A school journal dating back to 1944 and 1945, donated by an antiques collector on Friday, has given a glimpse into daily life at Chiayi County’s Shuishang Elementary School near the end of World War II, when Taiwan was under Japanese control.
Sun Ching-hung (孫慶鴻) on Friday donated the journal to the school it originated from, ahead of the school’s 120th anniversary celebration.
The teacher who held the journal recorded class content and daily schools activities in the beginning, Sun said.
Photo: Lin Yi-chang, Taipei Times
“However, as the war progressed there were increasingly more days when classes were suspended,” he said.
“Later on, the teacher began holding air-raid drills with the students, and eventually the school was temporarily closed due to US bombing raids on southern Taiwan,” he added.
The journal gives a rare first-hand look at the period’s changes from a grassroots perspective, he said.
The school was established in 1903 as Minakami Elementary School and was renamed Minakami Public School in 1921. In 1941, under a decree from Tokyo, all Japanese public schools and elementary schools were renamed “national schools” (kokumin gakkou, 國民學校).
Following Japan’s defeat in WWII and the arrival of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to Taiwan, the school underwent several name changes before it was given its current name, Shuishang Elementary School, in 1968.
Sun said he came upon the journal four years ago when an old house near the school belonging to a late doctor was being demolished.
The doctor’s family contacted Sun saying they were preparing to demolish the house, and asked him to look inside first to see if there was anything worth preserving, he said.
The journal also provided an insight into what classes students took in school during the late Japanese colonial era, he said.
The journal’s first entry on April 17, 1944, mentions reading, arithmetic, history, gymnastics, traditional Chinese painting and agriculture, among other classes, Sun said, adding that the handwriting in the early entries is impeccable.
An entry for a fifth-grade history class shows that students were taught about the Tenson Korin, a story from Japanese mythology about the grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu’s descent to Earth, he said.
“After June 21, many of the entries become illegible and many pages were left blank. After July, words such as ‘air-defense training’ and ‘air-defense shelter repair’ appear often,” Sun said.
“On Oct. 10, two days before a bombing raid on Taiwan, the words ‘warning’ and ‘alert issued’ appear,” he added.
Entries for 1945 begin on Jan. 29, and the journal mentions air-raid sirens being heard for several days after that, Sun said.
In March that year, the US launched a large-scale bombing raid on Tainan, and the journal entry for March 12 reads “school is closed,” with the rest of the page left blank, he said.
The war ended on Aug. 15, and on Oct. 25, the KMT government took over control of Taiwan.
School principal Fang Cheng-yi (方正一) said the journal would be displayed at the school’s anniversary event, along with other artifacts, including old photographs of the school buildings and items that belonged to Taiwanese artist Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波), who was a student there.
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