On the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia yesterday, pro-localization groups again urged the government to establish a memorial park and a monument to commemorate the Taiwanese who died in the Japanese campaign, a history that they said was deliberately neglected by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
Advocates and academics said the memorial park and monument should be built to counter the historical narrative imposed by the KMT regime that stressed the Republic of China’s role in the Second Sino-Japanese War, while the forgotten history of Taiwan in World War II involved Taiwanese conscripts fighting for Japan across Asia and the Pacific, as well as Allied air raids on Taiwan.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, a total of 207,183 Taiwanese served in the military of Imperial Japan either as soldiers or in noncombat capacities, of whom 30,300 were killed in action and more than 20,000 were missing in action.
“The number of Taiwanese war dead was more than those persecuted in the 228 Incident, but there has been no memorial service in Taiwan to commemorate wartime victims,” Aletheia University professor Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said.
“Some Taiwanese have been criticized for paying tribute to Taiwanese war dead enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, but there is no monument to commemorate them in Taiwan,” Chen said.
Taiwan’s wartime history was neglected and distorted to serve the KMT regime’s China-centric narratives, and the nation has yet to face its wartime history to bring about transitional justice and reconciliation, Taiwan Association of University Professors chairman Peter Chang (張信堂) said.
“It was not until last year, when the association held an exhibition about US air raids on Taiwan during World War II, that many Taiwanese realized Taiwan was ever bombed by the Allies. They came to understand that their history was dramatically different from what was taught in schools,” Chang said.
Taiwanese have been taught history that is not closely relevant to Taiwan, and few people know that more than 20,000 Taiwanese are enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine, National Chengchi University history professor Hsueh Hua-yuan (薛化元) said.
Taiwan Tower, a monument to remember Taiwanese servicemen fighting for Japan, was unveiled in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture in June, and there is a similar monument in the Philippines, but Taiwan does not have its own memorial park and monuments to remember that history, they said.
While countries remember World War II with a variety of ceremonies and works of art, Taiwan is oblivious to its wartime past, New Power Party Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said.
Taiwan suffered great losses during the war, as more than 3,000 civilians were killed in the Taipei Air Raid on May 31, 1945, Lim said, adding that 173 Taiwanese were convicted as war criminals.
“Taiwan does not have any national-level memorial for its wartime history. Even now, attempts to address Taiwan’s wartime history will be stigmatized. However, it is time that we remember that history,” Lim said.
A monument could be built on the green plot in front of the Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei, which used to be a train station and a military factory during the Japanese colonial era, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching