Taiwanese soldiers were conscripted by the Empire of Japan to fight in the bloody Battle of Okinawa during the final days of World War II. Eighty years later, the fate of many of those men remains unknown, as families continue searching for answers. Historians say Taiwan has yet to fully reckon with this chapter of its wartime past. Now, a new effort is underway to identify the missing and honor their sacrifice regardless of the side they fought on.
00:00On June 22, 1945, the last major battle of World War II ended after nearly three months of fierce attritional fighting.
00:23The bloodiest battle of the Pacific War has ended in victory for the Americans on Okinawa.
00:28330 miles from the home islands of Japan, the stars and stripes are hoisted on this most vital strategic base.
00:35It's just a classic example of a kind of a violent climax to just this catastrophic event that had swept through Asia and the Pacific.
00:44It gives us a little bit of a preview of what the invasion of the Japanese home islands would have been like.
00:49Okinawa, strategic link in the Ryukyu chain, an island strong point in the southern defense system guarding the Japanese mainland.
00:57The battle involved around 1.3 million allied personnel,
01:04U.S. Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force units against 120,000 Imperial Japanese defenders.
01:11It was the last major battle of the Pacific War and the first with significant involvement of Taiwanese soldiers in combat following the start of conscription in Taiwan in January 1945.
01:18Over 200,000 Taiwanese actually served in the Imperial Japanese Army in a wide sense during the war years.
01:25Not all of them were in active military service. I think that's more like about 80,000 or so.
01:32But others did work that essentially served the wider purpose of the Imperial Japanese Army.
01:39Daily militarization of Taiwanese young men until 1938, when laws passed that were in the military army,
01:46the military army, the military army, the military army, the military army, the military army, the military army.
01:49And they had to do all of them.
01:50They had to work with the military army in active military service.
01:51But there were several in active military service.
01:52I think that's more like about 80,000 or so, but others did work that essentially serve the wider purpose of the Imperial Japanese Army.
01:58tell me. Daily militarization of Taiwanese young men until 1938, when a law is passed that
02:09Taiwanese can be volunteer soldiers or volunteer gunzoku, kind of laborers or attached to the
02:15military. And then the actual formal draft of Taiwanese men doesn't begin until much later in
02:21war. The battle cost the Americans nearly 13,000 lives, about 7% of the nearly 200,000 troops on
02:30the front lines. Japanese losses were far worse, with over 110,000 killed, or roughly 92% of their
02:38forces. An unknown number of Taiwanese were among the Japanese dead. But how many served, let alone
02:46how many died, remains a mystery. A lone monument on the island lists just 34 Taiwanese names,
02:53a figure most experts believe is far from accurate.
02:56Then, according to the school of the U.S. Faculty of the fellow U.S. College,
03:03Yow estimates that the tax Bakeless record should remain taken from 1,000 people.
03:07His record of the maximum period is to be performed by a 1,000 people. The next day,
03:13in the U.S. Pennsylvania, the Jewish society to be corona, and then the Jewish society to be
03:15completed. Since the Jewish society, the Jewish society to study the people in the
03:20country, the Jewish society to join the hierarchy.
03:23Both Taiwan and Okinawa were part of the Japanese Empire during the war, and Taiwanese war dead were recorded alongside other Japanese casualties.
03:32In the war, we saw 34 Taiwanese people in Taiwan.
03:40Normally, they would not be able to write their names.
03:48They usually found their names in a three-word name.
03:58After the war, when the control of Taiwan was handed over to the Republic,
04:02those records, the ones that weren't destroyed, remained in Japan.
04:07Actually, the most detailed information in Taiwan is in Japan.
04:12But if there are no foreign authorities in Taiwan,
04:16if there are no foreign authorities in Taiwan,
04:20then we can only use those records or their family's letters to know that some people died in Taiwan,
04:30but there are no information left.
04:33The nature of a fighting on Okinawa has made recovering remains extremely difficult.
04:39Japanese soldiers and Okinawan civilians were often forced to fight to the death in caves
04:44or kill themselves, sometimes with their families, rather than surrender.
04:49As the war goes further north and gets closer to Japan and we get to this greater level
04:53of savagery that the war had become, the Americans were using more and more of one of humanity's
04:58oldest weapons, flames, fire. And what I mean is, of course, the flame tanks that I mentioned,
05:05but the flamethrower teams, you know, strap the tank to your back and here you are with
05:10that hose and you're just hosing down caves or any other fighting position.
05:14Against some of the most fanatical opposition ever encountered, the Americans blast their
05:19way forward grenade by grenade. The whole island is honeycombed with defenses and the enemy has
05:24to be ferreted out one at a time.
05:26Eighty years after the war, the remains of dozens of people are still found each year.
05:31Some are soldiers, others are among the more than 100,000 civilians killed during the battle,
05:37roughly a third of Okinawa's wartime population.
05:41Around 1,400 sets of remains are unclaimed, awaiting identification through DNA testing.
05:47It was absolutely such a mess in 1945 that I think it's hard for us to wrap our minds around it.
05:53It's an environmental mess, how battered that landscape was, you know, and on top of it,
05:59the weather, of course, the rain had created quagmires of mud. A lot of the Japanese are underground,
06:06and so, you know, they experience subterranean deaths or they're sealed in caves.
06:14A mop-up team using phosphorus, flame and small arms fire reduces a camouflaged Japanese position.
06:21In the aftermath of a battle, and later the entire war,
06:26U.S. forces quickly shifted from combat to humanitarian efforts. Japan turned its focus to
06:32rebuilding, and in Taiwan, political realities like the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War took precedence.
06:38There was little appetite to confront inconvenient troops, especially the possibility that Taiwanese
06:46troops took part in war crimes and atrocities. No side had the political will to fully reckon with
06:53the past. Nobody's big concern was, in the immediate aftermath, commemoration and, you know,
07:00figuring out remains and all that, unless it's their own. You know, their idea was,
07:06let's move on. Everybody's idea was let's move on, and if you're well now,
07:10and the the idea is, I'm just happy I survived.
07:16而且那個台灣這邊的政府基本上也不鼓勵,甚至會去阻止台灣人去處理
07:19這個戰遣的這些相關的這些資訊,也就是代表說,很多的那個
07:24那個戰貌者,他的 الض�,他沒辦法去找說他的家人那個是在哪邊,暫時的
07:30也沒辦法去了解說,就是說,去跟那个沖繩縣政府去跟他們提起
07:3680 years on, the World War II generation is fading.
07:44Taiwanese now join Okinawa memorials, reading the names of their war dead.
07:49A small but overdue tribute, yet many questions remain unanswered.
07:54The full number of Taiwanese who served and died is still a historical mystery.
07:59And advocates press Japan to release wartime records while urging Taiwan to confront and
08:04fully reckon with its past.
08:07The second world war remains the most important and fully reckon with its past.
08:32The second world war remains the most important story in modern history, yet in one of its
08:38final chapters, the Battle of Okinawa, the deaths of Taiwanese soldiers remain a mystery.
08:44Without working to uncover and preserve this past, knowledge of Taiwan's role in the world's
