Recently I watched the movie 1942 which talked about the great
famine in Henan province in China at year 1942. According to some references,
nearly 3 million people starved to death out of 30 million in total population.
In other words, one out of ten people died. Meanwhile, nearly 15 million people
migrate to other provinces to seek food and shelter.
During
the process (exile) Chinese called “ Tao Huang”, many miserable and
non-humanistic things happened. Rich people with food on the cart were robbed or
even killed. Property rights were not protected. Japanese air force bombed the refugee
crowd as Chinese soldiers retreated with them together because Chinese
government gave up the Henan province. Corps were exposed and dogs came to eat
them. Moreover, Cannibalism was common in this progress. Even Woman and
children were traded for food. Although it was hard to imagine all of these
tragedies as we cannot experience starvation nowadays, it must be the darkest
time in humanistic history.
There
were many factors contributing to this catastrophe. But the main reason is that
Chinese government was involved in the War against Japanese government. As a
result, they did not have enough resources to provide aid to refugees. Moreover,
30 million people without enough food was a big burden so Chinese government tactically
gave up Henan province to Japan. Bribery and corruption also made the condition
worse.
1942 is a dark year in Chinese history. But if
my country was not that weak and could provide any help to Henan province, may
be some people can be saved and this tragedy could be avoid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_1942
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