Tue, Aug 07, 2018 page4

• Documentary to feature POW’s ordeal in Siberia

  RUSSIAN LABOR CAMP: Prisoners were given little to eat, so he put tree bark in his soup or porridge, and ate slugs, leeches and other bugs, Lai Hsing-yang said

  • By Huang Mei-chu and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  A Hsinchu man who served in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II is to be featured in a documentary about his time as a prisoner of war (POW) in Siberia.

  Lai Hsing-yang (賴興煬), 94, on Saturday said he had never had the courage to bring up memories of his time as a POW, but with the help of his son, Lai Hsih-jen (賴世仁), he agreed to work with National Taipei University of Education academics and students, as well as Hsinchu City Councilor Yan Yung-chiu (嚴永秋) and others, on a documentary about his experience.

  The group is to visit sites in Siberia where Lai Hsing-yang was forced to dig in mines and fell trees.

  

  Hsinchu County Councilor Yan Yung-chiu, left, listens as former World War II prisoner of war Lai Hsing-yang relates his experience as a prisoner in Siberia in an undated photograph.

  Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times

  Lai Hsing-yang, who uses a wheelchair, had planned to make the trip in May last year, but he caught pneumonia, so the group delayed their plans for a year.

  They were supposed to leave yesterday, but the trip was again postponed to Sept. 21 after organizer Yang Meng-che (楊孟哲) — a professor in the university’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture — fell ill.

  The group is to spend eight to nine days in Siberia, visiting Vladivostok Harbor, the city of Nakhodka and other places where Lai Hsing-yang spent time as a prisoner.

  The expected cost of the documentary is NT$800,000, the group said.

  Yan, who donated NT$150,000 toward the production, said he hopes Lai Hsing-yang can finally rest easy knowing that his story would be preserved for future generations.

  Having been a member of the youth corps for six month at the time, Lai Hsing-yang was pressed into service by the army at the age of 19, he said, adding that he was sent immediately to what is now Nantou County’s Wushe area (霧社) for training.

  He said he passed a test to enter the Imperial Navy after preparing on his own and was stationed in Japan’s Okayama as a reserve officer.

  Two months after his arrival, the prefecture was bombed by US forces, he said.

  He was then sent to Keelung, where he boarded a ship to Shanghai, he said, adding that he lost contact with his family at the time.

  After arriving in Shanghai, he traveled with eight other Taiwanese conscripts to Wonsan Harbor in what is now North Korea, where his unit fought a Russian contingent.

  He was captured when the Japanese forces surrendered and he was held in Siberia for three years, even after the war was over.

  Russia refused to repatriate the POWs to Japan on grounds that the harbor was frozen, he said.

  Unable to acclimatize to the conditions in Siberia, he contracted pneumonia and was sent to a hospital, where he nearly died, he said.

  He and the other POWs were only fed two small meals each day and were forced to perform heavy manual labor in extreme cold, he said, adding that he often put tree bark into his soup or porridge to get some fiber and feel more full.

  He also ate slugs, leeches and other bugs, he said.

  Four years after the war ended, Russia signed an international agreement to release the POWs and he was finally able to return to his family, who had thought he was dead, he said.

  However, when he returned to Taiwan it was the beginning of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, and the government was suspicious of anyone they thought might be a communist spy, he said.

  Because he had been in Siberia under Russian control, the KMT kept him under surveillance, thinking that he might be a communist, he said.

  He acted cautiously at the time, mostly keeping to farming and not talking to anyone about what he had endured in Siberia, he said.

  In 2003, another former Japanese army conscript established a veterans’ association and Lai Hsing-yang was visited by Academia Sinica researchers documenting the history of POWs.

  Yang last year interviewed him as part of her master’s thesis on the subject.

  Talking with historians helped him overcome his fear of talking about his experience as a POW, Lai Hsing-yang said.
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