| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺南大學 === 台灣文化研究所碩士班 === 99 === In 1945, the Nationalist government of China began recruiting soldiers from among the Taiwanese when its army moved to Taiwan in October of that year. Due to hyperinflation and the hard economic times, the recruits got far less in salary than what was promised. In addition, pressgangs and deception were used to force some local Taiwanese to join the army. Even worse, the biggest betrayal was, between the end of 1946 and the beginning of 1947 the Nationalist government went back on its word of not sending the new soldiers abroad, but, under threat of being killed by bayonets or rifles, the Taiwanese recruits were forced on board ships bound for China to fight the war between the Nationalists and the Communists.
When the Nationalists were soundly defeated in China, only a handful of these Taiwanese soldiers were able to get back to Taiwan, either by their own resources or with help from some Taiwanese associations in China. Most Taiwanese soldiers became prisoners of war, and later, due to Taiwan’s status as an ‘unliberated area’, were forced to become part of the Communist army, fighting against their former colleagues. Some were even forced to fight in the Korean War after the conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists ended. In the 1960s and 1970s these Taiwanese-born soldiers suffered through the various political movements in China, especially during the Cultural Revolution, for being either former Nationalists or Taiwanese. They were not exonerated until Deng Xiao-ping became the leader of China in the 1980s.
In 1987, the ban on cross-strait exchanges, especially visits between families on either side of the Taiwan Strait, was lifted. However, the Taiwanese-born soldiers in China were harshly forbidden from returning to Taiwan under the ‘National Security Act’ and treated as ‘Mainland compatriots’, leading to the ironic situation of only one former Taiwanese soldier returning to Taiwan versus more than 200,000 former Mainlanders visited their Chinese families by the end of 1988. Reforms, first started in the end of the 1980s, were slow in coming, and It wasn’t until 1992 that laws were changed to allow the Taiwanese-born soldiers in China to come back to Taiwan.
Although the government now allowed the former Taiwanese soldiers back, it took no steps to ensure the comforts of the remainder of their lives. Seeing this, one of their numbers, Hsu Chao-jung, organized the old soldiers and founded a ‘Taiwanese Old Soldiers and Family Association’, to address their grievances. Many protests were held, especially to get recognition as ‘retired soldiers’(entitled to various benefits) and compensations from the government. However, instead of giving them what the former soldiers were morally entitled to, the Defense Department was only willing to give them ‘consolation money’, causing no small amount of distress for the soldiers. Moreover, it was stated that these former soldiers had ‘voluntarily’ joined the army to fight in the wars, leaving out those that had died or were missing. Although later on the surviving former soldiers tried several times to gain government compensation through legislative means, they were not successful.
Feeling that many of the Taiwanese-born soldiers had died in China without the world knowing of their sacrifices, and were hastily and summarily buried by the National Defense Department, the leader of the soldiers’ association, Hsu Chao-jung, worked tirelessly to have a ‘Memorial of Unknown Taiwanese Soldiers’ built. After exhaustive efforts to acquire land for the memorial, no money was found to build the memorial. When the Kaohsiung City government threatened to take back the land, Hsu took out his own savings which he was planning to use for his own funeral one day, to build the memorial. His selfless act moved the Government Council for Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government to help, and the park surrounding the memorial was named “War and Peace Memorial Park”. Unfortunately, just as the park was near finished, Kaohsiung City Council tried to disrupt the process and refused to have the park thus named. To defend the park, the only one in Taiwan dedicated to the memory of former Taiwanese soldiers who fought and died in China, Hsu killed himself by self-immolation. Afterwards, Chen Chu, mayor of Kaohsiung, put her political life on the line and threw all efforts into completing the memorial. Finally, a memorial for Taiwanese soldiers that fought and died in China was built.
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