The documentary One Day I’ll Return Home: The Story of Lai Xing-Yang in a Siberian Labor Camp (有一天我會回家) — about a Taiwanese man who served in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II and was taken prisoner and sent to Siberia — has won major awards at four international film festivals.
It received awards for best half-length documentary at the Five Continents International Film Festival in Venezuela, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Tokyo International Short Film Festival, and the 21st Yu.N. Ozerov International Military Film Festival in Russia.
Director Yang Meng-che (楊孟哲) yesterday said he did not have much of a budget or a production crew, so the documentary took eight years to complete.
Photo courtesy of Yang Meng-che
He added that his applications for government funding were mostly rejected, but he persisted as he did not want to let Lai Xing-yang (賴興煬) and his family down, because they trusted him to complete the documentary.
As Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule, some Taiwanese men became Imperial Japanese soldiers, and Lai’s life story is a testimony to this part of Taiwan’s history, Yang said, adding that the documentary would enable the younger generation to gain an understanding of Taiwan’s history.
The documentary is to be released in Taipei in October, which would hopefully bring comfort to Lai’s spirit, said Yang, who is also a professor at the National Taipei University of Education.
Asked how he got started with the project, Yang said that he had been studying “comfort women” during the World War II era, but met a Russian on Russia’s Sakhalin Island who spoke Japanese, and he was invited to his home, where he and the man’s father had a good conversation.
During the conversation, he learned that there were Taiwanese prisoners of war in labor camps in Siberia, but he could not find any information about it after he returned to Taiwan, Yang said.
He said he later learned of a Japanese academic surnamed Kobayashi who studied World War II, so he flew to Japan’s Kyushu island to meet him, and luckily received a list of the Taiwanese soldiers who had been in Siberian labor camps.
Of the seven people on the list, only Lai was still alive.
Lai was 91 years old at the time and lived in Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), but had originally refused to be interviewed, as he said his heart ached every time he spoke of the experience, Yang said.
However, Lai and his family were eventually persuaded of Yang’s his sincerity, and agreed to return to Siberia with him to film the documentary, he said.
Six months before their first scheduled flight to Siberia, Lai suddenly fell critically ill, so it became a race against time, he said.
Yang said that 94-year-old Lai was wearing an oxygen mask when he finally filmed him in Siberia in 2018, and he died two years later.
Lai was only 20 years old when he became a Japanese soldier, and his mother had given him an amulet when he left home, Yang said.
He became a prisoner of war about five or six years after leaving home and was sent to a Siberian concentration camp for three-and-a-half-years where he became seriously ill, Yang said.
Lai was later sent back to Japan, where he witnessed the atomic blast over Hiroshima, he said.
After finding jobs and earning some money, he was able to return to Taiwan, but was caught up in the 228 Incident and was immediately detained for two months, Yang said.
Lai often held the amulet his mother gave him in his hand and encouraged himself to return to her, and he finally did, Yang said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its