On June 6 every year since the end of the World War II, ceremonies have been held on the beaches of Normandy, where heads of state and war veterans gather and mourn the thousands of soldiers who fell on that fateful day in 1944 and during the entire war.
In similar ceremonies the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, civilians and politicians also pay tribute to those who perished in the Allied Forces’ atomic bombings on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, which ended the war with Japan.
While more than 200,000 Taiwanese men and women participated in some of the largest military campaigns in history — as Japanese imperial military personnel because Taiwan part of the Japanese empire — no such ceremonies are held to remember them.
Worse yet, not only is the majority of young Taiwanese unaware of that history, some of them have an incorrect perception of the war altogether, thinking that Japan was the enemy and that it was Japan, not the U.S., that bombed major cities across Taiwan toward the end of the war in 1945.
The wrong idea of the war and the lack of understanding of history is the result of strict education system and propaganda promoted by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Nationalist government, which retreated to Taiwan in 1949 following the Chinese Civil War.
Because of that education, the role of Taiwanese in past wars remains, by and large, unknown.
The History
According to statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,
207,183 Taiwanese — 126,750 military personnel (1937-1945) and 80,433 soldiers (1942-1945) — fought in the Sino-Japanese and the Pacific wars in the Japanese Imperial army. A total of 30,304 were killed in action, and more than 15,000 were listed as missing.
Casualty rates among Taiwanese were around 15 percent, much higher than those for Japanese troops.
Many Taiwanese men volunteered because they were taught that fighting for the Japanese emperor was an honor and that they would receive better payment as soldiers. Approximately 20,000 of them were Aborigines.
Elite Aboriginal soldiers, known as the Takasago Volunteers, were reputed for their supreme jungle survival skills and were fearless and fearsome. Most of them (there were between 4,000 and 8,000 in total) were sent to Papua New Guinea and suffered some of the highest casualty rates. According to post-war estimates, 90 percent of the Aboriginal soldiers who saw combat duty there were killed.
Meanwhile, more than 8,000 Taiwanese children between the age of 12 and 20, known as shonenko, manufactured fighter planes at a naval factory in Japan between 1943 and 1945. Some of them died in Allied bombings.
Many Taiwanese women were also recruited as nurses.
After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) tried 173 Taiwanese soldiers in 1946. Of them, 26 were sentenced to death.
While the majority of those who survived the war returned home, some were unable to do so due to post-war chaos. Some WWII veterans joined Chiang’s Nationalist troops after failing to find work after the war, while others had to find ways to survive amid the crackdown that followed the 228 Massacre.
The incident occurred on Feb. 27, 1947, after an argument between a cigarette vendor and Tobacco Monopoly Bureau agents escalated into an anti-government uprising. The Nationalist Army launched a crackdown the next day, killing tens of thousands of people and almost wiping out an entire generation of Taiwanese elite.
The volunteers and a large number of Taiwanese youth who were abducted by Chiang’s army were sent to China to fight the communists. Some of them died, and those who surrendered as prisoners of war were quickly forced to fight on the side of the Chinese Communist Party.
After the Korean War broke out, many of them were sent to North Korea to fight South Koreans and Americans.
One of the pioneers in gathering information and promoting veteran rights is Khou Chiau-eng (許昭榮), a veteran who fought in the Pacific in the Japanese Navy and joined the Chinese Civil War as a sailor in the Nationalist navy.
Khou, who was blacklisted by the KMT regime in the 1980s due to his background as Japanese soldier and his advocacy for democracy, visited China on several occasions to collect information about his fellow Taiwanese soldiers who were unable to return home, and came up with his own estimates.
According to him, about 15,000 Taiwanese soldiers had participated in the Chinese Civil War; of them, 12,000 were killed or went missing. However, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense says that its records show there were only 2,000 or so.
In his autobiography Better to Burn Out than Rust Away, Khou said that 700 of the Taiwanese soldiers who survived the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution managed to return to Taiwan, while about 200 stayed back in China.
After conducting several interviews in China, Khou concluded that those who remained in China were probably the most unfortunate: They fought in the Pacific War, the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War, and subsequently went through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, where they were tortured and scolded for their background as Japanese soldiers.
The Forgotten Ones
The facts and stories related to the war were not gathered and documented until recently. However, the history and tragedy barely gets mentioned in Taiwanese school textbooks, and literally nobody in the government has paid tribute to the dead and the veterans because Japan, currently a diplomatic ally of Taiwan, is still regarded as the enemy of the Republic of China (ROC) during WWII. And naturally, people tend not to commemorate the enemy.
Now in their eighties, those veterans, who sacrificed their lives, youth, families and innocence for the wrong country — Japan — are the Forgotten Ones. Not even their grandchildren know of what they did in their youth, of the courage that should be a source of pride.
Approximately 28,000 Taiwanese are enshrined at Yasukuni in Tokyo. One of them is Lee Teng-chin (李登欽), the elder brother of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). A Japanese Imperial Navy sailor, Lee Teng-chin was killed in action on Feb. 15, 1945, in Manila.
The soldiers’ memorial tablets are also enshrined at the Chih-hua Temple (濟化宮) in Beipu (北埔), Hsinchu County, and Pao-chueh Temple (寶覺禪寺) in Greater Taichung. Both constitute efforts by society to show respect for the veterans.
No national ceremony has ever been held to salute the fallen Taiwanese soldiers. Nor is there a national shrine or memorial for the war dead.
The Taiwanese government does have a shrine — the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine — for dead soldiers and those who were recognized as martyrs, such as firemen and police officers who died in WWII and during the Chinese Civil War. But since Taiwanese soldiers were labeled as Japanese soldiers, they do not “qualify” to have their places in the shrine.
When it comes to financial compensation, after years of negotiation with the Japanese government, Tokyo agreed in 1987 to give out a mere 2 million yen (NT$430,000) per Taiwanese soldier, and 120 times the unpaid salaries and military insurance during the war — a lot less than the 7,000 times the government paid to Japanese soldiers.
Back home, the welfare provided by the Taiwanese government to mainlander veterans, who arrived in Taiwan between 1945-1949 with the Nationalist regime, has been much better than that for the Taiwanese veterans. When Taiwan first lifted its ban on veterans’ visit to their hometowns in China in 1987, each of them received a subsidy of NT$20,000 for the trip. At the same time, Taiwanese soldiers in China were not allowed to return to Taiwan until they were over 75 years old, and they did not receive any government subsidy.
Having worked for promoting the rights and welfare of Taiwanese soldiers for decades, Khou became so frustrated with government indifference — KMT and Democratic Progressive Party administrations alike — that he committed suicide by setting himself ablaze on May 20, 2008, when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office. This was his final, silent protest.
“What people do not realize is that many remains of Taiwanese soldiers are yet to be found, from North Korea to the Philippines and from the jungles of New Papua New Guinea to the small islands off China’s southeast coast,” said Wu Chu-jung (吳祝榮), president of the Taiwan Extrapatriot Veterans Association and Friends of Khou Chiau-eng (高雄市關懷台籍老兵暨許昭榮文化協會).
“Of all the governments, only the ROC government would leave the remains buried thousands of miles away from home, uncollected,” said Wu, who was Khou’s foster child and vowed to keep promoting veterans’ rights after Khou’s death.
The association is one of the few organizations in Taiwan that continue to work to bring those who were killed in the war home and to look after the welfare of the survivors and those who returned.
In 1998, the government gave the association a 3,800 ping (1.26 hectare) plot of land in the coastal district of Cijin (旗津) in the southern port city of Greater Kaohsiung. This was where, 70 years ago, many Taiwanese soldiers had boarded the vessels that took them to the battleground of Southeast Asia.
The location is now known as the War and Peace Memorial Park and is operated by the association. However, due to lack of funding and donations, the park ceased operations in 2006. A monument and a memorial exhibition center are all that remains for the tens of thousands of forgotten souls.
To pay tribute to the Takasago Volunteers and to complete the Aboriginal tradition of bringing the souls of the dead back home, sculptor Siki Sufin of the Amis tribe, one of the 16 Aboriginal tribes in Taiwan, visited the Papua New Guinea city of Wewak, the site of Japan’s largest airbase in the country during WWII, last year. There he erected a wooden statue, which he named Takasago Wings. The statue faces in the direction of Taiwan, so that symbolically the souls can now fly back to their homeland.
More than six years after Khou’s death, this is about as much as the veterans and the dead can hope for from the government. Everything else, from gathering records of the war, interviewing veterans for oral history, and paying tribute for their sacrifices, comes from the private sector.
Why They Fought, and Who They Fought For
What troubles the veterans is a lot more than the lack of official recognition, the difficulties they faced in finding jobs, or the cruelty they witnessed and experienced during the war.
Like many war veterans in other parts of the world, they rarely talked about their war experiences after their returned home to their families. After all, it is extremely difficult to confess to anyone, even family members, that they killed people and to describe what the war was all about.
More importantly, their background as Japanese soldiers could very well have gotten them into trouble. Chiu Chin-chun (邱錦春), a pilot in a Japanese bomber squadron, said during an interview with the BBC in 2005 that he was warned by his relatives against revealing his military background after the war.
Hatred for the Japanese, brought to Taiwan by the KMT and instilled into the Taiwanese people for decades afterwards, as well as the miserable experiences in war zones — which included watching Taiwanese comrades being killed — created an identity crisis among veterans.
They were told to fight for the Emperor of Japan and to help establish the Great East Asia Coprosperity Sphere (大東亞共榮圈). Then they were told to fight the communists and for peace in the “Motherland.” Some of them, who were “fortunate” enough to wear three different uniforms in 10 years, were asked to fight for the unification of the Korea Peninsula. They never fought for themselves or their homeland.
After the war, the veterans found out that they had been abandoned by the Japanese government, which said that Taiwanese soldiers were no longer Japanese nationals. Returning home, they were criticized for being Japanized and wearing the “enemy’s” uniform.
The atmosphere that engulfed the veterans was, in fact, the essence of society at the time, in which Taiwanese were viewed as having been “poisoned” by the Japanese empire and the colonial period. The 228 uprising and massacre occurred in that context.
Many veterans, including Khou, wrote in their memoirs that they did not know where they belonged and which country they came from — Taiwan, Japan, or the ROC. While they believed they were doing the right thing when they joined the military and showed their loyalty to Japan, post-war developments forced them second-guess their sacrifices. Those doubts became even more serious when the ROC government displayed more interest in retaking the “mainland” than developing Taiwan.
“Most of us, including me, did not know who we fought for and why we fought,” Khou wrote in his autobiography.
Former president Lee Teng-hui summed up the general feeling shared by many Taiwanese in an interview in 1994 with Japanese writer Ryotaro Shiba, which he described as “the sadness of being Taiwanese.”
Some could argue that sadness is no longer the fate of the Taiwanese, as Taiwan has become a de facto sovereign and independent country, and the world’s 19th largest economy. In some ways, however, Taiwan needs to reconcile itself with its past before it can move on.
This includes a complete re-examination and representation of the role that was played by Taiwanese during the many wars that occurred in the past 400 years. What happened and why it happened must be part of the material found in the nation’s textbooks. Moreover, a national war museum, as well as an annual national commemoration ceremony, should be set up so that the forgotten souls can finally return home after 70 long years.
They were Chinese soldiers based in Taiwan. Even today, the soldiers in Taiwan belong to the army of the Republic of China which was founded in 1912 with capital in Nanjing. The ROC forces were defeated in the Chinese Civil War and retreated to the Taiwan Island with temporary capital in Taipei. The Civil War has not yet ended and reunification is the national goal of the entire Chinese nation. The people of Taiwan are Chinese.
China people are Chinese. Taiwan people are Taiwanese. We have NT, an army, navy, and air force. We have elections and freedom of gathering, speech, and travel. PRC never defeated ROC. ROC is still here but with less land. Kin Men Island was bombarded for 30 years with bombs from China, and it still belongs to ROC on Taiwan. I don’t understand how you can say ROC lost, and that people in Taiwan are Chinese. Take a walk outside your house right now and tell me what you see.
I would be somewhat skeptical of the claim that Taiwanese school children mistakenly believe that Taiwan was bombed by Japanese rather than Allied forces if that claim hadn’t been qualified as referring to “some” of them*. After all perhaps no other historical event is as well documented and widely published as world war two. The widespread availability of popular history books and television documentaries and the absence of government censorship on this subject should ensure that generally accurate information is available to those who wish to have it. Moreover, although the specific details about how many Taiwanese soldiers fought and died, where, when and for whom may not be present in school textbooks, the simple fact that Taiwan was a Japanese colony during the war easily facilitates the inference that large numbers of Taiwanese soldiers fought for the Japanese and large numbers of them were killed, captured or went “missing”. So again, it is not as if the absence of this information from school textbooks means that it is absent and entirely unavailable to Taiwanese school children (or anyone else). Those who wish to have this information need only look for it and may obtain it for free or for a relatively trivial price.
It seems to me that the author’s sense of outrage, largely directed at the government, is only partially justified. Yes, the government attempts to indoctrinate schoolchildren through the national curriculum and through political vetting of (especially, but by no means exclusively) history textbooks, and yes this is to be rightly lamented. However, the idea that this should be corrected by re-vetting the history textbooks and forcing all schoolchildren to learn a history of world war two that includes some focus on Taiwanese nationals is not something I would wish upon Taiwanese children. It’s not that the veterans do not deserve recognition and some form of compensation for the unjust suffering they endured, it’s that it involves the presupposition that children are the property of the State and must be educated in particular subjects against their will and irrespective of their own valuations and those of their parents. There are many children, particularly girls for instance, who lack any interest in history and especially military history and will not be more receptive to it the harder you try to ram it down their necks. Why should these children have their time and energy – the only life they will ever have – wasted by compelled attention to something in which they have no interest?
And it is not as if all or even the most important injustices of the history textbooks are the exclusive outrage of political and military affairs. The market for textbooks is rigged by the political selection of a national curriculum, and consequently Taiwanese students (like students in other countries) have little to no exposure to the history of commerce, the history of materials sciences and the history of finance. Yet all three subjects – commerce, materials sciences and finance – are arguably (and I would say clearly) far more relevant to students’ future job prospects and broader participation in society. Yet in almost every country with a politically controlled national curriculum, these subjects tend to be comparatively neglected if not omitted entirely. How many Taiwense schoolchildren, for instance, are aware of Taiwan’s importance via the camphor trade for the development of the world’s first plastic (celluloid) and the consequent development of film-based photography, the increasing use of celluloid for household products such as combs and toothbrushes and the eventual end of the Belgian trade in African ivory? I would wager that number is very small. Yet that is no reason to ram it down their necks against their will.
If it is to be argued that there are problematic gaps in the content of what is taught through the national curriculum, then it must be accepted that other people will claim there are still other gaps. You cannot devise a single national curriculum that will satisfy all those who have various competing complaints for the simple reason that classroom time is a limited resource. This is one reason for abolishing the national curriculum and allowing parents and – crucially in my view – the children themselves to have greater control over how they spend their educational time and how. I was fortunate enough to have established good reading habits by the age of six or seven years old, and those habits were established at home not at school.
In sum, it seems to me that beside the injustice of soldiers being forgotten is the forgotten injustice of children being denied the chance to learn to make their own choices and develop their own interests under parental guidance. Whilst we may be able to estimate the number of soldiers who lost their lives or who were captured or mistreated in various ways because these things occured in the past, there can be no such estimates for the number of lives slanted, businesses never started, scientific achievements never reached due to the strangling effects of compulsory education because these things always belong to the future. Past injustices can never be truly righted, none of us can ever go back. The human will can only act from the present into the future, and no more can be asked of it than that.
*Of course, there will always be those who lack any interest in history and consequently are unaware of historical events, but that can hardly be blamed on textbook authors.
Quote: “Now in their eighties, those veterans, who sacrificed their lives, youth, families and innocence for the wrong country — Japan — are the Forgotten Ones.
My comment:
The Takasago Volunteers and other Formosan Japanese personnel of the IJAF fought for country. They did not fight for the “wrong country”. They fought for their home country until it surrendered to overwhelming force. That does not make them wrong.
Contrastingly, the IJAF soldiers from Japanese Formosa are victims of one of the many horrendous and unforgivable war crimes perpetrated on the Formosan Japanese by their undeserving Chinese occupier. Likewise, are victims of a war crime the generations of young Formosan males who have been conscripted in the armed forces of the Chinese occupier. Likewise, are victim of a war crime generations of Formosan young females who have been forced into sexual slavery as comfort women in the Chinese occupier’s military brothels.
Such are the plagues visited on the Formosan Japanese since the ideologues of US-DOS and of the China lobby in Washington decided that a derelict Chinese rump state should be coddled so as to thoroughly humiliate a defeated foe.
When Nazi Germany occupied Europe, there were freedom fighters to help the Allies. When Nazi killed millions of Jews, there were some Jew rejected to follow the law and jointed the fight. I have not hard (to the best of my knowledge) any Taiwan Lang stand up against the drafting to go to SE Asia fighting. Not even passive resistance against the occupiers. My uncle was drafted, but he refused to follow order to have guard duty in a POW camp, which usually included mistreatment to POW. He was sent to labor camp and died there.
I am a Taiwan Lang and very ashamed that my ancestors helped Japan, Just the same for those Taiwanese now helping KMT and CChinese railroading Taiwan since 1949.
Yes, Taiwan forgot those who fought the WWII for whatever reasons. On a smaller scale, where are we when president Chen and Ma got different treatment? If we do not treasure our right as Taiwan Lang and stand up even for a passive resistance, who will?
Seventy years after the fact, the victor of Japan and the principal occupying power of Japan (Formosa and Pescadores included) recognizes the decisive contribution of the “Navajo Code Talkers” in the victory. And the whole world knows about those heroes.
The Takasago Volunteers stood by their mother country, Japan on the battle field and ultimately, in defeat. Only their defeated brothers-in-arms know about their valor.
日本軍沒有失敗,對於日本軍與台灣高砂族當時的戰事,乃因順勢國際法理而「歸順」述言,高砂Takasago名為日本天皇所賜,是法理歸化後,日本天皇對於台灣高族的集權統治,包含實施皇民化,後得教育規則.
I witnessed Takasago students born after April 28, 1952, chatting in Japanese at Taihoku Shihan Daigaku in the late 1970s. They had learnt their mother tongue at home. That was almost 40 years ago. Since then, they have been earning their living holding positions in the officialdom (jungongjiao) of the occupier’s regime. And now, retirement is looming.
Recently, I’ve read about Takasago chieftains who belittle their fathers’ commitment to the war effort of their mother country. Recently, I’ve read about Takasago chieftains who express equal respect for the late Showa Emperor and that butcher (Chinag Kai-shek); Recently, I’ve read about Takasago chieftains who, when they talk about their ancestral country, mean China.
From Hirohito to Chiang Kai-shek 6/23/2011
http://www.froginawell.net/japan/2011/06/from-hirohito-to-chiang-ka…
Such readings dishearten me. But when I pause to think, I understand that those chieftains talk BS because they are the jungongjiaos of the occupier’s regime.
Money talks.
No one but you, Philip, can tell who you are.
Do you deem yourself a Takasago?
Then, go on a pilgrimage to Yasukuni.
There, your forebears’ spirits will answer.
Now, humbly prepare yourself for what will make your forebears proud.
Those Taiwanese soldiers are cowards if not traitors. They may be forced or fooled to join Jap army. They had chance to turn the weapons against the Japs. Some are traitors that joined Jap army willingly like 李登輝. They shamed their ancestors.
The Takasago Volunteers turning their weapons against the “JAPS”? When they so fervently assumed their allegiance, even at the cost of their lives?
Only a filthy CHINK could make such assumption with a straight face. Only a filthy CHINK SLAVE of the western powers like you CHINKS have been all through the XXth century could lord it on decent Formosan Japanese like you have been allowed to do by your American master who quarantined you, PIGS, on Taiwan, an inalienable territory of Japan the US really controls since the surrender of Japan.
What the offspring of the proud Takasago ought yo say:
我記得我是最偉大的皇民化時代那一代的後代。
我也記得我這塊土地是大日本帝國的。
因此我要求尊敬，又要求尊重國際法。
你們這一群趕快要滾出我的皇土。
否則我將要報復。
And they should do something drastic about it.
When a retired ROC general is reported saying at a CCP/KMT United Front get-together in China that the armed forces of both the KMT and the CCP together are the armed forces of China, the following is worth quoting:
“(4) It was certainly not the intention of the American people whose forces liberated Formosa and the Pescadores at so great a cost in blood and treasure, that the Cairo Declaration and this Government’s action in facilitating Chinese control of the islands should have resulted in the creation of a menace to the stability and security of Southeast Asia and in the suffering which has been endured by the people of Formosa during the past four years.”
Quoted from: “Policy of the United States toward Formosa (Taiwan): concern of the United States regarding possible conquest by Chinese communists,” (United States Department of State / Foreign relations of the United States, 1949. The Far East: China (1949)/Foreign Policy Vol. XI, P. 362)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=FRUS.FRUS1949v09.p0372&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v09&isize=text
Among the “Free Chinese” auxiliary force the “principal occupying power” is tolerating as its guard dogs on Taiwan, a passel of stinky CHINKS(*) traitors are biting the hand that rescued them.
http://hoonting.blogspot.fr/2015/06/ait.html
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(*) Offensive? Out of line? How about your “JAPS”, my despicable EQ-impaired low IQ AQ.
You make a good case for recognition of the soldiers but fail to recognize or understand the bitterness which undermines all effort to support these veterans. Although I don’t discount their sacrifices because for anyone born and raised in Japanese Formosa, Japan was the “Motherland.” They knew no other. But Formosa was a country rife with racism and a class/caste system long before the start of WW2. That was their world: Free choice? Democracy? From people who have known only service to an Emperor or a King? Are you kidding? Military service was a way to move up in the social strata. The Takasago soldiers not only fought to prove themselves as aboriginal warriors but also for the same reason the Korean soldiers conscripted by Japan were said to be more brutal and vicious than their colonial masters — so the Japanese would respect them and treat their families appropriately if they should die in battle — because they were of a lower class and less valued than native Japanese soldiers. But who will answer for the hundreds of young Formosan boys and girls — ages 13 through 16 — who were forcibly taken from their Formosan families and forced to serve in the military as junior soldiers or comfort girls? World War 2 was a difficult period for everyone in Asia for many reasons and its effect still lingers into the 21st century. Although I do agree that the veterans deserve compensation from the countries they served, but given the Taiwanese nature of avoiding ugliness by sweeping it under the rug, I doubt if anyone would want to revisit these memories with any sort of national recognition. Think about how many Taiwanese have traced their ancestry to Koxinga’s service and are proud to announce that they descended from “criminal, cut-throat pirates” — there should be thousands by now. 😉
I am an eighth generation Australian married to an (at least) eighth generation Taiwanese, who also has some Taiwanese Aboriginal ancestry.
Many of my wife’s family were soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Forces while others remained in Taiwan supporting the war effort for the empire.
Many of my family were soldiers in the Australian Imperial Forces and British Commonwealth Occupational Forces while others remained in Australia supporting the war effort for the empire.
Australia remembers the Australians who lived, fought and died for their family, their way of life, and even for their part in the British empire, the “motherland” for most Australians at the time.
Taiwan does not remember the Taiwanese who lived, fought and died for their family, their way of life and even for their part in the Japanese empire, the “motherland” for many Taiwanese at the time…
Some soldiers joined the war because they thought it was their duty, some for their empire, many to bring honour to their families back home and to protect their way of life. Some soldiers joined the war because they had to, whether because of the law, or simply because it was a paid job, even if not a highly paid one. Some went for an adventure that ended up being far more horrific than they could ever have imagined.
Taiwan, and every country should remember its people who paid for the life we enjoy now with their own. We should remember every person who served abroad and at home, in Australia and Taiwan. I hope Taiwan has the courage to put aside 70 years of treating its WW2 past as a blight and recognise the past for what it is… History.
History is most often written by the victors, if there is such a thing in war, and the post WW2 mainland Chinese immigrants forced Taiwanese to believe they were traitors and slaves and almost succeeded in obliterating history. In fact the politics of cross-straight relations still attempts to obliterate history in favour of fabrication.
Taiwan has memorials to people that died in China, during the Chinese Civil War, when Taiwan was part of Japan. What is their connection with Taiwan? Taiwan uses a dating system based on the overthrow of the Qing Empire in China in 1911, when Taiwan was part of Japan. What is the connection to Taiwan? People have been forced to swallow these ideas for 70 years, the total replacement of the island’s real history with an alternative history – and some are still trying to do it…
It will be a great day when this island of Taiwan erects its first official memorial to the people who have defended, fought for and died for this island and its people. Only when people actually remember them will their spirits return home…
V-Cub says something that many old Taiwanese living under Japanese ruling would not believe. During the Japanese ruling (early 20th century), Chinese people (not Aboriginal people, though some of Aboriginal people started learning Chinese literature since mid 17th century) in Taiwan still regarded China as homeland and sent the Children to learn Chinese discovered by many scholars in recent years. Only until 1920s Japanese government started banning Taiwanese young primary school age children learn Chinese, banning those private Chinese schools, and only Japanese can be taught at all schools. I still remembered the newspaper published by Mr. Zheng Wei-Shui advocate democracy in Taiwan is in Chinese, and those evidences can be found in Taiwan as parents of those primary or high school age students in 1920s-1940s can read traditional Chinese. Druiring the second war world, the so called imperial movement, Japanese government encourage Taiwanese people to give up their Chinese names and adopted Japanese names as courpnterpart in Korean Peninsula. Also Japanese banned all traditional temples and their idols in Taiwan so there were some temples hiding idols in the building until end of war. Just few years ago, there is an old idols discovered in ceiling of a temple when it is under renovation, there was a clearly written note by the older generation back in 1930s that they had to hide it under Japanese government’s ban.
Please tell me that who implant the wrong history in Taiwanese people society, the Japanese government ruling 50 years that killed at least thousands of Aboriginal people in 1930 or KMT which came to rule Taiwan after 1945? Do not forget KMT never banned any religious worship as Japanese government did in 1930s-1940s. My grand parents were born in southern Taiwan in 1910s, only received Japanese education in primary school but they talked to my family in Taiwanese and live according to Chinese Lunar calendar and went to local Buddist and Daoist temples that were established in 19th century or even older that British settlement in Australia. I would compare British settlement with Japanese ruling in Taiwan as there are many different characteristics in both histories. Read carefully about recently discovered histories of Taiwan under Japanese ruling before you make comments in Taiwan. I would say it is much better for Taiwanese to know about China as our ancestors adopted lunar calendar, rituals, Chinese literatures and arts from China.