Description
The new facility had three metre high earthen walls topped with electrified barbed wire and a moat with drawbridge surrounded the buildings within. There were hundreds of rooms and smaller surrounding laboratories, office buildings, barracks and dining facilities, warehouses and munitions storage, crematoria, and the prison cells. Out of necessity, the Japanese were forced to use local Chinese labor for the construction; but due to secrecy, laborers had to wear a basket over their head to prevent them from seeing more than small sections of the facility, and had be escorted by the army guards. The prisoners brought to Zhongma included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, as well as political prisoners and people rounded up at random for suspicious behavior by the Kempeitai.
Read more about this topic: Zhongma Fortress
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