History in the Making--What Taiwanese Were Told About the War

Who was responsible for starting the war between China and Japan? After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 on the pretext of the "918 Incident" (in which Chinese forces allegedly destroyed a Japanese rail line in Manchuria) the Japanese colonial government mouthpiece in Taiwan (Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo) carried the following cartoon:

A figure in a Chinese scholar's gown with distorted features, identified as "the Nanjing government," is shown deep frying tempura, holding long chopsticks in one hand, while the other hand is shielding his face; he appears to be in pain. "Nanjing government" is unable to open his eyes because of the smoke pouring out of the oil-filled pot. Bits of tempura, labeled "Manchurian Railroad Incident," "Captain Nagamura," and "Wanbao Mountain," (all references to alleged Chinese provocations of Japan) are already in the pot. An item labeled "Manchurian and Mongolian Problem" is being soaked in sauce to prepare it. The message that Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo was trying to send was clear: "The pot is on the verge of boiling over. If the 'Nanjing government' throws another piece of tempura into the oil and gets scalded in the process, it only has itself to blame!"

After the September 18 Incident, the Japanese held a press conference in Shenyang at which they displayed alleged evidence--damaged rail ties, military equipment--that the chinese had sabotaged a Japanese railroad. （photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History）

Taiwanese citizens of Japan

Looking back at this propagandistic cartoon of the colonial era, a Chinese not only feels put out, he or she is also prompted to wonder: how did Taiwanese of that era see Japanese propaganda? Did they believe it?

Like Japanese, Taiwanese were conscripted into the Imperial Army during the Sino-Japanese War. Today the most common query they face is this: "You too are a Chinese, yet were on the other side against the motherland. When the two sides were fighting, didn't you feel an inner contradiction, an inner struggle?"

But many people who ask that question neglect to first recall the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed by the Qing Court after the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. The terms of the treaty clearly indicated that Taiwan and the Pescadores were to be "ceded in perpetuity" to Japan. By the time the Sino-Japanese conflict heated up again following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, Taiwanese had lived under Japanese rule for more than four decades--two full generations or more.

During this period, only a small number of Taiwanese, gentry like Lin Hsien-tang of Wufeng, had the tools to thoughtfully ponder what attitude to take toward Japan and the mother country. The great majority of Taiwanese, trapped under Japan's high pressure regime, "were completely unequipped to counter Japanese propaganda," says Lin Heng-tao, a specialist in Taiwan history.

In recent years people in all walks of life in Taiwan have opened their hearts and begun to discuss the special experience of the "Taiwanese citizens of Japan." The only way to understand the feelings of that generation, cautions Chang Wen-yi, a Japanese teacher at Ilan's Fuhsing Junior College of Industry and Commerce, who has been gathering wartime reminiscences of Ilan people, is to go back to those days.

During the battle for Shanghai in 1937, a child who has just lost her mother cries next to a railroad track in Shanghai shortly after the railroad station was bombed by the Japanese. Her father, holding another child, crouches at her side.（photo by Wang Hsiao-ting, courtesy of the Armed Forces Museum）

Parades and red bean buns

In Taiwan's textbooks, the eight years of the War of Resistance between 1937 and 1945 are described as China standing firm and paying in blood to defend the nation's territory. But for Taiwanese who one now in their sixties or older, the many "incidents" in China were remote events that happened "way up in Manchuria or around Shanghai." Given that their Japanese rulers described the war itself only as "an incident," the understanding that Taiwanese have of the conflict naturally has turned out quite different from that of mainland Chinese.

Taiwanese of those days never experienced, and thus cannot fully comprehend, the surge of emotion in China behind the call for "struggle tb the whole people to resist Japan to the bitter end." None knew of the 300,000 Chinese massacred in the Japanese Rape of Nanjing. On the contrary, "we participated in parades and ate red bean buns which were being given away to celebrate the incoming reports of victory," recalls Ilan elder Lan Chin-hsing. Of course, Lan explains, this does not mean they took pleasure in the invasion of the mother country. Rather, times were hard, and "our main thought was to get some red bean buns."

In those days Taiwanese mostly got information about the war from the radio. Lin Heng-tao relates that "wealthy households had their own sets, while the poor heard the news from loudspeakers in public places." (In fact, one such set-up for public broadcasting still stands in Taipei's New Park.)

A news photo taken by the Japanese after the occupation of ROC government buildings in Nanjing. The caption reads, "The Japanese flag flies over the capital city of Nanjing. . ., set fluttering in the clear blue sky by the new hope of East Asia." （photo taken from Asahi Shimbun）

A just war?

Besides the radio, the main channel used by the Japanese authorities was Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo, which was the organ used by the Governor-General's Office to transmit pronouncements to society.

"In Beidaying, Chinese troops attacked our forces; our forces joined battle and occupied part of Beidaying." "The Fengtian incident was caused when Chinese troops destroyed the rail line." "Our forces scattered 8,000 Chinese troops with a single attack." "We [the Japanese government] have always been striving to realize the principle of limiting the escalation of this incident." "Japanese military officials clarify: In order to maintain the dignity of our forces, it is necessary to severely punish the Chinese forces."

On the third day after the 918 Incident, Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo had a four-page spread devoted exclusively to news of the military situation in Manchuria. The headlines and subheadings all conveyed the idea that "It is not the Japanese government that has wanted war. In fact, it is due to the repeated provocations by the Chinese (such as attacks on our forces, sabotage of the railroads, and so on). Since the incident, Japanese forces have deliberately tried to keep the conflict from widening. They have only severely punished the enemy when necessary to maintain the dignity of the armed forces. Japanese forces have been incomparably courageous, scattering the Chinese forces at the first charge." All of the information produced by the Japanese authorities suggested that Japan had good cause to go to war with China.

In 1937, Japanese soldiers occupying Nanjing massacred 300,000 civilians, an act that Chinese cannot forget. （photo courtesy of the production team for the TV documentary series One Inch of Land One Inch of Blood）

Who provoked whom?

It is ironic to recall, as some who were in Manchuria at that time may still do, that the truth of the 918 Incident was exactly the opposite of the Japanese media's version. It was in fact the Japanese military that was making provocations one after another.

"Foreign reporters in Shenyang at that time all had serious doubts: Why were the Japanese holding nighttime patrols right nearby where the Chinese forces had been stationed? If Chinese forces were going to wreck the rail line, why would they do it right next to the Chinese base?" So relates Huang Kuan-chao, who wrote his MA thesis at the Chinese Culture University on "Japanese Control of the Newspaper Industry During the War," quoting from reports of the time.

In 1931 all the international media, including major papers in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States, expressed skepticism over the 918 Incident.

What did Taiwanese think of the incident in those days? "Intellectuals knew more of what was going on," contends Lin Heng-tao. They could guess from the newspaper reports and from what their Japanese friends were telling them that all-out war between China and Japan was inevitable. Though they were naturally deeply distressed, there was nothing they could do to affect the big picture.

Compared to the so-called "gentry," what most ordinary Taiwanese worried about then was daily life. In his work Taiwan Lianqiao, Wu Chuo-liu points out that at the time of the 918 Incident the economy in Taiwan was in very bad shape. "There were unemployed everywhere. Young Taiwanese only wanted to leave the country. No matter what social class they were from, they just wanted to get out of Taiwan." Chang Wen-yi adds that for most Taiwanese the events in Manchuria were thousands of miles away, far removed from mundane concerns.

During the Rape of Nanjing, Japan's own newspapers proudly reported on killing competitions among the Japanese soldiers. The officer at left killed 106 people, the one at right, 105. They were having a contest to see who could be the first to kill 150. （photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History）

A voice for Taiwanese

Besides official Japanese channels, another source of information for Taiwanese was the Xinmin Bao, a Chinese language journal which was widely seen as the spokesman of the four million Taiwanese. At its peak in 1930, the Xinmin Bao sold 50-60,000 copies per issue; its readership consisted mainly of Taiwan's relatively small strata of well-educated persons.

Because today we don't have a full collection of the paper, it is hard to get an overall view of how the Xinmin Bao reported the 918 Incident. But the newspaper displayed a clearly Chinese nationalistic position. Witness a headline like "All of Manchuria in an uproar, Japanese forces take Fengtian," which pointedly avoids the phrase "our forces." There were also patriotic turns of phrase in the text, such as "In a flash the Japanese flag was flying over Fengtian. The white sun against the blue background [the ROC flag] was gone!"

Under the pressure of Japanese rule, Xinmin Bao was very valuable in getting out new ideas and smashing taboos. Yang Chao-chia, then one of the stockholders of the paper, recalls in his memoirs that he personally witnessed the editing of the paper at the time of the 918 Incident. Everyone was filled with anguish at Japan's aggression against the mother country. In Japanese wire service reports, China was referred to using the characters "Zhi Na." To avoid insulting the mother country the editors changed "Zhi Na" to the characters "Zhong Guo," the Chinese people's own term of pride for China. It's no surprise that they often ran into trouble with the Japanese censors.

Critiques published in the September 26, 1932 edition of the Xinmin Bao reveal much about the thinking of educated Taiwanese in those days: They warn that "both parties in a fight end up getting hurt"; they express hopes that both the Japanese and Chinese will prudently consider whether war is really necessary; and, given the dramatic depression in the price of rice in Taiwan at that time and difficulties in the Japanese economy, they suggest that the Japanese government weigh the economic effects of war. Similar warnings about the adverse consequences of a war appeared with great frequency.

A photo from the Japanese media taken after the capture of Wuhan. The caption reads, "Raising high the slogan of building a new order in East Asia and promoting cooperation between Japan and China, citizens of Hankou attending a 'National Salvation Meeting' swear to 'rejuvenate Asia.'" （photo taken from Asahi Shimbun）

The muting of the Taiwanese voice

Reflective Taiwanese intellectuals were very frustrated by Japan's aggressive action in "the war with the mother country." Yeh Jung-chung, then an editor at Xinmin Bao, says in his memoirs that "You really had to have gone through it to understand. It was a terrible feeling, a sense that you had taken all the insults you could take, yet having to scratch out a living in the dirt. It was anguishing, pretending to be deaf and ignorant and compromising yourself due to the overall situation." He adds, "There was no place to vent your sorrow. Sometimes you just had to hold in your tears and pretend to be cheering."

In those days Xinmin Bao was definitely the paper that the Taiwanese gentry relied upon. "If you wanted to read the news from the war zone, you would go to the library and skim through Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo. If you wanted an outlet for your feelings, you would read Xinmin Bao." So says 70-year-old Wang Chang-hsiung, one of the leaders of the New Literature Movement in the Japanese occupation era. He concludes that Xinmin Bao accurately reflected "the way Taiwanese really felt."

Regrettably, the more the war progressed, the tighter became the controls on this voice for Taiwanese. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, Japan intensified the "Japanification" of Taiwanese, and all newspapers were ordered to cease using Chinese. Xinmin Bao steadily lost its room to speak out. In 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the paper was forced to change its name. Yang Chao-chia's memoirs record: "Everything was under military control. There was no freedom to say anything, much less express any Chinese nationalist sentiment." The voice of the Taiwanese faded away.

Taiwan also had its share of propaganda photos with the theme of "soldiers love the people and the people respect the soldiers." This photo was taken in 1943, during the last phase of the war, when economic conditions in Taiwan were most severe. （photo courtesy of Chen Ching-fang）

A sacred war

Besides the radio and newspapers, another important channel for colonial government propaganda directed at the populace was films, which were shown on a rotating basis on the streets and in schools. Several years ago the National Film Archives began to actively collect such footage. The late film director Ho Chi-ming led searchers to a batch of films shot around 1940, which had been kept in the storage room of a primary school in Taichung County. A large number of these were related to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Battle for Shanghai, and the occupation of Nanjing.

The older generation of Taiwanese, following then-Japanese practice, refer to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as "the Zhi Na Incident." This event was what sparked all-out war against Japan by China. On July 7, 1937 Japanese forces on maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge in Peking occupied Wanping County on the pretext of looking for a missing soldier. Chinese troops stationed in the area resisted fiercely. This event, so familiar in this version from Taiwan's modern school textbooks, looks very different in the hands of Japanese propagandists.

The film begins with the words "A Sacred Punitive War" emblazoned on the screen, leaving little doubt about the Japanese point of view. The film states that Japanese forces went into action because Chinese forces "illegally opened fire." Japanese forces held themselves back, asking the Chinese forces to respect the cease-fire agreement, but the Chinese unilaterally violated the agreement. The Imperial Army thus decided to "punish" China, and quickly occupied Wanping and other areas. On the screen, soldiers of the Chinese 29th Army raise the white flag of surrender over a pile of rubble that used to be the Wanping County seat. (The subtitle reads: Chinese troops give up upon seeing the situation turn against them.) Then the Imperial Army is shown gloriously marching into Peking. The images that flash by present a completely Japanese perspective.

In Japanese propaganda films, no matter how long they have been fighting, the Japanese forces are always immaculately dressed and very confident, while their commanding officers come across as gifted leaders of men. They are always shown backed by awesome firepower, with mounds of captured equipment, looking valiant and dashing. On the other hand, Chinese troops always seemed to be defeated and incompetent. When Japanese forces marched into a city, foreign residents of all nationalities as well as the Chinese residents were said to be "extremely grateful, crying tears of joy."

Near the end of the war, a large number of Taiwanese were conscripted in to the Japanese army. One of them （first at left） was the uncle of Wu Po-hsiung, who is now the secretary-general of the Presidential Office. （photo by Teng Nan-kuang, courtesy of Teng Shih-kuang）

All lies

These films, produced by newspaper giants Asahi Shinbun, Mainichi Shinbun, and Osaka Shinbun, completely obscured the reality of the fierce battle for Shanghai and the fall of Nanjing. As Chinese know from their own books, "The Chinese armed forces held Shanghai amidst bitter fighting from August to November, and even then the Japanese were unable to completely rout the Chinese." But in the relevant Japanese film, the viewer only gets two images--"Fighting has spread to Shanghai, where our forces are heavily engaged," and "Valiant naval airmen who gave their lives"--that gloss right over actual events. As for the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in which 300,000 Chinese were massacred, the film offers not a single picture. One only hears, "The commanding officer called for surrender, and gave the Chinese side until noon to respond," followed by "The flag of the Imperial Army flies over Nanjing's Guanghua Gate." This is how the Japanese occupation of Nanjing was portrayed.

Did these films have any impact on people back then? Li Hsiu, a Tainan native now in her late 50's, still remembers that she watched films like these in primary school. "Everyone admired the heroism and courage of the Japanese soldiers," she admits. They were also deeply impressed with the idea that the Chinese side was militarily incompetent. She remembers that when the kids played soldiers in school, the losers would often be ridiculed as "Zhi Na [Chinese] troops," indicating how inept they were. In his novel Waves of Anger, the writer Chung Chao-cheng depicts young Taiwanese girls as having deep admiration for Japanese officers, which might be related to the impression given by this type of propaganda.

In chorus with the films, the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo carried many reports, which without exception emphasized that Japan had "no choice" but to mobilize its forces because of the "provocations and interference" of the Chinese armed forces and the "insults to Japan and resistance to Japan" of the Chinese people.

"Actually it was all lies," states Lin Heng-tao. Overall, the impression Taiwanese were given about the origins of the fighting was that "China is poor and backward, and Japan is fighting only to rescue China and safeguard peace in East Asia. Since the United States and Britain are interfering in East Asia, and the Russians threaten from the north, if Japan had not come forward there would be nothing to resist them." Lin adds that another reason Japan offered for fighting China was to "resist communism." "A martial tune of the day extolled 'acting on Heaven's behalf to strike down the unrighteous,'" with the latter term referring to communists.

The Taiwan Courage Corps was active in southeast China, doing medical, propaganda, and other tasks in the war against Japan. （photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of History）

Believe it or not

Did people believe these things? Fang Kun-yung, then a primary school teacher, relates that most people were in fact very clear about the barbarity of the Japanese forces, but there was nothing they could do. "Sometimes we Taiwanese teachers would talk amongst ourselves, saying things like 'Why should the Japanese make it their business if China is backward and corrupt?' But we always had to be on the alert, and the less of this kind of thing said the better, so we mostly kept silent."

Taiwanese not only questioned Japanese motives for sending troops into action, they also didn't completely believe the heroic accomplishments claimed in the propaganda. Yeh Jung-chung's memoirs record the following amusing anecdote. News from the front was broadcast over the radio every day. The stories always started with "The High Command reported..." and were preceded by martial music to attract people's attention. A Taiwanese surnamed Chan who was a news reader on the Taiwanese language station frequently used the expression "blown to bits" to describe what happened to Chinese planes shot down by the Japanese. Wrote Yeh, "One day this old man from the countryside was out in front of a shop listening to the broadcast. Again the broadcaster boasted about 'blowing the Chinese planes to bits.' The old man was so sick of hearing it that he blurted out, 'Fuck it, can the planes really be so bad that they just fall to pieces?'"

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the war then spread to Shanghai. As the fighting became more intense, the colonial regime began to mobilize the Taiwanese. Groups like "Fenggong Associations" (the basic level organizational unit for mobilizing the Taiwanese) were set up on each street, and committee members urged women who were passing by to sew "thousand-stitch cloths" (traditional Japanese amulets to help soldiers remain safe) to send to Japanese men at the front. Some Taiwanese were even recruited or conscripted into the fight. The book Taiwan Lianqiao states that some soldiers entered the army in a blaze of glory, but when news came back that they had been seriously injured or killed, Taiwanese finally discovered that in fact the Chinese forces were not quite the easily-routed "Zhi Na soldiers" derided in children's games.

There were also some Taiwanese who formed a "Taiwan Courage Corps" to fight against the Japanese. Most of the members were sons of Taiwan who had moved to the mainland because they did not want to live under Japanese colonial rule. The unit was led by Li You-pang, a native of Taipei County, and its ranks were later swelled by Taiwanese who defected from the Japanese military to the Chinese side. At its peak there were 700 members.

Because the Taiwanese were capable in Japanese, they often assisted in intelligence work or interrogation of prisoners. Another important function was providing medical services; there were four "Taiwan hospitals." However, there was no way that people in Taiwan could find out about such contributions back then.

During the war, the Japanese authorities in Taiwan initiated a campaign to encourage women to sew "thousand-stitch cloths" for Japanese soldiers at the front. （photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History）

Inflammatory news

As the war intensified, the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo often printed "special editions" or extra pages, which were dominated by photos from the front. When you flip through the pages, you see cavalry holding their rifles sitting at attention on their horses, scenes of soldiers and encampments at the front, general officers negotiating with the enemy. . .

From the point of view of the present day, these pictures certainly look like they are trying to inflame martial sentiments.

Huang Kuan-chao's study points out that most of the media in Japan was heavily commercialized. In order to spur sales, they carried many photos of the fighting, front line diaries, and the like. They deliberately exaggerated the difficulty of the fighting in order to glorify the valor of the Japanese soldiers. Sometimes they connived at carrying stories designed to stimulate hatred against China. They did not allow the Japanese public to understand the real nature of war, or raise questions about Japan's policy toward China. This is one reason why, once launched, the conflict could not be brought under control again.

The colonial media was under the jurisdiction of the military, so it had even less room to maneuver. Reports of the war were mainly sensationalistic and inflammatory, staying right in step with the ideology of the Japanese military. The Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo became the most powerful propaganda helpmate to the Japanese armed forces.

A booklet entitled "The Current Situation of Imperial Citizens," which attempted to indoctrinate Taiwanese through a question-and-answer format. （photo courtesy of the Ilan Historical Museum）

Educating "the Emperor's subjects"

Besides relying on the army-controlled media, the colonial authorities also employed a vast popular mobilization network to transmit pronouncements downward.This network included local notaries and census secretaries (local government functionaries), who were figures of repute in their neighborhoods. These Japanese propaganda staff had not only Japanese language newspapers and radios in their homes, but also propaganda leaflets and handbooks.

Recently the Ilan Museum of History secured a small volume called A Textbook on the Current Situation of Imperial Citizens. The booklet, which focuses on the war, was written in a question-and-answer format. Many of the questions and answers have a wry twist. For example, the query "Who is Chiang Kai-shek?" gets the response, "He is an old Chinese general who allowed himself to be deceived by the United States and Britain, betrayed his old friend Japan, and ran like a rat to Chongqing."

Or take this one: "Who is Wang Chao-ming." The answer: He is the chairman of the new national government. After the "Zhi Na" incident, he immediately "recognized the impossibility of Chiang Kai-shek's resistance to Japan, so he escaped from Chongqing and called for peace. He leads the 400 million Chinese, helps Japan, and is devoted to building the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Today people in Taiwan would be rather surprised by such answers. This booklet, published in 1943, when the war was steadily turning against Japan, paints a rather different picture of these two leaders than the one Chinese are familiar with-- Chiang as "the Commander-in-Chief of All Allied Forces in the China Theater" and Wang as "a traitor to China propped up by Japan." The volume demonstrates how Japan distorted the images of Chiang and Wang at that time.

In this photo, taken in the last stages of the war, a neighborhood leader （clad in tuxedo） from Luotung in Ilan County leads citizens to the tra in station to receive the cremated remains of local boys killed overseas. During the war, about 200,000 Taiwanese soldiers were sent overseas, with more than 50,000 killed or missing in action. （courtesy of Chen Huang）

In the line of fire

The slander and disparagement of the Republican government in China did not stop with these types of booklets. In January of the year after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo produced a special comic edition to celebrate the new year. In it, Chiang Kai-shek, the highest leader in the China Theater, was depicted as a painfully skinny fox, with a fat old tiger standing behind him. The illustration is a reference to the Chinese proverb of "the fox [acting like a bigshot by] borrowing on the awesomeness of the tiger." Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who went to the United States to lobby for more support for China, was portrayed in a four-frame comic strip as a person who was always talking about serving the mother country but in fact was buying decrepit old equipment from foreigners while pocketing the difference.

Tainan's Li Hsiu recalls that when her primary school held athletic events, they always put out two water barrels on the track, one with "Chiang Kai-shek" written on it, and the other inscribed "Song Mei-ling" [Madame Chiang]. Students were given stones to cast at the barrels at will; she herself played this game at the time, and didn't think there was anything strange about it. It was only after the war that she knew that the person whose name was on the barrel was going to be president for the Taiwanese.

In fact, after the United States entered the war and the tide turned against Japan, Taiwan was brought directly into the line of fire when American planes began bombing the island. One of the major results of Taiwan's becoming a war zone was that people increasingly discredited Japanese propaganda.

The ceremony for the acceptance of the Japanese surrender for the area of the China Theater consisting of Taiwan Province was held at the Chungshan Hall in Taipei on October 25, 1945. （photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History）

Propaganda bombs

Yeh Jung-chung's memoirs note that American B-29 bombers appeared over Taiwan promptly at 9:00 each morning, and left at 3:00 in the afternoon. "It was like entering into uninhabited territory. No Japanese planes rose to meet them, nor was there anti-aircraft fire. It made the daily fare of boastful statements from the Japanese army look pitiful." Lan Chin-hsing says that at the Ilan air base he personally saw a Japanese officer climb into a rickety old plane and try to suicidally ram an American aircraft, but his plane came apart in the air. Although it was an awe-inspiring sight, Lan was also startled into wondering whether the Japanese army had not reached the end of the road.

Post-war studies suggest that Japan simply didn't have the resources to sustain the war of attrition it had gotten into. So its leaders had to rely on the fervent morale of its citizens in order to keep a handle on the worsening situation. Therefore, even though the military situation was already looking very bad, upbeat reports from the front continued unabated.

In his study Huang Kuan-chao notes that after the war spread to the whole Pacific, all war-related information came under the unified control of the military high command. More than 900 war-related stories were released in the three years and eight months between Pearl Harbor and Japan's surrender. Huang found that "for the first five months, reports were basically accurate. But after the Battle of Midway in 1942, the Japanese military began to greatly exaggerate the losses inflicted on the United States and to understate Japanese losses. Almost all of the information that filled the newspapers was fabricated."

Some Taiwanese had their own ways of getting around Japanese propaganda. Wang Chang-hsiung recalls that he would sometimes "invert" the reports in the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo by taking them to mean the opposite of what they said, which enabled him to guess most of the true state of affairs. Daring individuals listened to short-wave radio broadcasts, which was rather risky since one could be arrested as a spy for doing so. And there were others who could hear something different from the usual propaganda from Japanese friends or "overseas Chinese" who still traveled back and forth from parts of mainland China.

But there were few who dared to openly discuss the war. Even Taiwanese soldiers returning wounded from the front in Southeast Asia would keep their mouths closed for fear of being accused of revealing military secrets. In any case, aside from fighting courageously, the Taiwanese soldiers sent to the front knew little of the overall situation.

At meetings of Taiwanese veterans of the Japanese army, both the Japanese and ROC flags are hung. "Who am I?" The doubts and disputes that still exist about national identity in Taiwan can only be understood by going back into history. （photo by Vincent Chang）

Whose side are you on?

When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not a word was mentioned in the media in Taiwan. And when Japan admitted defeat and prepared to surrender, there were some Taiwanese who turned off their radios because they thought that the emperor's surrender speech (which, among other things, called on people to "struggle" and "unify") was just the same old song-and-dance about the "sacred punitive war." In his memoirs, the well-known attorney Chen Yi-sung recorded just how "absurd" the ending to the war seemed. With that broadcast, the "citizens of a defeated power" overnight became "citizens of a victorious power."

When the events of those days are brought up, many older Taiwanese would prefer not to look back. As Chen Chin-tang, an elderly Taiwanese man who fought in the Japanese army, says with deep emotion, "In those days I was completely confused. I couldn't even tell myself which side I was on!"

[Picture Caption]

P.9

By the time of the formal outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Taiwanese had already been under Japanese colonial rule for 40 years. Though the vast majority still felt loyalty to China, under Japan's high-pressure rule it was difficult to express such feelings, and Taiwanese felt very internally divided. (photo courtesy of Chang Wen-yi)

P.10

After the September 18 Incident, the Japanese held a press conference in Shenyang at which they displayed alleged evidence--damaged rail ties, military equipment--that the chinese had sabotaged a Japanese railroad. (photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History)

P.11

During the battle for Shanghai in 1937, a child who has just lost her mother cries next to a railroad track in Shanghai shortly after the railroad station was bombed by the Japanese. Her father, holding another child, crouches at her side.(photo by Wang Hsiao-ting, courtesy of the Armed Forces Museum)

P.12

A news photo taken by the Japanese after the occupation of ROC government buildings in Nanjing. The caption reads, "The Japanese flag flies over the capital city of Nanjing. . ., set fluttering in the clear blue sky by the new hope of East Asia." (photo taken from Asahi Shimbun)

P.13

In 1937, Japanese soldiers occupying Nanjing massacred 300,000 civilians, an act that Chinese cannot forget. (photo courtesy of the production team for the TV documentary series One Inch of Land One Inch of Blood)

P.13

During the Rape of Nanjing, Japan's own newspapers proudly reported on killing competitions among the Japanese soldiers. The officer at left killed 106 people, the one at right, 105. They were having a contest to see who could be the first to kill 150. (photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History)

P.14

A photo from the Japanese media taken after the capture of Wuhan. The caption reads, "Raising high the slogan of building a new order in East Asia and promoting cooperation between Japan and China, citizens of Hankou attending a 'National Salvation Meeting' swear to 'rejuvenate Asia.'" (photo taken from Asahi Shimbun)

P.15

Taiwan also had its share of propaganda photos with the theme of "soldiers love the people and the people respect the soldiers." This photo was taken in 1943, during the last phase of the war, when economic conditions in Taiwan were most severe. (photo courtesy of Chen Ching-fang)

P.16

Near the end of the war, a large number of Taiwanese were conscripted into the Japanese army. One of them (first at left) was the uncle of Wu Po-hsiung, who is now the secretary-general of the Presidential Office. (photo by Teng Nan-kuang, courtesy of Teng Shih-kuang)

P.17

The Taiwan Courage Corps was active in southeast China, doing medical, propaganda, and other tasks in the war against Japan. (photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of History)

P.17

During the war, the Japanese authorities in Taiwan initiated a campaign to encourage women to sew "thousand-stitch cloths" for Japanese soldiers at the front. (photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History)

P.17

A booklet entitled "The Current Situation of Imperial Citizens," which attempted to indoctrinate Taiwanese through a question-and-answer format. (photo courtesy of the Ilan Historical Museum)

P.18

In this photo, taken in the last stages of the war, a neighborhood leader (clad in tuxedo) from Luotung in Ilan County leads citizens to the train station to receive the cremated remains of local boys killed overseas. During the war, about 200,000 Taiwanese soldiers were sent overseas, with more than 50,000 killed or missing in action. (courtesy of Chen Huang)

P.19

The ceremony for the acceptance of the Japanese surrender for the area of the China Theater consisting of Taiwan Province was held at the Chungshan Hall in Taipei on October 25, 1945. (photo courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History)

P.20

At meetings of Taiwanese veterans of the Japanese army, both the Japanese and ROC flags are hung. "Who am I?" The doubts and disputes that still exist about national identity in Taiwan can only be understood by going back into history. (photo by Vincent Chang)

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During the war most people got their information from the radio. A public broadcasting tower still stands in Taipei's New Park. (photo by Lin Meng-san)

During the war most people got their information from the radio. A public broadcasting tower still stands in Taipei's New Park. （photo by Lin Meng-san）