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Academics urge
wartime research
LEST WE FORGET: Several academics at a forum
yesterday stressed the importance of promoting World War II history so a
Taiwanese perspective on the war could be formed
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Too little effort has been made in Taiwan to research the role the country
played in the Pacific Theater of World War II, wasting an opportunity to
establish wartime history from a Taiwanese perspective, academics said at a
seminar yesterday.
¡§There are many relics, preserved or faded away, and stories, told or untold, in
Taiwan that preserve the memory of war, but most people often talk about World
War II like it happened elsewhere,¡¨ National Chengchi University historian Tai
Pao-tsun (À¹Ä_§ø) said at the seminar, which was focused on history in Taiwan
between 1941 and 1949.
Nine theses were discussed at the seminar, which was organized by Taiwan
Extra-Patriot Veterans Association (TEPVA) for the second consecutive year and
is aimed at promoting academic research on the nation¡¦s recent war history.
Many of the thesis authors, including Tai, lamented that most of the information
cited in their studies came from either the US or Japan ¡X a result of Taiwan¡¦s
inadequate preservation of relics, documents and oral history as well as the
education system implemented by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government
after it took over Taiwan.
If not for these reasons, it would be hard to explain why some young people
today would think that it was Japan, rather than the US, that bombed Taiwan
during the war and why few are aware that the Presidential Office building,
known at the time as the Office of the Governor-General, suffered a direct hit
and extensive damage in a bombing raid in Taipei in 1945, they said.
Tai and Tu Cheng-yu (§ù¥¿¦t), a doctoral candidate of history at National Cheng
Kung University, said conducting more research into Taiwan¡¦s history during the
period would help people understand more about the nation¡¦s role and strategic
significance in the war, as well as Taiwanese¡¦s lives during the Japanese
colonial period.
The authors intended to demonstrate the value of more research by covering a
wide range of topics in the seminar, including the US¡¦ bombing of the Okayama
Airfield ¡X now known as Gangshan (©£¤s), Kaohsiung ¡X Japan¡¦s deployment of special
attack speed boats in Taiwan and Penghu, the recruitment of student soldiers in
1945, Japan¡¦s invasion of the islands in the South China Sea, as well as the KMT
government¡¦s recruitment and kidnapping of Taiwanese to be soldiers to fight in
the Chinese Civil War.
According to statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,
more than 30,000 Taiwanese soldiers were killed in the Pacific War, 15,000 of
whom are listed as missing in action.
Hundreds of thousand of Taiwanese were directly or indirectly involved in the
war, said Lee Hsueh-feng (§õ³·®p), who was among 8,000 Taiwanese boys between the
ages of 12 and 14 who went to Yamato City in Japan¡¦s Kanagawa Prefecture in 1943
to build fighter planes.
More than 300 of those boys died during the Allied bombing of Japan and never
returned home, Lee said, adding that the more one knows about war, the more he
or she understands that peace should be cherished.
The period between 1943 and 1949 for Taiwanese was probably so unique that it
would never be replicated again, Lee said.
¡§Some of us fought for Japan, some for the KMT and some for the Chinese
Communist Party. And some did more than one,¡¨ Lee said.
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