Taipei, April 26 (CNA) Taiwan needs to shore up its national defense instead of emphasizing its independent sovereign status, a Japanese law professor who spent part of his youth in Taiwan before World War II said at a Taipei seminar Wednesday.
"From the international law perspective, Taiwan is already an independent country with its own territory, government and people," said Shigeru Oda, a professor at Japan's Tohoku University and a former judge of the International Court of Justice for 27 years.
"There's no need for Taiwan to stress the fact of independence, " Oda said. "Instead, what Taiwan urgently needs to do is shore up its national defense."
The Oda family enjoyed a deep relationship with Taiwan when the island was under Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945). During that period, Oda's grandfather and father served as doctors in Taiwan, helping to establish medical schools on the island.
Oda, 79, grew up and received most of his secondary education in Taipei before returning to Tokyo in 1945 to pursue an international law career, which has taken him to the U.S. and the Netherlands.
During the last 60 years, Oda has occasionally visited Taiwan and described himself as "nostalgic" and holding special feelings for the island.
Oda addressed a full house about how the Taiwanese were reluctant to talk about politics after the tragic Feb. 28 Incident of 1947 in which many elite Taiwanese professionals were jailed or executed by the then-Kuomintang government.
In his view, Oda continued, Taiwan was wrong to adopt an "all or nothing" approach in its battle to defend its seat in the United Nations in the early 1970s. Because of then-President Chiang Kai-shek's reluctance to make any compromise on the Republic of China's national title, the U.N. General Assembly came to adopt Resolution No. 2758 in 1971, giving the "China" seat to Beijing at the expense of Taipei.
The seminar "My perspective on Taiwan" was part of a series of activities to commemorate the late ruling Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Huang Shin-chieh. It was co-organized by the Ketagalan Institute and the International Cultural Foundation.