Taiwan yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of the Sancha Mountain Incident, when a US B-24 bomber carrying freed Allied prisoners of war crashed in the Central Mountain Range, leading to the deaths of all 25 onboard and 26 who were caught in a storm trying to rescue them.
The crash occurred on Sept. 10, 1945, one month after Japan’s surrender in World War II.
Eleven American, four Dutch and five Australian prisoners of war were killed, as well as five American crew members.
Photo: CNA
More than a dozen Indigenous Taiwanese people and nine Japanese military and civil policemen, who were serving in Taiwan during Japan’s colonial rule of the island, perished in the subsequent rescue attempt due to bad weather.
Only one Taiwanese newspaper, the Taiwan Shinpo (台灣新報), reported the crash on Sancha Mountain — a peak in the southern Central Mountain Range rising 3,496 meters -- at the time of the incident, devoting fewer than 300 words to it on Oct. 24, 1945.
“Eighty years later, we have not forgotten,” said President William Lai (賴清德) in a Facebook post yesterday.
Photo courtesy of a private contributor via CNA
“As we reflect on the shared lesson of World War II -- that unity prevails, aggression is inevitably defeated -- 80 years ago, a group of people, without regard to nationality, blood, or side in the war, risked their lives to save others.”
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) said that military personnel recently went to the crash site, where wreckage including wheels, engines, canteens, fuselage pieces and five machine guns remained scattered in the area.
Four of the machine guns were first carried to Jiaming Lake, an alpine lake in the Central Mountain Range in Taitung County, and then transported away by helicopter on Monday, the ministry said.
The weapons will be displayed at the National Military Museum in Taipei once construction there have been completed, the MND added.
The crash and rescue disaster went largely unrecognized for decades.
Memory of the incident resurfaced in 1998 when historian Shih Tien-fu (施添福) documented it during research fieldwork for a town chronicle commissioned by the Guanshan Township (關山) Office in Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan.
In 2001, a memorial was erected in the township. Recollecting the incident, Ku Amu (古阿木), 96, of Chulai (Sulaiyaz) Tribal Village in neighboring Haiduan Township, said in June that the victims were first buried at the site, and that a year later, people from Lidao (Litu) Tribal Village were asked to help recover bones.
Residents of the village, however, said they had no recollection of their folk undertaking such a task.
Hsu A-yung (余阿勇), the son of the hunter who discovered the wreck, recalled that his father and grandfather heard an explosion while hunting and found “everyone dead” in the torn-apart fuselage.
He said hunters removed clothing from the victims and wore it back in the village because clothing was scarce at the time.
Hsu said Japanese police officers mistook the clothing as evidence that Americans were in the village and were too afraid to enter until they learned of the crash.
He added that some villagers later tried to carry wreckage down to sell, but he had no memory of bones being moved.
Taiwan’s Veterans Affairs Council confirmed that 16 US servicemen were reburied on Feb. 22, 1950, at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, adding that the burials contained actual remains and not just symbolic interments.
In June this year, a government mission team was sent to Sancha Mountain to hold a memorial ceremony, President Lai said on Facebook.
The team also surveyed the crash site, and in early September carried wreckage down for systematic preservation and record-keeping, he said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS