The government’s recent conferment of medals to war veterans marking the 70th anniversary of the Second Sino-Japanese War or World War II was seen by war veterans as heart-warming after what some of them described as a comparatively “cold” reception from society in past years.
Liu Chi-chiu (劉支球), a 98-year-old war veteran, said he could never forget the war.
“I fired the first shot that would later start the battle of Nanjing,” said Liu, then a lieutenant colonel in the 159th Division of the Army, adding that at the time Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) had asked his platoon leader to station some patrols on the paths between the two mountains outside of Nanjing and to fight off enemy advances.
Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Japanese pushed toward Nanjing following the battle of Shanghai from August to November in the same year. The city fell to Japanese forces by Dec. 12 and was the precursor to the Nanjing Massacre.
Liu was among the war veterans who were given Ministry of National Defense medals specially made to thank the veterans for their wartime service.
Liu said the medal held great meaning and emotional value because it was akin to feeling warmth after 70 years of “like being in a freezer” due to the social isolation of veterans.
“The comment might be too loaded, but society is such that one must be self-sufficient and love themselves while maintaining a sense of duty toward society,” Liu said, adding that if one does not perform well and according to social expectations, it was only right for them to be placed in “the freezer.”
Retired Major Chang Chao-ming (張昭明), who remained on China’s east coast and carried out acts of guerrilla warfare against the Japanese during the war, went on to fight in the second Nationalist-Chinese Communist Party war in 1949 before coming to Taiwan. He said that liberty in the modern age was made possible by the sacrifices of the Nationalist Army, the predecessor to the Republic of China Army.
Chang said he initially felt disqualified when receiving the medal because the veterans had been fighting for their nation, and not just for themselves or their families.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS