A statue of Japanese engineer Yoichi Hatta near Tainan’s Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) was found decapitated in an apparent act of vandalism, the Taiwan Chia-Nan Irrigation Association said yesterday.
Hatta is dubbed the “father of the Chianan Irrigation System” for his contributions to the development of irrigation in the Chianan Plain (嘉南平原) in southern Taiwan by building the Wushantou Reservoir during the Japanese colonial era.
An association member exercising in the area at about 6am saw that the statue’s head was missing, association president Yang Ming-feng (楊明風) said, adding that he told workers at the reservoir to call the police.
Photo: Wang Han-ping, Taipei Times
Police arriving at the scene surveyed the damage and collected information.
“The culprits of this violent act against Hatta’s memory should be strongly condemned,” Yang said.
The Tainan City Government issued a statement condemning the decapitation, saying that Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) has instructed the city’s police department to form a task force to find the culprits.
Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
A civil engineering graduate from then-Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), Hatta arrived in Taiwan in 1909 to serve at the civil engineering bureau, controlled by the Taiwan governor-general’s office.
In 1919, Hatta was tasked with designing an irrigation network for the Chianan Plain.
Following about 10 years of construction, Hatta’s team completed the reservoir in May 1930.
The reservoir has a capacity of 150 million cubic meters and can irrigate 100,000 hectares of farmland through a network of canals with a total length of 16,000km running through Chiayi and Tainan.
Hatta was killed in 1942, onboard a Japanese ship that was sunk in a submarine attack during World War II. He was on his way to Manila, where the Japanese government had sent him to develop agriculture in the Philippines.
His body was found, and after cremation, a portion of his ashes was taken to Taiwan for burial in a gravesite at the reservoir.
Following Hatta’s death, his wife, Toyoki Yonemura, remained in Taiwan. Heartbroken over the sudden and tragic loss of her husband, she committed suicide on Sept. 1, 1945, by jumping into the reservoir her husband had built.
The statue of Hatta was commissioned by the engineer’s aides and created by Japanese sculptor Yuma Tsukada of Kanazawa; it was shipped to Taiwan in 1931. However, local residents hid the statue for 40 years from 1941, fearing the Japanese government and later the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government would want to melt down the statue for war materials and for political reasons.
Only when the political climate began to change in 1981 did the residents uncover the statue. It was reinstalled at the reservoir park.
On the anniversary of Hatta’s death on May 8 each year, the Chia-Nan Irrigation Association holds a memorial to honor his contribution in turning the Chianan Plain into Taiwan’s rice bowl.
Lai has asked the irrigation association to enlist professional help to repair the statue ahead of the event, the city government said.
Replacing the statue’s head should not be a problem, as the irrigation association had made a mold of the statue as a precaution, sources said.
News of the statue’s decapitation led to an outcry and speculation among local residents, with some accusing supporters of unification with China or people with anti-Japanese sentiments.
Some residents said Hatta’s legacy is apolitical and should not be used to incite hatred.
Former commissioner of then-Tainan county Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) in a Facebook post called the decapitation “a deliberate act” adding that he believes the culprits targeted the statute to sabotage next month’s memorial service.
He said that people who vandalized the statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in “vigilante-like actions” have incited populist hatred and partisan acrimony in Taiwan, adding that all such actions should be condemned.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS