On May 10, 2023, the last Taiwanese woman to be part of Japan’s comfort woman system during World War II, died surrounded by family members. Announcement of his death, in accordance with the family’s request, was delayed until May 23, 2023 following his memorial services. The delay in the public announcement reportedly reflects the deceased’s resistance to being memorialized as “Taiwan’s last surviving comfort woman” – her life was much more than that. She came forward in 1992 and, along with 57 others, was recognized as a real victim of the Imperial Japanese Army’s comfort women system during World War II. The existence of this phenomenon became public in Taiwan in February 1992. publication of three telegrams from Japanese Diet deputy Itoh Hidekoclaiming that on March 12, 1942, the Imperial Army Command in Tokyo received a request for a shipping permit for fifty Taiwanese aborigines who had been conscripted “at the request of the Southern Region Headquarters” of the Imperial Army Japanese to be transported and deployed to a “comfort station” in Borneo.
Seoul and Beijing have made the Japanese army’s roundup of Korean and Chinese women and girls into sexual slavery during World War II a “cause celebre” following the partition on August 14, 1991, by the former Korean comfort woman Kim Hak Soon about her heinous experience of sexual slavery. under Japan. For its part, Taiwan has chosen to address its grievances against Japan in a more nuanced manner than its neighbors. With Kinmen Island (Quemoy) located just 10.2 kilometers off the coast of mainland China, the Taiwanese live with the threat of mainland China seizing all or part of their territory at any time. In recent years, Taiwan has found help in Japan, a more and more openly guarantor and protector of the future of the island.
Taiwan’s quest for justice for victims of the comfort women system and their families is also blunted due to a post-World War II divide within Taiwan’s Han Chinese population, the ethnic background of 98 percent of its citizens. Han Chinese who arrived after World War II are still viewed with justifiable suspicion by descendants of much earlier Han migrations., dating back to the 1662 defeat of Dutch military forces occupying Taiwan by Ming dynasty loyalist Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), better known as Koxinga (國興家). Zheng fiercely opposed the Qing dynasty’s takeover of the mainland in 1644, and he and his son Zheng Jing established Taiwan as an outpost of resistance to Manchu (Qing) rule. During the two hundred and thirty years of the Qing dynasty’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, the Manchu rulers never managed to fully establish themselves as the ruling power.. Even Mao Zedong advocated for Taiwan’s independence from 1928 to 1943.
After World War II, Chinese interest turned to the annexation of Taiwan. On February 28, 1947, soldiers under the command of Chinese Nationalist President Chiang Kai-shek and Governor General Chen Yi fired into a crowd of Taiwanese protesters, killing one, wounding others, and alienating those who witnessed this unjustified action. In the months that followed, some 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese resistance fighters in Chiang faced death at the hands of Chiang’s forces. This did not stop when Chiang took the reins of power on the island after his defeat on the mainland.
The arrival of Chiang Kai-shek as leader of the island and his declaration of martial law marked the beginning of what the Taiwanese call the “White Terror”. Chiang oversaw the arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution of thousands of people who opposed his authoritarian rule. Two streams of KMT repression, the “228 incident” followed by the “white terror” which has lasted for forty years, serve as a rallying cry for the Democratic People’s Party (DPP), now led by President William Lai. For many Taiwanese, Chiang’s four decades of brutal repression portend what lies ahead for Taiwan’s young democracy if a new generation of Mainlanders, led by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Partyalways take charge of their homeland.
In Cihu Park in northern Taiwan, villages and neighborhoods across the island moved 150 of the more than 1,000 statues honoring Chiang’s reign. Efforts are intensifying for the possible removal of all statues of Chiang including The Chiang Kai-shek memorial in Taipei with its 6.3 meter statue from Chiang. Chiang’s statues are rivaled only by the 2,000 statues of Mao that continue to provide political scenery for mainland China.
Taiwan’s DPP has chosen to downplay and largely dismiss the comfort women issue, viewing it as an obstacle to maintaining its critical alliance with Japan. On the other hand, the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang Party (中國國民黨) (KMT), starting with President Ma Ying-jeou, have expressed remorse for the repressive Chiang regime but, in some ways, still find justification for this chapter in Taiwan’s history. They announce the end of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, reminding our fellow citizens of the forced integration of Taiwanese men into the Japanese army and the creation and implementation of the comfort women system, which walled up 2,000 Taiwanese women of Han and Aboriginal descent in harrowing rituals of daily sexual abuse and rape by the Japanese military, which upended prospects for marriage, family and any semblance of normal life in Taiwanese society after Japan’s surrender .
Nonetheless, calls for justice for Taiwanese victims of the system have never been more successful than in Korea and mainland China. As state-funded museums and historic sites commemorate the brutalities associated with Chiang’s rulethe Comfort Women issue had a much less galvanizing impact on Taiwanese citizens. Taiwan’s only comfort women statue is not government-sponsored but was created by a Taiwanese civil society organization. The Taipei-based Ama Museum, intended to honor Taiwanese comfort women, only existed from December 2016 to November 2020. was forced to close due to COVID and a lack of funding; However, it managed to reopen in November 2021.
Supporters of Comfort Women would do well to look for ways to incorporate this tragic chapter of history and the testimonies of its victims into the broader human rights narrative in Taiwan. In In 2008, then in 2017, Taiwanese President William Lai, recently inaugurated president of the DPP, spoke in support of justice for Taiwan’s comfort women. Today, as head of state, he has the opportunity to live up to that commitment and reconcile the disparate human rights concerns of the DPP and the KMT and foster a mature, mutually respectful and more frank dialogue with Japan on this subjectwhat was missing.
*This article is based on Dr. Ward’s recent presentation at the Columbia University Law School Forum. “The Legacy of World War II Comfort Women in the Asia-Pacific Region” in February 2024 where he spoke as an expert on the political divisions within the discourse on the Comfort Women issue in Taiwan.
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