My
Father/s Canteen
〈父親的水壹〉
An untold story about Taiwanese soldiers
forced to fight for Japanese causes
陳德玉
Keelung when their ships were sunk by US submarines.It' s amazing how he arrived in Manila! He said the three-month stay in Manila was the best time they had during those years. There were no battles,plenty of supplies available including tobacco and rice liquor, comfortable living in the western-style housing deserted by GIs. The only presence of minor threat was Filipino guerrillas.
After three months, they moved further south to "Halmahilas" , an island located between New Guinea (新幾內亞) and Borneo (婆羅洲) . People called it
“ small K island" because of it' s geometrical shape. ( You can see a K-shape island in the map, which is a "big K island" . Small K island is not that visible on the map ) . Life was not very strenuous there but certainly was not as good as that in Manila. In his job, the most commonly encountered patients were those with diarrhea ,malaria, injury from fist fight and
葬才
\-品- -:J:
三羽羽羽羽
j詞詞詞伺~.. 吾
聲聲
O
∞n， t出he句y knew t血he句yw附er昀e safe and each had γγ 」
崢 h坤O叩咖P戶e 叫u盯1汀1m叫叫nm1叫山1m
na盯rr叩owl句y escaped the invasion because of
Mac' s 叫叫g stra吻" La剖舵佩t記e
t出he句y were told t出ha刮t Mac' s叫t甘r叩O∞O叩p had ♂T干于 1
b 但過4
風聲明
the fall guys ( men that had fallen from coconut trees).
There was never any threat of ground battle until one day they saw a large gathering of US battle ships on the sea. Prior to this, there were frequent aerial dogfights which they could see from the shelter ( Fam-kong-don/防空洞).They knew that General MacArthur' s (麥克阿 瑟將軍) army was coming back and that invasion might be imminent. One night, a servant soldier,a Taiwanese,came to inform my father that he has seen many Japanese officers secretly packing their stuffs while the servant soldier was cleaning their living quarters. He overheard their -conversation and it appeared that they were planning to escape into the jungles. Frankly, this troop was not battle ready and certainly was no match for the GIs because they were a supporting battalion. Facing the dilemma of going into the jungle with the Japanese or surrender to GIs, they had an agonizingly long night.
體交大友聲花
One thing I found amazing was that even back then,many knew that Americans treat POWs fairly and surrender was not such a bad thing for Taiwanese, except for the fear of Japanese retaliate bullets. As hours passed by, and in fact days went by,
the invasion never came. Few weeks later,
they received news that Philippine main island had been invaded by GIs. From then
者同盟團
father. My family assumed that they had lost him until one evening he suddenly showed up on our street.
The canteen now sits in my family room ,
along with some of the war memoriors I collected over the years.
作者小檔案:
陳德玉學長，交通大學電子工 程系 58 級校友，現任美國 Virginia
Polytechnic Institute 及University at island. Japanese
separated into two groups. There were no Taiwanese combat soldiers because they were not allowed to participate,even if they wanted to. All of Taiwanese were supporting personnel, including one doctor, three sanitary soldiers and quite a few servant soldiers. They stayed in the island eight more months after the war ended. During ι
@ll) ~01@@~il@~90@0~0@ Q'il@~ Blacksburg 電子工程系教授。
•
After the war,Dutch army took over the and Taiwanese were
those months, they were self sufficient,
waiting to return home.
憂互妥
沈洪熹
次碌著氣清
友聲有聲
the one who informed my father of the imminent Japanese escape, did not make it
That broke my father' s heart. couldn' t save the soldier from an injury
An The servant soldier,
He home.
received in a fall from the coconut tree.
中天用正明
unexpected bee sting at the tree top caused s fall.
the servant'
切國皆寂靜
79
益坐車久抗瑩
During the eight months after the war,
no letters from my
在聲有聲，在聲有聲友聲有莓，灰葬布聲，友聲有替
之
ftJ
丸之
Ll
之
L!fNCKR
「
4月
1
，之
hrt
丸之
L1
月月
1
之卡之
L!
乞ksrJ
丸之卡，
p
JSome thought that he must have lost his mind in making such predictions. enough,several days later he was arrested by higher officers for spreading rumors. My father said even the officers who arrested Sure
•
co n 0 .哩， A &EL C .I .d e v且 PA CO --EA LU Vd LU n e k a LH P3 vd ' •• A LU .會 EA CO ., EA v e rA e w m ﹒唔， A LHbecause Okinawa was under severe attack by then.( Of course, nobody believed in his prediction of Roosevelt' s death). My father is not the kind of guy who can easily believe this sort of things but he did witness the predictions.
k
there was no news and
4
月叫
J
℃
