For British vlogger Jack Forsdike, history has always been personal. Growing up, he absorbed tales from his grandfather, a WWII RAF pilot whose every mission over Europe felt like a brush with death.
Everything shifted when Jack and his wife stepped into the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 in Harbin, the Chinese mainland’s northeast Heilongjiang Province. There, the past came alive in chilling displays of human experimentation and suffering.
Amid those walls, he discovered another chapter of the war: his wife’s grandfather, as a child in occupied Shenyang, was forced to study in Japanese and bow daily to the Emperor. Two family stories, separated by continent but bound by the same conflict, converged in one powerful moment.
More than 80 years after WWII, these memories still resonate. The scars of war live on not just in history books but in family lore, carried through blood and memory from one generation to the next.
Visiting such an exhibit can transform distant events into personal legacies. It reminds us that understanding history isn’t just about dates and battles—it’s about connecting with the human stories that still shape our world.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
