Forgotten History: Taiwanese Veterans of World War II

Read this!  You also have to consider, though, that Taiwan at the time was controlled by the Japanese.  Link xie-xie to View from Taiwan.  Here is a piece of it:

"There has been so little commemoration of the war in Taiwan in which millions of people were directly or indirectly involved. This is a strange society, " said TEPVA Secretary-General Chuang Sheng-huang [TEPVA is the Taiwan Extra-Patriot Veterans Association -- MM].  

Citing statistics from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Chuang said that around 8,000 Taiwanese soldiers and more than 120,000 other service personnel were involved in the Pacific War, 15,000 of whom are listed as missing in action.  

Taiwan's society in the 1940's was known for its diversification, according to Chuang. "Some of the soldiers volunteered, while some were forced to fight for Japan. Some thought of themselves as Taiwanese while others regarded themselves as Japanese," he said.  "There were even some Taiwanese who volunteered to fight for the KMT in the Chinese civil war," he added.  

"Irrespective of the political ideology, the war memories and humanity are the same then and now. What we're trying to do is to reveal history and let history speak for itself," he said.