Eternal patriots
Taiwanese volunteers didn't just yearn for the Republic of China, they were also intimately involved in Sun's revolution. When war broke out between China and Japan in 1937, numerous Taiwanese stepped into the breach, returning to the motherland to fight the Japanese.
"They did so because they knew that defeating Japan was the only way to return Taiwan to China," says Shao Ming-huang, adding that Taiwanese volunteers streamed back to China by every means possible. At first, their activities were largely unorganized. Then, in 1941, the Taiwan Revolutionary Alliance formed in Chongqing and vowed "to gather all of Taiwan's revolutionary forces under the leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party in order to overthrow Japanese imperialism, return Taiwan to Chinese rule, and build a new China based on the Three Principles of the People." General Li Youbang, who had joined the Taiwan Culture Association at 14 and gone on to study at the Whampoa Military Academy, recruited more than 300 young Taiwanese to form the Taiwan Volunteers, a guerrilla group active along the coasts of Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces.
The Taiwanese volunteers' efforts to resist the Japanese and restore Taiwan to China gave rise to many profoundly moving events, some of the most tragic of which involved the Lin family of Wufeng.
Originally from Changzhou, Fujian Province, the Wufeng Lins were widely recognized as one of Taiwan's most important families. During the Qing Dynasty, Lin Shuangwen was involved in anti-Qing activities and Lin Chaodong helped then-governor Liu Mingchuan repulse a French landing force. During the Japanese occupation, Lin Chaodong's son Lin Zumi sold off the family property to support the activities of Luo Fuxing, Yu Qingfang, and others engaged in military resistance to the Japanese. During the same period, Lin Xiantang employed non-military methods to resist the Japanese and promote democracy. Generations of the Lin family believed that Taiwan's existence was dependent on China's and that loving Taiwan meant loving China.
Lin Zumi not only spent his family's fortune supporting anti-Japanese activities, but also kept close to Sun Yat-sen. Made a commander of the Southern Min troops, he ultimately died for the cause, killed by the warlords during Sun's Northern Expedition.
Lin Zumi's son Lin Zhengheng followed in his father's footsteps, attending the ROC Military Academy in Nanjing and devoting himself to the Japanese resistance. He fought the Japanese in the Yunnan-Burma theater, where, in spite of suffering severe injuries to his left arm, he wrote to his wife: "I have done my duty in this divine war. Taiwan's return to Chinese control-my father's life's ambition-has been accomplished. If he knew, he would be smiling in the afterlife."
Though monitored and repressed by the Japanese colonial government, Taiwanese volunteers were determined to play a role in their motherland's history. Jiang Weishui (left) and Liao Jinping (center) were disciples of Sun Yat-sen. Lin Zhengheng (right), one of the Wufeng Lins, actually fought the Japanese. But the political upheavals and policy errors of the early years after retrocession brought suffering to an entire generation of Taiwanese elites, a situation that has yet to be redressed.