【南島中心】Taiwanese retraces grandfather’s footsteps /0822The National(PNG)
發佈日期 :
2013-08-29
Taiwanese retraces grandfather’s footsteps
Source:
The National, Friday August 23rd, 2013
By MALUM NALU
IT is little known and a rather sad story of World War 11 in Papua New Guinea that many of the Japanese soldiers were in fact Taiwanese.
The Takasago Giyūtai (Taiwanese volunteers) were forcefully-conscripted as soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army, recruited from the Taiwanese aboriginal tribes during WW11 because of their hunter-gatherer culture and skills and sent to the jungles of far off New Guinea to fight a war that was not theirs.
Now, almost 70 years after the end of WW11, a Taiwanese academic is in PNG to follow the footsteps of his grandfather in Wewak, East Sepik, as well as conduct traditional rituals to bring back the spirits of the Takasago Giyūtai who lost their lives there.
Prof Futuru Tsai, an academic at the National Taitung University in Taiwan, left for Wewak yesterday with research student Yavaus Gling, artist Siki Sufin and documentary filmmaker Siaman Zhang Yehai on a special mission to trace the footsteps of their grandfathers and take their spirits back with them back to Taiwan, as well as foster new bonds with the people of Wewak, East Sepik and PNG.
He estimates that of the more than 4,000 Takasago Giyūtai brought by the Japanese to fight in PNG, up to 3,000 died here.
Tsai’s grandfather Roeng died two years ago aged 90, but his stories about WW11 in PNG, which included that of starving Japanese being forced to eat human flesh to stay alive in the jungles, have always intrigued his grandson, who had already published his biography.
原文網址:http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node%2F55039
Source:
The National, Friday August 23rd, 2013
By MALUM NALU
IT is little known and a rather sad story of World War 11 in Papua New Guinea that many of the Japanese soldiers were in fact Taiwanese.
The Takasago Giyūtai (Taiwanese volunteers) were forcefully-conscripted as soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army, recruited from the Taiwanese aboriginal tribes during WW11 because of their hunter-gatherer culture and skills and sent to the jungles of far off New Guinea to fight a war that was not theirs.
Now, almost 70 years after the end of WW11, a Taiwanese academic is in PNG to follow the footsteps of his grandfather in Wewak, East Sepik, as well as conduct traditional rituals to bring back the spirits of the Takasago Giyūtai who lost their lives there.
Prof Futuru Tsai, an academic at the National Taitung University in Taiwan, left for Wewak yesterday with research student Yavaus Gling, artist Siki Sufin and documentary filmmaker Siaman Zhang Yehai on a special mission to trace the footsteps of their grandfathers and take their spirits back with them back to Taiwan, as well as foster new bonds with the people of Wewak, East Sepik and PNG.
He estimates that of the more than 4,000 Takasago Giyūtai brought by the Japanese to fight in PNG, up to 3,000 died here.
Tsai’s grandfather Roeng died two years ago aged 90, but his stories about WW11 in PNG, which included that of starving Japanese being forced to eat human flesh to stay alive in the jungles, have always intrigued his grandson, who had already published his biography.
原文網址:http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node%2F55039
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