This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of world WarII, victory in China's War of Resistance Against Japan, and the retrocession of Taiwan and the Pescadores to Chinese rule. A half century has slipped by, yet it has still not been long enough to clarify the impressions the 21 million people on Taiwan have of the war.
On the one hand are mainlanders who directly experienced the war. Since they came to Taiwan, there have been many changes, and these days they aren't all that willing to talk about their suffering in the war. On the other hand there are Taiwanese, who were caught between the land of their forebears (China) and their colonial masters (Japan). In the past, little attention was given to their perceptions of the conflict. Today, when some Taiwanese say, "commemoration of the war is for the mainlanders, what has it got to do with us?," many people find this hard to understand.
The war is long past, but not everything from then has turned to dust. We can look back at newspapers and other media of those days, and talk to survivors from that era. Perhaps by doing so, in this time of remembrance we can go back to those days and look again with warmth and understanding at the paths we have taken to the present.
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