KMT stubborn in its old age
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is more than 100 years old and has begun to show signs of stubbornness.
The Ministry of Education has indicated that the illegal “micro-adjustments” of high-school textbook guidelines will not be withdrawn in spite of protests by students from more than 200 high schools. The administration likes to do things behind closed doors and is interested in brainwashing students rather than teaching them true historical facts.
It looks like the old so-called “1992 consensus” never dies. This KMT guideline now has three versions: one China, different interpretations; two shores belonging to one China; and one China, same interpretation. The KMT thinks the first version is better and plans to use it again next year — like in 2008 and 2012.
The KMT has undergone cellular division several times and has spun off the New Party, the Taiwan Solidarity Party, the People First Party and the Republic Party. Now some leading “domestic” KMT members are abandoning the party. Does the KMT have foreign members?
For decades, the KMT has been criticized for clinging to its illegally obtained party assets. Several of its chairmen have pledged to get rid of these assets. However, so far, no positive action has been taken. Instead, a political commentator has been sued for overestimating its assets.
The acceptability of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) by the public has been at a low for quite some time. Instead of demonstrating his administrative ability to improve his approval rating, Ma showed off his youthfulness and physical strength by doing as many push-ups as he could in public.
KMT presumptive presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) indicated that the Republic of China (ROC) does not exist and caused a heated controversy. Nobody knows better about the ROC than Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who declared its death.
Whether the ROC exists or not, there is Taiwan — always.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
A response to Baron’s review
The book review of Turning Devils Into Men by James Baron is fascinating to an enthusiast of World War II history like me. The part on Taiwanese and prisoner-of-war (POW) camps especially attracted my attention.
Baron’s book review reads: “A total of 173 Taiwanese were prosecuted as war criminals… These colonial soldiers suffered disproportionately high conviction rates. This was partly because many Taiwanese served as guards at POW camps, where they were in contact with allied soldiers who remembered them after the war. These loyal subjects were ‘tossed aside’ by the Japanese after the war as ‘abandoned people.’”
Indeed, Japanese POW camps in Taiwan during World War II hosted several big names from the Allies, including US Army General Jonathan M. Wainwright, then-commander of US forces in the Philippines; and British Army Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival, then-commander of British troops in Malaysia and Singapore.
Wainwright and Percival were the highest-ranked US and British officers to become POWs during World War II, but suffered inhuman treatment regardless of their rank.
The experiences of Yasuji Okamura and Ando Rikichi provide a sharp contrast.
Okamura, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Army’s China Expeditionary Army, was convicted of war crimes, but pardoned and retained as a military adviser for the post-war Chinese government. However, Rikichi, who served as the final Japanese governor-general of Taiwan, was arrested on charges of war crimes and committed suicide before his trial.
The concept of post-war justice and its place in international law is certainly one of the themes of the book. However, after reading this review, I came across a quote on Amazon.com’s customer review site from a memoir of Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who commanded the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, which said: “It was a sacred war to liberate Asian nations that had been suffering enormously under the rule of the whites for 200 long years.”
This might be justice from the Japanese point of view during World War II and account for Japan’s xenophobia during the war, but it still cannot justify Japan’s wartime conduct. The Taiwanese working as guards at the Japanese POW camps might have been educated with this view of justice.
I sympathize with the POWs held or even executed by Imperial Japan during World War II, but I also sympathize with the Taiwanese charged as war criminals after the war. These Taiwanese were taught to be loyal to the Japanese emperor, but were not educated about humanitarian measures prescribed by international law at that time.
While the late Japanese emperor Hirohito, who even ordered the execution of all POWs as the tide turned against Japan in World War II, emerged unscathed after the war, these Taiwanese were not given a second chance. This indeed is a historical tragedy.
Chingning Wang
Pingtung
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