Distant memories of the Pacific War and the deaths of fellow child-workers and comrades still bring tears to the eyes of Lee Hsueh-feng and Lin Teh-hwa, two of more than 200,000 Taiwanese directly involved in World War II.
At around the time of the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings that led to the end of the World War II, there are still no formal ceremonies in Taiwan or memorials erected to commemorate former military men like Lee and Lin.
This is why they appeared at the War Memorial Park located in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, an important military and industrial center during the Japanese colonial era from 1895-1945, and called for the government to pay due respect to Taiwan's World War II veterans.
"Maybe it (the lack of recognition) is because we were seen as Japanese, which we really were at the time, " said 85-year-old Lin, who joined the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1943 at 17 as a volunteer because soldiers' families received special benefits.
Lin, who hails from central Taiwan, said he made the decision because "I had four older brothers. And at 17, I feared nothing, including death." He was fortunate to stay in Taiwan as a naval driver instead of being sent to the South Pacific theater, but said that "serving in the Japanese military was living hell," nonetheless.
Lee, on the other hand, went to Yamato City in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture that same year, in the first group of Taiwanese child workers, called "shonenko" who answered a call from the Japanese government to build fighter planes. In all, more than 8,000 boys aged 12-14 left their families, homeland and childhood with the promise of an education in Japan. However, the promises and their dreams were never fulfilled.
In December 1944, 25 Taiwanese boys were killed in a United States' air raid on Nagoya. Lee, at 17, was the oldest of the group, and assumed the responsibility of taking care of his "brothers, " who often got homesick and cried at night.
"We had a very hard time (in Japan) but we were a happy group of kids. Losing them (the 25 boys) just broke my heart, " Lee recalled, adding that 300 of them never returned to Taiwan after the war.
Those 25 boys, along with 30,304 Taiwanese soldiers killed in the war, including former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's older brother, are still remembered at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine and have never officially returned to their homeland either, Lee lamented.
Lee said he often wonders how he was able to tell his grandchildren that "grandpa built fighter planes for the Japanese Imperial Air Force at your age" in a time when most university students in Taiwan have little understanding of Taiwan's history and when some of them even think it was Japan rather than the United States, that bombed Taiwan in war.
Liang Chih-hsiang, 82, was one of the very few who fought as a Japanese soldier in the South Pacific before being recruited and sent to China by the Kuomintang (KMT) government to combat the troops of the Communist Party of China.
Yang Liao Shu-hsia, 83, was a 16-year-old student in the Japanese territory in Shanghai when the war in the Pacific broke out. She volunteered to be trained and serve as a military nurse and was not able to return to Taiwan until 1947.
Stories like these could go on and on. Those who were involved in the war are now in their 80s and, as Lee puts it, will be "naturally fading away" soon.
There should be a memorial in Taiwan like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, which lists the names of those who died and those who remain unaccounted for in the Vietnam War, because the war experience is a collective memory of millions of people, said Jiang Chung-hwa, chairman of the Taiwan Extra-Patriot Veterans Association (TEPVA).
The association is seeking collaboration from dozens of civic organizations, as well as donations from the public, to establish a memorial park where a monument can be erected and ceremonies can be held annually for the families of the World War II Taiwanese soldiers and service members to commemorate their loved ones.
"There has been so little commemoration of the war in Taiwan in which millions of people were directly or indirectly involved. This is a strange society, " said TEPVA Secretary-General Chuang Sheng-huang.
Citing statistics from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Chuang said that around 8,000 Taiwanese soldiers and more than 120,000 other service personnel were involved in the Pacific War, 15,000 of whom are listed as missing in action.
Taiwan's society today is known for its diversification, but the same goes for Taiwanese society in the 1940's, according to Chuang. "Some of the soldiers volunteered, while some were forced to fight for Japan. Some thought of themselves as Taiwanese while others regarded themselves as Japanese," he said.
"There were even some Taiwanese who volunteered to fight for the KMT in the Chinese civil war," he added.
"Irrespective of the political ideology, the war memories and humanity are the same then and now. What we're trying to do is to reveal history and let history speak for itself," he said. By Chris Wang CNA Staff Reporter ENDITEM/J