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.
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