Over NT$10 billion in wartime currency (-x用??? issued by the Japanese colonial government during World War II to Taiwanese who served in its army has never been recognized by the country's post-war governments, but surviving families of the drafted Taiwanese still keep the scrip in the hope that it will one day be honored.
"The Japanese government should learn from Germany in its handling of compensation requests from people in its former colonies," said Chen Tai-li (
"Japan is now an economic power. It should stop trying to avoid its responsibility to the people in its former colony. They just make all sorts of excuses," he said.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The scrip I hold now belonged to two of my family members who were forced to serve in the Japanese imperial army or participate in engineering projects on land under Japanese occupation," he said. "I was a junior high school student at the time."
The main pretext which the Japanese government has been using to avoid handling the issue is a statement made by US General Douglas MacArthur in 1945 in his capacity as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, said New Party legislator Chang Shih-liang (張世良).
"General MacArthur said that all monetary units issued by the Japanese government during war-time would be no longer valid," Chang said.
"Tokyo has been quoting the statement again and again as the reason why it cannot honor the currency issued by its wartime government," he said. "This is extremely outrageous."
"There are around 2,000 people in the country who still hold scrip of this kind," Chang said.
"The wartime currency is worth around NT$10 billion in total if calculated in terms of the change of commodity prices over the past fifty years," he said.
Chang led members of Chen's association to Tokyo in July to negotiate with the Japanese government over the issue. But the group got only a promise that the matter would be submitted to the Japanese Diet for consideration.
Chang and representatives of the association plan to go to Tokyo this weekend in an attempt to try to keep the issue moving forward.
"We will give the Japanese government two months. If nothing is done during the period, we will take some action to highlight our appeal," Chang said.
"The Japanese government during the administration of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa (2?t護?), between 1993 and 1994, had considered earmarking a budget of a trillion Japanese yen as the fund to handle compensation for people in Japan's former colonies who suffered from wartime atrocities by Japanese troops," said association executive Chen Ming-chu (3祟?]).
"But Hosokawa's policy was not followed by subsequent governments. Our hope now lies with a bill proposed by the Japanese Diet for the establishment of an `eternal peace investigation bureau' (
"If the bill is passed this session, we will have more chances to get some concrete results," she said.
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