by Al Campbell

    VANCOUVER, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- High-school students from Vancouver and the surrounding areas marked Thursday's International Human Rights Day by learning about a dark period in history seldom taught in the Canadian school curriculum.

    At a symposium entitled "Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific 1931-1945", an event hosted by the Vancouver Board of Education and ALPHA Canada, a group committed to promoting awareness of human rights violations committed during the Japanese army's occupation of the region, about 200 teenagers were given a first-hand experience on the atrocities that occurred.

    With the symposium covering graphic details of the 1937 Nanjing massacre that killed an estimated 300,000 people, and stories of so-called comfort women forced into prostitution, Canadian prisoners of war in Hong Kong and that of survivors of concentration camps and biochemical warfare, the dark subject matter proved shocking for most of the youngsters in attendance.

    Hendrik Heitkamp, an international student studying in Canada for a year, said he had no idea there had been a "second Holocaust" in Asia. "The first I heard of it was from my history teacher in Canada. In Germany we pretty much only learn about the European theater of war so this new insight is appreciated. It was pretty shocking," said the 17-year-old from the Rheinland.

    "I hadn't really heard about the history in Asia before but I'm pretty excited to learn about it because I'm always looking to learn new things about different places, one of the reasons why I came to Canada to study."

    Sadie Herbold, a 17-year-old whose Dutch grandfather had been a prisoner-of-war in Europe, said she was only now learning about the war in Asia. "I've heard some things that are pretty appalling and it has actually made me cry a few times. I didn't know these things were happening. It's pretty horrible."

    John Price, a history professor at the University of Victoria who was speaking at the event, said he wasn't surprised by the lack of awareness about wartime Asia by the students.

    "In a sense, it was an effect of the Cold War. What happened in Asia was buried," he said. "There continues to be a problem of Euro-centrism in the (Western) school curriculum and that's at all levels from primary schools to the universities. There's a lot of work to do. The way to do that is not by becoming too Asia-centric but in taking a global approach and include those areas of the world, those experiences that have been marginalized, both in terms of space and people's experience."

    A speaker of note was Marius van Dijk van Nooten who survived 3.5 years in a concentration camp after being interned by the Japanese in West Java at 11 years old. Now 79, the former sea captain held his young audience captive with stories how he had to clean-up the feces and spit of tuberculosis victims and how he had to pry the gold fillings from their teeth after they died.

    After being released in 1945 and returning to his native Holland, van Nooten said he was asked to stop talking about his war-time experiences, one of the reasons why he eventually left and immigrated to Canada. "It is extremely hard when I talk to the children, but it needs to be done. I have to take myself years back and remember the horrors that occurred. I saw people dying from malnutrition and there was nothing we could do."