Japanese octogenarian visits museum during post-war retrace journey in China

"More war photos should be seen by the public of Japan," said Gen Maruyama, an 80-year-old Japanese man who is bicycling through northeast China to retrace his post-war journey.

The Japanese octogenarian visited the "9.18 Historical Museum" in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, on Monday. He spent two hours inside the museum.

"I was extremely shocked by one photo in which a Japanese soldier cut off the head of a civilian and hung it on a telegraph pole," Maruyama said.

"Compared with Japanese troops' atrocities, the Japanese people who were left behind in China after Japan surrendered in 1945 did not get the same revenge," he said.

Maruyama was born in Harbin in 1935, four years after invading Japanese troops attacked Chinese soldiers in Shenyang, on Sept.18, 1931 and soon occupied Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces.

His father, who had served as a Japanese official in Harbin, returned to Japan in 1945, leaving Maruyama behind in Harbin.

The next year, with the help of many Chinese people, he returned to Japan from Harbin via Huludao, a coastal city in Liaoning. More than one million Japanese nationals were repatriated via Huludao from 1946 to 1948.

He later became an airline pilot after graduating from an aviation college in Japan.

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Maruyama on July 12 flew to Harbin from Japan with two friends in their 60s, and began his 1,000-km biking journey southward to Huludao.

"I feel grateful being able to return to Japan after the war. Peace should really be treasured," he said.