President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday attended the openings of two exhibitions on people’s lives during the 1937 to 1945 Second Sino-Japanese War and presented a Republic of China (ROC) national flag to the son of a war heroine.
The two exhibitions, one about wartime lives and the other specifically about Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule and Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水, 1891-1931) are being held at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.
Ma gave the ROC national flag to Chu Fu-kuei (朱復圭), the son of Yang Hui-min (楊惠敏, 1915-1992), who as a girl guide supplied ROC national flags and supplies to Chinese troops besieged by the Imperial Japanese Army in Shanghai in 1937, to show gratitude and respect to citizen heroes and heroines during the war.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ma said that “the mistakes of history might be gradually forgotten, but historical truth cannot be forgotten, since forgetting history could lead to the recurrence of the same mistakes.”
To commemorate the victory over Japan is to express the hope of avoiding war and to hope that “war will not happen anymore,” rather than showing off that we were on the winning side, Ma said.
Ma said that millions of Chinese soldiers sacrificed their lives in the eight-year conflict, but ultimately the war showed the willpower and determination of the Chinese people.
In response to media speculation that the commemorative events for the end of the war would affect diplomatic relations with Japan, Ma said that they would not.
Ma is scheduled to attend a conference on the 70th anniversary of the victory hosted by Academia Historica on Tuesday.
The date, July 7, is the 78th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, which is widely considered the beginning of the war.
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