Answer by Yoneda. I first found out when I went to the place of execution, together with Tajima.
Q. Did you go to the sick men’s quarters before the sick men were taken to the mountain?
105 A. Yes I did go.100 court testimony by Yang Bing, A471.80978
101 court testimony by Yoneda Susume, A471.80978
102 Record of Military Court, A471.80978
103 court testimony by Lo Mei Ling, and court testimony by Yang Bing, A471.80978
104 court testimony by Yoneda Susume, A471.80978
105 The “mountain” refers to where the shooting/execution took place.
Q. Was Tajima with you in the sick men’s quarters?
A. Yes.
……..
Q. Did you go with the sick men from their quarters to the mountain?
A. Yes I followed behind them.
Q. Was Sgt Awano with you then?
A. Yes Sgt Awano was there, but he was ahead of us leading us.
Q. Did he join you at the sick quarters?
A. I met him at the entrance to the labour camp.
Q. Was that after you had started with the sick men from their quarters?
A. Yes.
Q. When did you first know that the Chinese were going to be taken to the mountain?
A. When Sgt Awano told us to follow behind.
Q. Before you left with the sick men did you at any time during that morning interpret any conversations between Tajima and Lt. Lo?
A. Yes I did interpret it.
Q. Where did the conversation take place?
A. At Lt. Lo’s quarters.
……..
Q. Did you think it odd that you a civilian was ordered to shoot Chinese when there were Japanese close handy?
A. D (sic, I) did not have an opportunity to think it odd at (sic, as) I was not giving (sic, given) a chance because it was at the pit right before the shooting.
Q. Why did you pretest when given the order by Sgt. Awano?
A. I thought it was not my duty to kill the Chinese as I was only a Formosan Labourer.
Q. What happened when you refused to carry out the order?
A. When I objected to that Awano came very close to me and told me that I was to do exactly the same as Tajima did or otherwise he would kill me.
Q. When Awano said that to you did you think he would actually carry out the threat?
A. Yes I thought he would carry out the threat.
In addition, the court took record of Yoneda’s statement in another court document:
I was a Chinese interpreter attached to the Talili Branch of the 26 Field Supply Depot. I think the incident occurred about the 20
thof April 1943. That day I interpreted and took Chinese to the place where they were to be shot. Being ordered by Sgt. AWANO, I shot two Chinese and First c____
106private TAJIMA shot the other two.
The above testimony by Yoneda better delineates the sequence of events that led to his involvement—as well as that of other convicted TWCs who had served as ad hoc interpreters such as Hayashi—in the killing of Chinese POWs:
1. Assignment of ad hoc interpreter:
Due to the language barrier, communication was difficult if not entirely impossible between the Japanese military authorities and the Chinese POWs. Under the circumstances, ad hoc interpreters were needed.
In Rabaul, the only persons capable of this task were the Taiwanese, who were capable of speaking both Japanese and Chinese (dialects). Therefore, in addition to the original job such as laborers of the
Formosan Special Labor Volunteer’s Corp, Taiwanese who were able to speak/communicate in multiple languages were given additional assignment as ad hoc “Chinese interpreters”.
2. Interpretation duty and more:
Whenever any Japanese—whether it was an officer or soldier—needed to talk to or convey message to Chinese POWs, a Taiwanese would be required to be present as interpreter to conduct communication between the Japanese and the Chinese.
106 The word is illegible in the document, but should be “class”.
Because of their language ability/interpretation duty, in any matters that dealt with Chinese POWs, Taiwanese would always be needed and present. For the sake of convenience, the duty of supervising Chinese POWs was also given to the Taiwanese.
3. Participation in the Chinese killing:
At the occasion of killing Chinese POWs, the Taiwanese were needed and present because of their language ability/interpretation duty.
On the day of the killing, these Taiwanese were initially present at the occasion simply to perform the duty as interpreters.
The Taiwanese were first at the living quarters of Chinese POWs, serving as interpreters to convey message from the Japanese officers to Chinese POWs.
Then, when the Japanese officers asked those sick Chinese POWs to step out and walk to the pit where the Chinese POWs were eventually killed, the Taiwanese were present all the time, again, serving as interpreters to convey message from the Japanese officers to Chinese POWs.
The Taiwanese were at the bottom of the Japanese military rank, they were likely to be given order by other Japanese soldiers and not given any autonomy in terms of job assignment. In the case of Yoneda, he was originally/initially asked to be present to perform interpretation duty, but was given additional duty, by Tajima, who was a First Class Private, to carry weapons and follow Chinese POWs to the pit.
Japanese officers gave order to soldiers to kill the sick Chinese POWs at the pit.
While the Taiwanese were present at the pit, where the killing would take place, they were ordered by Japanese soldiers to take weapons and shoot the Chinese.
The Taiwanese could only follow order, as they did not have any power to refuse or act against Japanese officers or soldiers.
(As a result) The Taiwanese who served as ad hoc interpreter participated in the killing of Chinese POWs.
As illustrated above in cases of Yoneda and Hayashi, among others, civilian Formosans who served as interpreters between the Japanese military and the Chinese prisoners of war were brought (or rather forced)
into a situation in which he committed the alleged war crime. In other words, based on analysis of trials records from the Australian courts, informal interpretation duty was partially responsible for the conviction and death sentence of several TWCs, such as Hayashi, Okabayashi, Takebayashi, and Yoneda in the two Chinese POW killing trials.
Conclusion
While the status as formal interpreters or the assignment of informal interpretation duty alone did not lead to the trials of these Taiwanese wartime interpreters as war criminals and none of the TWCs was convicted solely because of interpretation, the assignment as interpreters did played a significant role in bringing/forcing a good number of TWCs into the situation in which they committed/were alleged to commit war crimes. And in the cases of Yasuda Muneharu, Hayashi Hajime, and Yoneda Susume, interpretation assignment partially but directly led them to a wartime (and postwar situation in court) in which they paid the ultimate price of life.
In discussing the relationship between interpretation and power (and its consequence), Delisle and Woodsworth point out that “In the German army, interpreters held the rank of officers. This was not necessarily an advantage if the interpreter became a prisoner of war”.107 The cases of Taiwanese wartime interpreters as analyzed above show that during the war, language proficiency and interpretation duty brought a good number of Formosans to a peculiar work situation in the battlefields, in which they were seemingly given higher “power” vis-à-vis the Chinese POWs under their supervision or the local civilian residents under the terror of Military Police. And in contrast to wartime interpreters in other countries, the Taiwanese—as Japan’s colonial subjects—were made wartime interpreters under a rather particular colonial and wartime context, in which Taiwanese wartime interpreters’ unique language proficiency of their native Chinese dialects and the Japanese—the language of colonialism and their acquired “national language”—re-defined the relationship (of power) between the colonizer and the colonized. The history of Taiwanese wartime interpreters certainly adds a new dimension to the discussion of politics of language (kokugo or “national language”) and Japanese colonialism.108
107 Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth, eds., Translators through History (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1995), p.274
108 See further discussion in Lee Yeounsuk (Maki Hirano Hubbard, trans.), The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in
Language proficiency, unfortunately, became a burden on these Taiwanese wartime interpreters as they were sent to the courtrooms of war crime trial after the war and eventually either the scaffold or prison cells.
To re-phrase Delisle and Woodsworth’s point, in fulfilling their interpretation duty, willingly or unwillingly, Taiwanese wartime interpreters took on the responsibilities of Japanese officers and suffered the
consequences. In battlefields, wartime interpreters served as the messengers between two warring parties; but
as the above cases of Taiwanese wartime interpreters illustrate, it was the messengers who got punished (and sometimes killed) in the postwar war crime trials.參考文獻