Nobel Women's Initiative - Home
Join Us Donate
  • Home
  • Who We Are

    Since 2006 we have worked in solidarity with women's movements, organizations, and activists around the world to build peace, defend justice, and champion equality for all.
    • The Laureates

      • Rigoberta Menchú Tum
      • Jody Williams
      • Shirin Ebadi
      • Leymah Gbowee
      • Tawakkol Karman
      • Maria Ressa
      • Narges Mohammadi
      • Oleksandra Matviichuk
    • The Board

      • Profiles
    • Supporters

      • Individual and institutional donors
    • Staff

      • Profiles
  • What We Do

    Nobel Women's Initiative delivers programs, events, training, mentorship, advocacy and campaigns.
    • Areas of Work

      • Influencing Change
      • Shifting the Narrative
      • Leading Peace Together
    • News & Information

      • Press releases and Statements
      • Annual & Thematic Reports
      • Blog
  • Our Approach

    This is why and how we work to increase the visibility of women striving for peace, justice and equality.
    • About Us

      • Vision, Mission, Feminist Principles
      • Highlights of our Work
      • History & Background
    • What's Our Approach?

      • Transition and Renewal
      • Strategic Directions 2023-2027
  • Get Involved

    Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on opportunities to join us in our work.
      • Donate
    • Work With Us

      • Jobs
Join Us Donate
  1. Shifting the Narrative
  2. 16 Days of Activism
  3. Meet Wang Xuan, China

Meet Wang Xuan, China

“What I do is deeply meaningful. The small people, the little people, hand in hand, pooling our efforts – we changed history!”

 

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
Meet Wang Xuan, China

Wang Xuan began her career as an English teacher and linguist, but her life’s work has been the heroic crusade that exposed a World War II war crime forgotten by almost everyone. From 1938-45, Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army ran the world’s largest biological warfare program, spreading infection of plague, typhoid, and cholera among Chinese civilians. This program, never publicly acknowledged by the Japanese government and largely unknown in the West, killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese, and left others to suffer for decades. In the mid-1990s, a group of Japanese peace activists began investigating and visited the Chinese village of Chongshan in Yiwu City, where a third the population had died of plague. Enraged to learn the true cause of what had been called “rat disease,” the villagers decided to sue the Japanese government – and reached out to Xuan with a plea: Help us.

Xuan lived and worked in Japan, but to the villagers, she was one of them. Chongshan was her father’s hometown, and as a child, he had lost his own brother to plague. It also was where Xuan had spent four grueling years as a teenager, when Mao’s Cultural Revolution banished the intelligentsia to the countryside to live and work as peasants.

Over a decade, often using her own money, Xuan assembled 180 village victims and relatives of victims as plaintiffs, and gathered evidence of what had happened. Her documentation, from old records and testimony from Japanese soldiers and military doctors, was damning. Though the villagers’ demand for compensation was rejected – in 1972 China had given up its right to demand war reparations as a condition of establishing diplomatic ties with Japan – they won a moral triumph: For the first time ever a Japanese court admitted that the country had used biological weapons against civilians.

What made you take on such a difficult quest?

The villager who asked for help said, “You’re the only one from the village who speaks Japanese and knows Japan. This is something you must do.” This man was someone who’d always been close to my family and meant a lot to me. And the people of Chongshan cared for me when I lived there during the Cultural Revolution. We were very poor, but I felt protected there.  If they asked me to do something, I would never refuse.

I first heard about the plague from my father when I was five. He told me, “You used to have an uncle. He died. So many people died...” Even so many years later, he looked frightened. When I learned about Unit 731, it was like my mind was struck by thunder. My face went red. What happened was a crime against humanity!

I set three goals for this work: That we find out the historical truth about the biological warfare campaign; that based on what we found, the Japanese government would admit what they’d done; and that the government would then take responsibility.  They had to apologize. They had to put it in the history textbooks.

Although you couldn’t get compensation for victims, do you feel you got justice?

Monetary compensation isn’t everything. We couldn’t bring lives back, but we now have the record of history. It took a lot of courage for the Japanese judge to admit the truth. I appreciate it greatly.

Yet more than 10 years later, you are still pursuing an element of the case?

Before we filed our lawsuit and submitted papers to the court, we collected evidence and interviewed many victims. During that time we met a lot of people who had suffered for decades from what they called “rotten leg disease.”

It’s a terrible thing. Itchy blisters form on the skin, then become ulcers. The skin rots so badly sometimes you can see bone. The wounds are very painful and you can smell them 100 meters away.

We brought in three US specialists who confirmed that this was subcutaneous anthrax, and the result of biological warfare. It was not a disease included in the original lawsuit. 

How have you helped those who suffer from rotten leg?

In 2014, we were stunned to discover that it was curable. I’ve worked to raise money for victims to receive medical treatment, which involves a skilled cleaning of the wounds followed by a series of skin grafts, and is very expensive. We’ve been able to send 120 people for treatment at four hospitals, with some of China’s leading experts. People’s lives have changed. One old man said, “For the first time in my life, I have socks.” Another told me, “For the first time in my life I can put on leather shoes and visit my relatives.”\

What is your future work?

I’m seeking to confirm the existence of a cholera campaign in 1943 in northern China. We’ve recorded interviews with 3,000 old people in the countryside. I’ve also done 1,000 interviews that include medical details with villagers suffering from rotten leg disease, along with a thousand of their neighbours and friends One thing we can do for these people is create a data bank for scientists to use.

This whole project sounds very difficult emotionally.

For a period of time I lost my ability to feel happiness.

Do you feel you’ve given up your life for it?

After the Cultural Revolution, I dreamed of studying in the US or England and I still haven’t done that. But what I do is deeply meaningful. The small people, the little people, hand in hand, pooling our efforts – we changed history!

LEARN MORE

Read this insightful profile at Al Jazeera of Xuan and her work.

The Washington Post on the landmark lawsuit, organized by Xuan, which confirmed Japan's use of biological weapons against civilians in World War II in 2002.

 

 

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email

16 Days of Activism

November 25, 2022

Afrah Nassar: "Believe that you are worth listening to."

November 25, 2022

Jamila Afghani: “We should extend hands of support to each other."

November 25, 2022

Mèaza Gidey Gebremedhin: “I always need to fight for myself, for my place in this world, and to help others.”

November 25, 2022

A Q&A with democracy activist Khin Ohmar: "I feel at peace knowing there is a young generation fighting for their rights."

November 25, 2022

Amira Osman Hamed: "Don't let them terrify you."

November 25, 2022

Lubna Alkanawati: "What's really helped me to survive is the women's network around me."

November 25, 2022

Nina Potarska, Anna Chernova and Oksana Senyk: "Family peace is a small piece of peacebuilding."

November 25, 2022

Nadia Murad: "We don't get anywhere by pacifying with politeness."

December 10, 2021

Manal Shqair: I’m always fighting every day for my existence as a woman (Palestine)

December 9, 2021

Ounaysa Arabi: Knowledge is power and we have a good inheritance from feminists around the world (Sudan)

December 9, 2021

Ilaf Nasreldin: We as women deserve to live a better life (Sudan)

December 8, 2021

Musu Diamond Kamara: When one woman is affronted, all of us are affronted (Liberia)

More — 16 Days of Activism

Nobel Women's Initiative

Contact Information

General Inquiries
Email:
261 Montreal Rd, Suite 310
Ottawa, ON K1L 8C7
Media Inquiries
Daina Ruduša
Email:

Join Us

  • Join us
  • Donate
  • Event Registration Fee

Social media

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Subscribe


© 2025 Nobel Women's Initiative

Sign in to control panel Created with NationBuilder Built by Progressive Nation
Loading…