In 1952, ROC Foreign Affairs Minister George K.C. Yeh (葉公超) signed the Treaty of Peace Between the Republic of China and Japan. Article 3 of the treaty provided the legal basis for negotiations concerning repayment of Japan's war debts to Taiwan. At the time, Japan did not recognize the Chinese Communist government. But in 1972 Tokyo switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, and a joint Sino-Japanese communique in effect invalidated the Treaty of Peace. This removed the legal grounds for the payment of Japan's war debts to Taiwan.
In the same year, a group of Taiwan soldiers who had served in the Japanese Imperial Army wrote to the Japanese government demanding compensation. The government responded that the matter could be resolved only after Japan and the ROC had worked out certain “special provisions” concerning the details about payment stipulated in Article 3 of the Treaty of Peace. It stated that Japan was eager to reach an agreement, but “had yet to receive a response from the ROC government.” If this is true, one cannot help but wonder why the issue was left unresolved for twenty years before the ROC and Japan severed diplomatic ties.
Reprinted with permission from the China Times, July 10, 1995.
As a Japanese colony (from 1895 to 1945), Taiwan was largely considered a steppingstone for Japan's expeditions into Southeast Asia during the war. The colonial government focused on industrializing the island and strengthening its own military. When war broke out in the Pacific, Japan immediately began recruiting soldiers in Taiwan. Farmers and members of the island's indigenous tribes were assigned as militiamen, interpreters, and managers of POW jails on the front lines.
Worthless paper? Taiwan residents have spent fifty years fighting to receive compensation for their war bonds, Japanese savings accounts, and back salaries owed by the Japanese government.
Japan established a special army volunteer system in Taiwan in 1942 and a similar system for the navy the following year. By September 1944, the military operated a mandatory recruitment scheme. According to Japanese records, 80,433 Taiwanese soldiers and 126,750 civilians were mobilized during the mid-1940s. Among these, 30,306 were killed during the war. Altars for 27,857 deceased Taiwan soldiers have been found in a martyr's shrine in Tokyo. Another 173 local soldiers were found guilty of war crimes by the Allied Forces' military court and twenty-six were sentenced to death. [The Veterans and Dependents Association in Taipei estimates that 200,000 local men were recruited into the Japanese Imperial Army.] Actual figures cannot be determined because Tokyo refuses to disclose documents on its military rosters.
Japan's claimed annulment of the 1952 Treaty of Peace cut off the negotiation channel for post-war compensation for Taiwan soldiers and civilians. The issue gained public attention in December 1974 when a Taiwan veteran of the Japanese army, an indigenous tribesman, was discovered living on a small Indonesian island, unaware that the war had ended. After being transported back to Taiwan, he received compensation of ¥70,000 (now worth US$766) from the Japanese government. The receipt of such a meager amount of money won him widespread sympathy in Japan and many Japanese citizens sent private donations.
In February 1975, Taiwan political activist Wang Yu-teh (王育德) gathered a group of local veterans and organized a movement in Japan to seek compensation. Two months later, veteran Teng Sheng (鄧盛) delivered a written request for certification of his war injuries. In September 1975, he received a certificate of war injury but no compensation.
In June 1977. the Japanese Diet formed an ad hoc committee to study the issue. One month later, fourteen Taiwan soldiers filed a suit in Tokyo district court demanding compensation of ¥5 million (now US$54,700) for every local veteran. The case concluded in February 1982 with a ruling that war compensation should be determined as a matter of foreign policy or as a legislative decision, and that Taiwan soldiers were not entitled to compensation under the Law of Beneficence because it applies only to Japanese nationals.
The case was then appealed to the Tokyo High Court. In August 1985, the court concluded that Japanese law had not been violated, but also stated that the Taiwan soldiers had been treated unfairly compared with their Japanese counterparts. The ruling included a provision “hoping that the Japanese government would overcome diplomatic, financial, and technical difficulties to remedy their losses as soon as possible.”
In 1988, the Diet passed a “consolation law” under which ¥2 million (US$21 ,900) was allocated for each Taiwan veteran who had suffered severe injuries during the war and for each family that had lost a soldier in the war. That same year, the Japanese government earmarked a budget to cover these war debts.
The “consolation funds” were distributed by the ROC Red Cross. When the disbursement concluded on March 31, 1995, compensation had been sent to 29,645 soldiers---slightly below the 31,000 confirmed World War II veterans listed by the ROC Ministry of the Interior. Legislative Yuan Vice President Wang Chin-ping (王金平) requested that the 1993 deadline for filing an application be extended for the I,000-odd individuals who had not yet done so, but his request was denied.
Dissatisfaction with the compensation for Taiwan's veterans is not the only war-debt issue that remains unresolved. Many other debts remain unpaid. These include:
・Pensions for Taiwanese hired by the Japanese colonial government, and salaries, severance pay, and expenses for Taiwanese working in Japan during the Japanese Occupation. These involve 71,000 cases totaling ¥329.3 million (US$3.6 million).
・Savings accounts and annuities operated through the Japanese postal service involving 66.000 million cases and ¥162 million (US$1.8 million).
Spurred by these unresolved debts, a coalition of Taiwanese veterans and their dependents and the families of war dead have become increasingly outspoken in their demands for compensation in recent years. In 1993, Japanese Prime Minister Keiichi Miyazawa urged the Diet to resolve the issue of war debts as soon as possible. Negotiations on the issue between the ROC and Japanese legislatures began in March 1994.
Led by Legislative Yuan Vice President Wang Chin-ping, Taiwan insisted that local veterans of the Japanese army receive compensation for the time they served based on the present salaries of men enlisted in the Japanese self-defense corps, that is, a wage seven thousand times their original wage.
Negotiations came to a standstill at the beginning of this year and Japan decided on its own to increase compensation amounts based on rises in rice prices since the end of WWII. Using this system, the payments would be increased to 120 times the original salary. The Japanese government then allocated ¥35 billion (US$383 million) for war debts from its fiscal 1995 budget.
Liu Sung-pan (劉松藩), president of the Legislative Yuan, stresses that Taiwan will continue to negotiate with the Diet concerning war debts. He explains that Japan has remained vague concerning other war debts, such as public bonds issued in Japanese yen and German marks, on grounds that these are “undetermined debts.”
Masaru Nakamura, a Japanese professor of agricultural economics now teaching at National Taiwan University in Taipei, has found that Japan issued government savings bonds in Taiwan up to six times in 1939 alone. The face value of these bonds totaled ¥5.4 million (US$59,000) and only 6 percent were purchased by Japanese residing in Taiwan. If the 94 percent purchased by Taiwanese is multiplied by the Japanese government's suggested rate of 120, the current debt stands at ¥620 million (US$6.8 million). Nakamura points out that Japan also collected “defense donations” and “patriotism donations” from Taiwanese.
Early this year, the Japanese government announced that applications for the repayment of “determined debts” can be filed with its representative office in Taipei beginning in October. This will not include “undetermined debts.”