to protect the mine. However, Japan has a large number of coal mines in Shanxi, which are larger in scale and higher in output than the Chengjialing mine, and some of them have never heard of the need for garrison protection, and at most the local puppet army will maintain law and order. So what is there in the Chengjialing mine that is worth the Japanese expending the already very nervous troops stationed in China here?

The contents of this page are even stranger. The garrison of Chengjialing should have sent a report to the headquarters before, and now this piece of paper is the headquarters' reply to the report. I don't know what was reported before, but just looking at the reply order, it should be a solution to the problem of a large number of miners fleeing and disappearing, and the solution is to increase the fence of the mine by another meter and install a power grid. At the same time, the local puppet army dispatched a company of troops to garrison Dongyang Village to arrest the escaped miners, and the miners who were caught must be killed as an example. Dongyang Village is the deserted village where we slept that day, but it is indeed the only way for the Chengjialing Mine to reach the outside world, and it is difficult for the miners to escape if they set up a card here.

But what really intrigued me was about the use of the word missing. Come to think of it, assuming that a large number of miners really fled, then it was enough to write only fleeing in the reply order, and adding the word missing must mean that the Japanese army knew that not all miners disappeared as fleeing, and the disappearance obviously happened in the mine. In the same way, the disappearance is by no means an isolated incident, it should occur very frequently, and if it is an accidental one or two, it can be completely integrated into the fugitive, and there is no need to emphasize it.

But obviously, the Chengjialing mine before this report was surrounded by walls and guarded by Japanese garrisons, so how did these disappearances happen? And did today's spontaneous combustion of the human body also happen in the past?

The last two pages are estimated to be reports on the annual production status of the mine, and there is nothing worth paying attention to, but on the last page, I suddenly saw the words "Kamo Army", and my heart couldn't help but be terrified. Kamo Unit is the official name of the notorious Unit 731 of the Japanese Kwantung Army, I just watched a documentary about Unit 731 some time ago, and I was very impressed by their inhumane test methods, how could Unit 731 also have something to do with the Chengjialing Mine?

I carefully read this page from beginning to end, and it should have been an order from the North China Garrison Army Headquarters, saying that a doctor named Inoue Kuniku of the Kamo Army would take a medical team to the Chengjialing Mine to guide the research work, and the report on the follow-up research situation should be directly reported to the Kwantung Army Headquarters, and there was no need to forward it to the North China Garrison Army Headquarters.

Unit 731 was set up by the Japanese Kwantung Army to study bacteriological warfare weapons, and it is said that most of the Japanese biochemical experts and doctors were gathered, and we are familiar with them using the living bodies of Chinese and Korean people to conduct experiments on bacteriological weapons, but what we did not pay attention to is that Unit 731 is actually still active in various areas of China where large-scale plagues have occurred, but they are not to save lives and help the wounded, but to collect virus samples for research and training. As for the transfer of documents, it is even more profound. The Kwantung Army's status in China was significantly higher than that of the North China Garrison Army, and the fact that it had passed through the North China Garrison Army Headquarters and was directly reported to the Kwantung Army Headquarters could only show that the content of the report was extremely important and the level of secrecy was very high.

I was very surprised by the appearance of Unit 731 in the Chengjialing mine, but there is only one explanation, and that is that there is a large-scale epidemic here. Of course, this explains the reason for the huge loss of miners from another angle, but after thinking about it, more questions have emerged. If it was the plague that caused the miners to die, then why were there a large number of reports of escapes and disappearances, but there was no mention of the miners dying from the plague? Also, if it was the plague, then what should be done was to isolate the sick miners, why did the Japanese blow up the mines? Could it be that the plague came from the mines?

I looked at the time when this document was signed, and in July 44, that is, less than half a year before the mine was blown up, Unit 731 intervened in the investigation of the mine, was it the direct cause of the mine explosion soon after?

I was holding the document and thinking wildly, but at some point, Director Qi was already standing behind me, patted me gently, and said with a smile: "Mr. Chang, there is only a place for a desk in this room now, and there is really no place to ask the two of you to sit down, I'm really sorry, come with me to the backyard, I can sit down and talk." ”

I saw Curator Qi holding a few rare books and a big wooden box, and I was overjoyed, and I followed Curator Qi with Xiao Duan to the backyard.

This backyard was originally the garden of the old house, but except for a two-person high rockery, the other flower and tree pavilions have long been demolished and disappeared, replaced by the same rainproof cloth maze as the front yard, and it is obviously piled higher than the front yard, and even the surrounding wings can not be distinguished.

Lao Qi took us around to the vicinity of the rockery, and we found that there was a few square meters of open space next to the rockery, and a small table and two rattan chairs were placed.

"Chang, this is the last bit of open space in the courtyard, and you probably don't have a place to sit and chat in a few months. Xiao Duan saw that there were only two chairs, so he simply sat on the floor next to the small table. Curator Qi invited me to sit down and handed me a thread-bound ancient book first.

"Dongyang Night Talk", I glanced at the cover of the book. The book is not very thick, the cover is very damaged, most of it is still stained with oil, and someone has written a dime and a half in a ballpoint pen.

"I picked up this book five years ago at the scrapyard, and it is estimated that the original owner of the book wanted to sell it at the market, but unfortunately it did not happen, so it was sent to the scrapyard. The person who wrote the book was a local talent named Zeng Wanchun. Zeng's family is a big family in Daizhou, Zeng Wanchun's great-grandfather entered the Hanlin Academy, did editing, and the following generations are also famous, but most of them are only in their hometowns as staff, and there are no famous figures.

Zeng Wanchun should be a talent in the Daoguang years, he has entered Beijing many times to catch the exam, but he has not been able to go further, and then he was disheartened, so he opened a private school in Guangling, taught for decades, and wrote this "Dongyang Night Talk" in his later years, which is full of anecdotes and jokes alluding to officialdom in Guangling. ”

"This book should be Zeng Wanchun's descendants to pay Zi, the book has been a matter of Guangxu years, it is estimated that it is just to pay tribute to the ancestors, the engraving is very rough, and the printing is very small, I have worked in the museum for decades, and I have only seen such a book in Guangling. ”

"Lao Qi, does this Dongyang mean the Dongyang Village on the way from Guangling to Chengjialing?" I asked as I flipped through the book.

Director Qi nodded, and said slowly, "That's right, that's it, it's a pity that it's been deserted for more than ten years, and the old mansion of the Zeng family inside is still very impressive, it is said that when Zeng Wanchun's great-ancestor who was a Beijing official was there, the farmers in the village were all tenant farmers of the Zeng family." There are at least a few hundred items in my collection in this courtyard that were picked up from the old Zeng family's house. ”

"Lao Chang, you said that the Chengjialing mine was closed in the light year, but there is a bit of a record in this book, you look here. ”

Curator Qi said, turning over a few pages of the book, one of which was sandwiched with a light blue note with the word "Ming" written, he pointed to the page in his right hand, and when he saw that I began to read seriously, he picked up the thermos next to the small table and poured tea for us.

(The Buddha said, "The eyes are the door to liberation, and the ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind are the doors to liberation.") The ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind are empty, and there is no self and no self. Brahma, when you know that all you enter this gate of liberation, it is not in vain to do the right thing. Color, sound, fragrance, taste, touch, and law are the same. All the Dharma is the door, the so-called empty door, no phase gate, no action gate, no birth gate, no extinction door, no coming door, no way to go out, no retreat door, no starting door, always pure door, and leaving the self door. -- "The Sutra Asked by Siyi Brahma")