Zheng Shangzhu self-report:
When the Japanese invaded Jiangshan in 1942, I was only 11 years old, and I was at home with my four mothers and five mothers and an 8-year-old brother Zheng Binggen, and my parents went out to hide from the Japanese army during the day.
One day at the beginning of the seventh lunar month, her mother Dai Yulan couldn't go out to hide because she was unwell, so she slept on the bed with a fluke mentality and put down the mosquito net.
At about 9 o'clock, two Japanese soldiers and a civilian man came towards us. The man carried two baskets with a rice basket on them. They did not enter the village, but walked to the edge of the village and stopped at the door of Degui's house.
The man put down his burden, lifted the lid of the rice basket, and stuffed the bags of rice buns to Degui. Degui used the apron on his body to wrap it around, and it was full. The Japanese soldiers and civilians walked towards the natural village of Zhaishang again.
After the Japanese soldiers left, Degui was about to pour his pocket full of rice buns into the fish pond, and muttered to himself: "This thing can't be eaten, it's poisonous." At this time, the onlookers hurriedly stepped forward to stop her and asked Degui to give her all the rice buns.
She gave a small portion of it to her neighbors, and most of them were kept for herself. When Wu Nanniang returned home, she gave my brother and me a rice lesson, and then walked into the room, stuffed a rice bun for my mother lying on the bed, and left two rice buns for my eldest grandmother.
I took the rice bun, smelled the medicine, and found that there were small black spots, and I couldn't eat half of it, so I gave the other half to my brother, so my brother ate a total of one and a half. The eldest grandmother went home to see the rice bun, and after knowing the origin, she ate it all.
My mother ate rice buns and became ill two days later. The mother had a stomachache, diarrhea, and was very thirsty, and the stool she pulled out was like snot. The next morning, my mother died of her illness.
My brother had a late seizure. I remember that day my father heard that the Japanese soldiers were about to retire and was going to tidy up the toilet, so he asked my brother to take a broom and sweep the floor by the toilet. In the evening, my brother complained of stomach pain, and his father asked him to go back to the room to rest, and Wu Nanniang also grabbed some sesame seeds and broke them, and soaked them in boiling water for my younger brother to eat.
Who knew that the more my brother ate, the more painful it became, and he had diarrhea all night, pulling along the patio in the room, one after another, like snot, and finally bloodshot. I tapped my brother's back and rubbed his stomach overnight, and the adults fed him canola oil, but to no avail.
My brother was very thirsty all the time, and he drank as much tea as he gave him, but he didn't quench his thirst. The younger brother had deep sunken eyes and was very thin, and finally died the next morning. The eldest grandmother also fell ill and died. Wu Nanniang ate the most, and also died. What a tragic scene!