The End of WWII in Asia 

REPORTER:   

80 years ago, allied prisoners of war were being liberated from across the collapsing Japanese Empire. 

Sgt. Robert Belle (BRITISH POW):   

I was taken captive in Singapore, from where I was sent to Thailand and compelled to build the railroad to Burma. During which time, at least 50% of people died from a list of disease/malnutrition. From Thailand I was taken on a Japanese ship that was meant to take us to Japan. 

REPORTER:   

September of 1945 former Japanese colonial subjects in Taiwan, worked to rescue and feed British and American air and seamen that had — until very recently — been their captives. 

John C. McManus (MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY):   

Now, I've come across Taiwanese in a way, and this is uncomfortable because, um, where I have come across them was as guards on some of what became known as the hell ships. Um, you know, that, uh, that some of the American POWs were riding on to, to be sent to Japan 

REPORTER:   

Located at the geographic center of the Japanese Empire – Taiwan, was an ideal transit point for POWs being shipped north to Japan's main islands. on squalid, airless, overheated ships. 

Anne Wheeler (CANADIAN FILMMAKER, DAUGHTER OF POW):   

My father came to Taiwan, which of course was Formosa then, and in one of the hell ships and they held at the docks and kind of humiliated in front of the locals. 

REPORTER:   

Anne Wheeler’s father was one of more than 1,000 POWs forced into slave labor in a mine in the mountains above Keelung, in what is now New Taipei. In total, about 4,000 captured soldiers and airmen were held in 14 camps across the island. The camps were overseen by the Japanese military, but some relied on locals for staffing. Discipline and orders ultimately flowed straight from Tokyo. 

REPORTER:   

Just months before the war ended, fourteen Allied airmen were executed here — shot or beheaded on the orders of Japanese authorities. Taiwanese served as guards, but it was the Japanese military police who carried out the killings. Today, this wall is all that remains of Taipei Prison — built from stones taken from Taipei’s city walls, laid by local laborers — colonial subjects — who had little say in their city’s fate. 

REPORTER:   

Still, even under colonial rule, many of the 200,000 Taiwanese who served in the Japanese military volunteered when the call came from Tokyo. They were deployed alongside forced conscripts, taking on roles across Southeast Asia and China. 

Mike Lan (NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY):   

before 1941, um, Japan was mostly focusing on the war in China. Um, and some Taiwanese started to serve and to be recruited as interpreters in China for a good reason, because, um, most Taiwanese, uh, were descendants of immigrants from southern China. So they shared common language and culture with, uh, people in China, especially in southern China. 

REPORTER:   

And while most translation work was bureaucratic and innocuous, at times it served far darker purposes. Malaysian director Lau Kek Huat has spent years interviewing members of Southeast Asia’s Chinese diaspora about the war. 

Lau Kek Huat (DIRECTOR, ‘FROM ISLAND TO ISLAND’):   

[The Japanese military] made use of a lot of Taiwanese in situations in which they needed translation. If you want to commit a massacre you need to look at the natives and sort out who should be killed and who should be spared. In those situations Taiwanese soldiers were useful because of their language proficiency. 

REPORTER:   

Between 1937 and 1945, up to 20 million civilians were killed under the Japanese Empire. through massacres, forced labor, famine, and disease. In Southeast Asia, the death toll included up to a million in the Philippines, as many as 4 million in Indonesia, and up to 2 million in Vietnam — along with hundreds of thousands more in Burma, Malaysia, and Thailand. 

REPORTER:   

The starved bodies of the recently liberated people bear witness to the sorted prosperity of Japan’s “Coprosperity sphere” 

REPORTER:   

Although Taiwanese were stationed across these countries, many were victims as well as perpetrators — forced into service, some as child soldiers. 

Barak Kushner (PROFESSOR OF EAST ASIAN HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE):   

most Taiwanese are kind of stuck in a colonial system of bad choice A, worse choice B, um, you know You don't really have many choices. So I'm not sure it's necessarily Taiwanese not looking at their responsibility until recently. I think it's more an issue of the inability to kind of openly discuss those possibilities and to discuss the historical narrative, because that door wasn't open due to martial law. 

REPORTER:   

80 years after the war’s end, every allied POW ever held in Taiwan is now dead and the generation of Taiwanese that held them captive is fading fast. With first-hand witnesses disappearing, the task of reckoning with Taiwan’s wartime past falls to historians, who try to make sense of choices made under extreme circumstances. 

Mike Lan (Professor, NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY):   

I think we need to look into wartime responsibility. Not in a legal sense, not even in a political sense. But I think we need to look into. Wartime responsibility in terms of remembering and and by remembering what Taiwanese had experienced and done during the war. I think it will only help us to better understand the essence and the nature of war. 

REPORTER:   

With Japan collapsing and Republic of China rule just weeks away, September 1945 began a period of rapid change for Taiwan. Peace had come to much of Asia, but its people still faced years of violence and political turmoil, leaving little room to confront wartime responsibility. Eighty years later, Taiwan is still shaped by that turbulent past. 

Eason Pan, John Su, Jeffrey Chen and Bryn Thomas for TaiwanPlus.