SINOSPHERE
A Gap Lingers in Taiwan’s Wartime Memory
AUSTIN RAMZY July 16, 2015
时报看中国
盟军空袭台北，被遗忘的二战历史
王霜舟 2015年7月16日
This month, after a military parade featuring troops riding motorcycles and mountain bikes, Apache attack helicopters flying in formation and shirtless frogmen waving paddles from the backs of trucks, President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan told a handful of World War II veterans that their contribution to defeating Japan was not forgotten.
本月，台湾举行了一场阅兵仪式，参与阅兵的有骑摩托车和山地自行车的部队，还有阿帕奇攻击直升机编队飞行，以及在卡车上挥舞着桨片的赤膊蛙人。阅兵结束后，台湾总统马英九对一些二战老兵说，他们击败日本人的贡献并未被人遗忘。
“Facing history,” he said, “there is only one truth: that the eight-year war of resistance was led by the Republic of China, and the victory was the result of the heroic struggle of the whole nation’s army and civilians’ brave struggle under the leadership of Chairman Chiang Kai-shek.”
“面对历史，真相只有一个！”他说，“8年抗战是中华民国政府主导的，抗战胜利是蒋介石委员长领导全国军民英勇奋斗的成果。”
Mr. Ma has repeated those words in one form or another throughout this summer, during events in Taiwan to mark the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. They are meant to remind the world of China’s critical contribution to Japan’s defeat and that it was Chiang’s party, the Kuomintang, that led the fight, not Mao Zedong’s Communists. The Communists won a subsequent civil war and established the People’s Republic in 1949, forcing the Kuomintang to flee to Taiwan.
这个夏天，在台湾纪念抗战结束70周年的各种活动中，马英九曾多次以这种或那种方式重申这番话。纪念活动是为了提醒全世界，中国在击败日本的战争中做出了重要贡献，而领导抗战的是蒋介石的国民党，不是毛泽东的共产党。共产党人赢得了随后的内战，并在1949年建立了中华人民共和国，国民党则逃至台湾。
曾经的日本总督办公楼、现在的台湾总统府，曾在1945年5月31日的空袭中严重受损。
But even as the role of the Kuomintang in Japan’s defeat is better understood, some in Taiwan complain that a devastating wartime attack on the island — a deadly 1945 air raid on Taipei by American bombers — has been ignored, with no official events to mark its anniversary and no physical memorial for the dead.
但是，尽管国民党在击败日本的过程中发挥的作用得到了更多的认同，台湾仍有一些人抱怨，二战中台湾遭受的一次毁灭性袭击——美国轰炸机1945年空袭台北，导致大量伤亡——遭到了无视，官方没有举行周年活动来纪念它，也没为死者树立纪念碑。
That lacuna is a product of Taiwan’s complex history, which survives in its present-day political divide between those who see Taiwan’s identity as part of a greater China and those who see it as an independent nation. During the war, Taiwan was a colony of Japan, which had taken over the island in 1895 after defeating the Qing dynasty in the first Sino-Japanese War. More than 200,000 Taiwanese served in the Japanese Army during World War II. When Chiang’s Kuomintang took control of Taiwan after the war, it had little interest in the experience of its people during the war, particularly the suffering caused by its American allies, scholars say. Seventy years and the end of authoritarian rule on Taiwan have done little to change that attitude.
这种认知的缺失是台湾复杂历史的产物，延续到了目前的政治分歧之中：一些人认为台湾是大中华的一部分，另一些视它为独立国家。在二战期间，台湾是日本的殖民地；清王朝在第一次中日战争中失败后，日本于1895年接管了该岛。二战期间，曾有20多万台湾人在日军服役。学者认为，蒋介石的国民党在战后控制了台湾，但对台湾人在战争中的经历没有什么兴趣，尤其是美国盟友空袭造成的痛苦。七十年的时间距离，以及独裁统治在台湾的结束，也没能改变这种态度。
“The Communist Party was fighting a guerrilla war behind the lines. How is it that they came to represent China’s anti-Japanese struggle? So the Kuomintang has struggled for this history,” said Chen Yi-shen, a historian at Academia Sinica, a state-financed research institution in Taipei. “But this is out of touch with Taiwan. It’s the Kuomintang’s past glory. What about what happened to us then in Taiwan?”Jih-chang Lee, a retired philosophy professor, described his memories of the Taipei air raid in a newly published memoir. As a child, he had been relocated from Taipei in the final months of the war because of the Allied bombing. But a younger sister stayed behind. After the American B-24s dropped their payloads on the afternoon of May 31, 1945, Mr. Lee’s father rushed back to the house, on what is now Taiyuan Street in Taipei. He gathered others to dig through the rubble, but they were only able to clear it hours later, after the cries of the victims had stopped.
“After the war ended, I came back and saw the destruction and the place where my sister was killed,” Mr. Lee said in an interview. “That street had houses on both sides. Originally there were two-story buildings, but they were completely gone.”
“战争结束后，我回来了，看到损坏的房屋，和我妹妹丧生的地方，”李日章在一次采访中说。 “街道两边都有房子。本来是一些两层的楼房，但那时已被夷为平地。”
The estimated death toll of 3,000 was small compared with the more than 40,000 killed in Britain during the Blitz, or the hundreds of thousands of Japanese killed when Tokyo was firebombed and atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it was a traumatic event for Taiwan, injuring more than 10,000 and damaging important buildings like the Japanese Governor-General’s Office, now the Presidential Office Building.The war diary of Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, noted that 116 B-24s dropped 316 tons of ordnance in the attack on Taipei, then known by the Japanese name of Taihoku. The bombs that hit the nearby town of Yilan that day “achieved good destruction,” the diary said. Unexploded bombs continue to be found to this day in Taipei, a potentially lethal reminder of the buried history.
相比在德军伦敦大轰炸中丧生的4万多英国人，或者在东京空袭和广岛、长崎的原子弹轰炸中丧生的数十万日本人，预计约3000人的死亡人数并不多。但对台湾来说，这是一个创伤性的事件。轰炸导致逾1万人受伤，还损坏了一些重要建筑物，比如当时的日本总督府办公厅舍，现在的总统府。美国太平洋舰队总司令切斯特·尼米兹(Chester Nimitz)上将在日记中写道，116架B-24S将316吨炸弹投到台北，当时台北使用的是日文名“台北州”(Taihoku)。根据日记的记载，当天投到宜兰附近的炸弹“取得了良好的破坏效果”。直到今天，未爆炸的炸弹还不断在台北被发现，它们仍可能会致人死伤，也提醒了人们那段被埋葬的历史。
“There are still hidden stories that need more telling,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of history at the University of Oxford and author of the book “Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II” (outside the United States, it is titled “China’s War With Japan, 1937-1945”). “It is a worthwhile thing that greater China’s contribution to the war against Japan is recalled proportionally on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. It’s not as if it hasn’t been addressed, but broadly speaking, there hasn’t been enough attention paid to the indigenous story of what happened in Taiwan.”
“还有一些不为人知的故事需要更多地讲述出来，”牛津大学历史学教授、《被遗忘的盟友：中国的第二次世界大战》（Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II，在美国境外用的书名是《中日战争：1937-1945》）一书的作者拉纳·米特(Rana Mitter)说。“两岸对大中华区的抗战贡献进行同等的纪念是有必要的。并不是说没有提到这一点，但广义来讲，台湾本土所发生的事未得到足够的重视。”
Sun Lih-chyun, a spokesman for the executive branch of Taiwan’s government, said that while none of the official events to mark the end of the war will specifically focus on the Taipei air raid, it will be discussed during memorial activities.
On May 31, scholars held a panel discussion and civil society groups organized a memorial event on Ketagalan Boulevard, across from the Presidential Office Building. But Mr. Chen, the historian, lamented that there was no official remembrance or memorial for the dead. “In Taiwan, there’s talk of transitional justice, but it’s not complete,” he said. “The ghosts can’t leave.”
5月31日，学者举行了一场专题讨论会，公民社会团体在总统府对面的凯达格兰大道上组织了一场纪念活动。但历史学者陈仪深哀叹没有对亡者的正式缅怀和纪念。“在台湾，有关于转型正义（民主国家对过去政府违法和不正义行为的补偿，编者注）的讨论，但不彻底，”他说。“亡灵无法安息。”
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