Chaoshan Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall (Zhonglie Temple)

Chaoshan Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall (Zhonglie Temple)

The Chaoshan Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall (Zhonglie Temple) is a cultural relic protection unit of Shantou City.

The Chaoshan Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall is located within Zhongshan Park in Jinping District, Shantou City.

The museum displays many precious relics from the war period, including documents of enslaved laborers, information on Chaoshan-born air force personnel during the war, various issues of pictorials issued by Japan during its invasion of China, Japanese military artifacts salvaged from Chaoshan waters, weapons used by local civilians in the resistance, military and Japanese supplies, overseas Chinese donation letters expressing patriotic support for the war effort, and even firsthand accounts of Japanese atrocities, as well as wartime message books left by young women who joined rescue teams. There are over 350 such items, all donated by private collectors and related charitable organizations.

In June 1939, the Japanese army along the southern coast of China issued orders to capture Chaoshan. On the Dragon Boat Festival, June 21, they deployed 44 sorties of aircraft to carry out massive bombings in the Shantou area. “A thousand villages shrouded in vines, the land strewn with the dead; ten thousand homes lie desolate, haunted by ghostly wails.” In an instant, the region was engulfed in flames, homes were destroyed, the landscape lay in ruins, and corpses littered the ground. “Mothers called their sons to fight the Japanese, wives sent their husbands to the battlefield.” In this time of crisis, the people and military of Chaoshan united to face the national peril and engaged in fierce, bloody battles against the rampaging Japanese invaders, writing a magnificent chapter in the Chaoshan people’s resistance against foreign aggression.

The history of the Chaoshan resistance is a microcosm of the grand and sweeping history of the Chinese nation’s fight against Japan. In fact, starting from the September 18th Incident, Japan deliberately orchestrated and launched a series of aggressive actions against China: releasing poison gas, producing biological weapons, conducting live human experiments, burning, killing, raping, and looting, carrying out large-scale massacres... In the face of justice, countless brave men and women rose with fervent patriotism, actively responding to the Chinese Communist Party’s call for a united front in the anti-Japanese struggle. With the spirit of “facing danger without flinching, bearing the moral responsibility without rest,” they threw themselves into the historical torrent of resistance and salvation, engaging in arduous and bloody battles against the vicious Japanese invaders, completely shattering Japan’s fantasy of conquering China within three months. “For every inch of land, a drop of blood; for every hundred thousand youths, a hundred thousand soldiers.” The Chinese military and civilians, with an indomitable patriotic devotion, fought bravely on the battlefield, defending the integrity of the nation’s territory and the inviolability of its dignity.