Chinese Air Raid on Taiwan, Early WWII

My friend eyedoc put up an interesting post at http://danshuihistory.blogspot.com/2010/01/air-raid-feb-23-1938.html on the early days of World War II in response to my comments. I had written the following:

Jarmon, Robert. Taiwan: Political and Economic Reports - 1861-1960, Volume 7: 1924-1941, page 512: In January, 1938 "monster celebrations were organized to [celebrate] the fall of Nanking, in which all classes loyally participated" [British consul at Danshui describing the Taiwanese response to WWII - the celebrations took place in Taiwan]. On p. 510, I think, the consul described how either 500 or 1,000 (the book is not in my hand) Taiwanese volunteers were in Nanking as farming recruits.

Important dates:
1. September 12, 1937 (five days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident) the first steamer of Japanese recruits from Taiwan leaves for China via Keelung.
2. September 28, 1937, British consul Archer makes the following admission: "Formosans are not yet liable to military service, but a number have been called up to serve in labor corps, and have been sent away to the front (Jarmon, 533). Archer stresses the impetus for volunteering was financial. In addition to rations, recruits received 1.20 yen a day.
3. Late December, 1937, a Tainan-based regiment of Taiwanese recruits returns from China through Kaohsiung (Jarmon, p. 563)

4. Consul Archer reckons by the end of September 1937, 1,000 Taiwanese are in China, though their service has caused "some disquiet among the Formosans" (Jarmon, 533).

5. April 26th, 1938, 1000 Taiwanese farmers comprising the Patriotic Agricultural Corps" sent to Shanghai. Number of volunteers greatly outnumbers the final total taken (Jarmon, 599).

Around the same time as the "monster celebrations", 200 prominent Taiwanese businessmen gathered to pass a resolution supporting the provisional Japanese government in northern China. Interestingly, on February 23, 1938, Chinese bombers appeared in Taiwan's skies, nailing both the Taipei Airport and Shinchiku Oil Fields without fielding as much as a scratch. Damage to the country's infrastructure was minimal. Damage to Japan's prestige among the local population was great.

Today I received an email from a friend in the US about this: 

"A little late but I do have comment on the article, “Air Raid Feb. 23, 1938” listed by EyeDoc on “The Battle of Fisherman’s Wharf.” First of all, I have discovered that the correct date is Feb. 22 instead of 23; see the two articles below. Both articles pointed out that Tai-Hoku, Taipei airport 台北市松山軍用機場 was attacked but Chin-Chiku airport 新竹飛行場 was not; instead the raid was on the oil field near Shin-Chiku, 竹東員崠子油井. The first article written in Japanese is by my Pen pal, Dr. Hwang who keeps diary for life that I have full trust on his record; see file attached. The second article looks and feels real McCoy; you may verify by yourself."

The link was http: //74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:fkHjK2eFbCUJ:tnews.cc/035/newscon1.asp%3Fnumber%3D4661+昭和13年2月22日空襲&cd=2&hl=zh-TW&ct=clnk&gl=tw

I'll put up a translation later, when I have time. I'm off to see eyedoc, who returns to the States tomorrow, now. More to come.

Taiwan World War II

Images of Taipei during World War II

I received an informative letter today, from L.C. (I think he lives in Japan) via eyedoc, who runs an interesting blog on World War II http://shinseimaru.blogspot.com/

"Hi there,

It seems that at least there are three gentlemen out there want to know about the arrival of POWs in Hualien, aka Karenkou in Japanese. Among the three, Hong-Ming is from my native town, Tamsui and I know him pretty well, I guess. Pat is an American husband of a Taiwanese lady living in Taipei though I still can not figure out what he does for living after reading through his site. Michael is a complete stranger to me; I can only guess he has something to do with Society of POW in Taiwan. As far as arrival of POWs is concern, I am not the only one who has eye witnessed the event but I may be the only one who is still young in mind that dare to be on the internet today.

The war started when I was a third grader and Singapore was occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army less than three months later, February 15, 1942 to be exact. I still remember well the scene that General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya demanding the surrender from the British and forces Percival to say Yes or No in the spot without giving him a moment of consideration. The British POWs arrived in Karenkou when I was fourth grader, so it must be after April; as you know the school semester always started on the first day of April. We were lined up along the main street, which stretched from train station to the army barracks to watch the tall and skinny British soldiers walking through. One of the bystanders pointed to the first guy leading the troop and said “he is the commander”; it was the first time I heard of PA-SHI BARL （パーシバル）, General Arthur Percival, however, I was not sure he was the right one since there was no name tag on him. The real Percival I saw for the first time was through the news picture of signing the Peace Treaty on U.S.S. Missouri together with Douglas McArthur on September 2, 1945.

The army barracks where these POWs were kept located just beyond the Guntai River from our Meiji elementary school. The levee at the riverbank from the school to Jinja, Japanese Sinto shrine was nice walking path but it was closed to traffic since the arrival of POWs. We, the adventurous kids always stretched our heads over the levee and peeked on the POWs who were planting vegetables on the other side of riverbank. The guarding Japanese solders would shout “Bakayaro!”, and throw stones to us at once upon finding our peeking.

When I published my story in my monthly newsletter, which is written in Japanese, some of the elder schoolmates challenged my writing by saying that they met the POWs at the harbor instead of the train station. The fact is that, I discovered later, there were more than one arrivals of POWs in Karenkou; some arrived by the ships and the others by the trains from south.

P.S.

4. Hualien / Karenko Camp was never attacked or bombed by the allies. It was closed in June 1943 - long before the allies started bombing Taiwan. By the time the allies got around to bombing Hualien and Taitung it was the spring of 1945.

I still remembered vividly that the first Karenkou bombing was executed on the morning of October 12, 1944 around 9:00AM. It continued for three days, all by Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters from aircraft carriers. Our family runs to the country side the very first night by train; it was so over crowded that we have to stand on our feet all night long. As the result of the bombing, the Monopoly Bureau caught fire and that same fire eventually burned my brother’s lumber yard down to the ground."

*****

It's true that I'm married to a Taiwanese lady and that I live in Taipei. I work for a publishing company and also study at National Chengchi University in the evenings. Both my wife and I are interested in World War II, and in learning more about the events that unfolded here on Taiwan, for personal reasons that go further than "proper history told for its own sake". My wife's great-aunt died in a bombing raid in Dong Yuan (東遠) Market in the spring of 1945 at the age of 19. And my grandpa, James A. Cowsill, flew missions all over Asia on B24 Liberators as part of the 90th Jolly Rogers Bombardment Unit. On July 9, 1945, they flew over Taiwan on a mission to hit Taichung. After radioing back that the clouds made impossible to see the ground, they were redirected to Japanese airstrips at Kungshan (崑山), just outside of Kaohsiung: http://patrick-cowsill.blogspot.com/2006/12/wwii-bombing-raid-on-koahsiung.html
and there is also http://patrick-cowsill.blogspot.com/2006/12/ww-ii-draws-to-close.html

Actually, my grandpa hated the war; he rarely talked about it. I once asked him, when he showed me a sweatshirt with a B24 that he'd picked up at K-Mart for ten bucks, why he didn't go to vet meetings, as he'd probably be able to get something a bit more authentic. He asked me: "Why would I want to go see those guys and remember that stuff?" He did, however, leave a pretty vivid story behind. During his time in the air force, he wrote 900 letters home to my grandma and uncle, who was very little at the time. My grandma kept all of them (I've posted a few - see above links) and crunched them into a narrative, which starts:

"I was married in August of 1939, and in September, with the German invasion of Poland, the European War was on. Of course, it was common talk that it wouldn't be long before Americans would be fighting another war, but I didn't see how I could be much affected. Nevertheless, in 1940, Congress passed the draft law. Even the draft act didn't seem too serious, because it meant if I did get caught in that foolish thing, it would be only for a year. The draft act before it was revised stated that men would be subjected to military training for one year only, and that didn't seem too bad. It might be a good deal, I thought, a little vacation, out roughing it with the boys, away from the office. I had been to scout camp when a boy and had had a whale of a good time."

It didn't take Grandpa long to realize that this wasn't scout camp. A few days after getting sucked in, he wrote:

"I decided that army life was lousy. I hated it already. We had reached Salt Lake at 1:00 a.m., about five hours late. Then we waited around until the truck came to pick us up. When we arrived at the field, we got some bedding and went to a barracks. There were no lights in the barracks. The bunks seemed already to be occupied. I had one heck of a time. I started to get into bed with some other fellow and he didn't take it too well. Finally I got settled in an upper bunk. It was then 3:00 a.m. I was so tired and sleepy but everybody kept talking. I knew we had to get up at 5:30. Later I found out that talking at bed time was quite common, and it wasn't supposed to keep one awake. A seasoned soldier could sleep through anything."

Many pages and years later, he concludes:

"October 15, 1988 - Bakersfield, California

Today, I opened an old trunk in the garage and took out my air force uniform which my wife had carefully stored in a plastic bag over all these 43 years. The insignia, the buttons, and the wings were all bright. The ribbons over the left pocket were like new and still in place.

However, upon careful inspection, I noticed for the first time that the patch over the right pocket of a flying American Eagle had been put on upside down, and NO ONE had ever noticed the mistake.

What irony, I thought! But perhaps this is a fitting way to end my story. My army life was a complete upside down experience."

Taiwanese Not Forced to Serve in WWII

I managed to interview a Sakizaya war veteran during one of my recent trips to Hualien, Taiwan. One of things that came up in our interview was whether or not Taiwanese were drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. According to this man, they were not. He told me that he even had to take a test to get in, which he did willingly, just to follow friends who wished nothing more than to serve and reap the rewards, namely money bonuses and land at the end of WWII.

The issue of Taiwanese serving in WWII for the Japanese is a touchy subject - see the lack of even one good book on this subject. The old Sakizaya man I talked to, who we called Backee (Grandpa in Sakizaya), said that he wasn't receiving a vet pension, an interesting point considering all of the old KMT soldiers who do receive one in Taiwan (I think the figure is at around 80,000). 200,000 Taiwanese individuals served in the Japanese military in one way or another; these people have been ignored by both KMT and the DPP governments.





A couple of shots of trains, and how people used to ride during the Japanese colonial era. I took them in Hualien, just outside the main gate to the Hualien Train Station.


I took this shot at the Hualien Train Station. They've got a few old trains and engines on display directly outside the main gate.

The Zero

I noticed this Zero on somebody's roof on the road from Jioufen (九份) to Jinguashi (金瓜石). I'm guessing, based on the cockpit and nose, that it is specifically a Zero A6M5, Type 0 Model 52. The Japanese used these planes throughout WWII. For at least the first half the war, Zeros were considered the best planes in the Pacific Theater. They flew long distances and maneuvered extremely well.

WWII is well represented around Jinguashi. This plane is about one kilometer from the past location of the Kinkaseki POW Camp and the mines where American, English, Australian and Canadian prisoners labored for various minerals three-plus years, from 1942 to 45. Emperor Hirohito's vacation chalet is down the street as well, overlooking the valley and the Taiwan Strait.