ABSTRACT

Hung Huo-chao (b. 1917) was sent to Rabaul in the South Pacific in March 1943, and in 1944 lost the lower part of his left leg in an air raid. In 1975, he became involved in a compensation lawsuit against Japan that continued for the next seventeen years.1 He said:

This is an issue of basic human rights. Demanding war debts from the Japanese is to earn back Taiwanese dignity. What we demand is to be repaid with reimbursement equal to that of our Japanese counterparts. That is, we demand the same compensation as Japanese in order to earn back our face as Taiwanese.2