WWII memorial site written on with menacing, hateful words

Three days after Chinese Americans unveiled the World War II Pacific War Memorial Hall in San Mateo, California, and announced a total of $54,000 donations, organizers said the memorial's website was hit by a hacker attack and a life-threatening message was posted.

The message posted on July 9 read: "Chinese, building the Memorial Hall is ironic. We still have opportunities to kill you all!!!"

"We suspect it is intentional, and it might be from some ill-minded Japanese," said Lin Wen, co-founder of the Memorial Hall whomanages the website, at a press conference held on July 11 by Florence Fang, chairwoman of the Florence Fang Family Foundation and curator of the memorial, in California.

Lin added that the message was using "Shina" to refer to the Chinese people. "The Japanese Imperial Army used the same norm during the war times," he said.

"We reported the incident to police on Wednesday and have decided to report it to FBI this week," said Lin. "We Asian Americans believe it is cyber crime, involving race discrimination and is not acceptable."

On July 7, Fang led the unveiling of the memorial to an audience of 100, the first overseas anti-Japanese memorial. Fang said the reason she chose the date for the unveiling was to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, which signaled the start of a full-scale Japanese invasion of China in 1937.

Fang discussed what happened at the press conference.

"The Memorial Hall is a place to remember Japanese atrocities during the war and to educate our kids about the truth of history," Fang said. "It is also to commemorate the friendship of Chinese and American soldiers who defeated Japan together in WWII."

"There are 167 memorials for Jews murdered during the WWII in 29 countries, but not a single one has been established outside of China for Chinese victims," Fang said. "We overseas Chinese should unite and speak for ourselves. We still need donations and volunteers for our Memorial Hall."

In May, a proposal initiated by the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WW II asked the Cupertino, California city council to designate an area as a Genocide Memorial Site, but it was once again tabled, said Ding Yuan, spokesman for the organization. "Japanese political extremists sent threatening emails to the city council to stop our initiatives," he said.

zilian@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 07/15/2014 page2)