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.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai