An expert in the history of Taiwanese prisoner of war (POW) guards donated belongings of two guards to the Taiwan Extra-Patriot Veterans Association in Greater -Kaohsiung yesterday in an effort to reveal the past to more people.
Lee Chan-ping (李展平), a retired compiler at Taiwan Historica, which is part of Academia Historica, made the donation to the association during a seminar on Taiwan’s involvement in wars in modern history. The seminar included film of Japan’s Aug. 15, 1945, surrender to the Allies at the end of World War II.
Objects of historical value handed over by Lee included old uniforms, glasses and shoes that belonged to Ke Ching-hsing (柯景星), a Taiwanese guard who gave his belongings to Lee before he died last year at the age of 91. Ke was sent to Borneo as a POW guard during World War II, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule, to guard some of the thousands of Allied POWs there. After the war, Ke and many other guards were imprisoned for decades for their part in the abuse of captives.
Lee said that although the historical artifacts were worth little money, they bore the “bitter stories of blood and tears from insignificant people in the tragedy of the times.”
Poems, songs, diaries and letters written by another POW guard, Lin Shui-mu (林水木), when he was in prison after the war, were also among the donated objects.
Lee, who has dedicated himself to digging up the stories of the POW guards and written two books on the subject, said 11 Taiwanese guards were given the death penalty and another 173 were incarcerated for between two and 25 years, many of whom committed suicide in prison.
Lee’s research, which he began in 2003, has taken him to former POW camps around Taiwan and in Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines. He said that Ke, who was forced by his Japanese superiors to shoot two captives, was originally given a death sentence by the International Court of Justice. The ruling was reduced to 10 years in prison on appeal, but many others were not so lucky, Lee said.
Lee compared the POW guards to Taiwanese comfort women, who have yet to receive an apology from the Japanese government for their treatment as sex slaves by the Japanese Army during World War II.
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