A Taiwanese Teikoku Kunjin

A Taiwanese Teikoku Kunjin revisits the wartime mobilisation of Taiwanese youth. Through the testimonies of five young men drafted in their twenties as volunteers, medics, or kamikaze trainees, and sent to the South Pacific, the film blends first-person narration with archival footage to trace survival, trauma, and the enduring human cost of imperial war.

Hung Pei-ying: 'Before I made A Taiwanese Teikoku Kunjin, newspapers would from time to time have a story of old Taiwanese people demanding compensation for their military service for Imperial Japan, or a story about some Taiwanese soldier hiding in the jungles in Southeast Asia for the last four decades, totally ignorant of Taiwanese political power shift. I would only read them as legendary tales and anecdotes. One day, director Shaudi Wang asked me if I was interested in making a film on this. I was very excited, yet frankly more by the chance to make a 16mm film than by the subject per se.

After one-and-a-half months of shooting, however, I got totally drawn into their memories of the Pacific War. The veterans' accounts of the war overwhelmed me so much that I could hardly put them in a half-hour film. My loss of control is therefore evident throughout the whole film. Yet their lives have become part of my life, fortunately without my having to pay the high price they did.'

— Excerpted from Programme Catalogue, Taiwan International Documentary Festival, 1998.