Establishing a Peace Culture:Story-telling and Historical Interpretation

by Ronald Tsao

Abstract

    Taiwan’s Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park has as its guiding mission human rights history, island ecology, and peace culture, and therefore has included the factors of history, environment and culture in the establishment of the museum and in its formative process. Important content in the park’s communicating of peace culture has been the veracity of historical narrative and the public’s understanding of the history of oppression of human rights. This paper emphasizes the long-term, ongoing interview of the life experience during the White Terror of the victims and people involved in their rescue, as it is they who provide the life histories. The public is relatively capable of deriving edification concerning the meaning of life from their stories, which facilitates a feeling of empathy, understanding and the importance of a peace culture for society, in turn promoting harmonious dialog and deepening the cultural imagination as regards the democratic life. Peace memorial museums in the Far East should allow history to serve as their mutual instructors, creating a concentric effect, spreading outward like ripples of water. Memorial museums are at the center of the dissemination of peace culture, just as each individual among the public is at the center of peace generation.

Key terms: peace culture, human rights, Taiwan’s white terror, story telling, historical interpretation

    The fifth International Peace Museum Conference which met in Gernika-Lumo in 2005 was truly memorable. We met again in the beautiful city of Kyoto, Japan, reminding me of the past participation of so many Japanese from the Kansai area in the rescue of Taiwan’s political prisoners. At the 10 December 2007 opening of the Jingmei Human Rights Memorial Park, Taiwan NGOs greeted the arrival of foreigners from a number of countries, including several from Japan, who had worked on the rescue of Taiwan’s political prisoners in the past. In June 2008 Kobayashi Ryujiro, who had come to Taiwan thirty years ago to gather material on Taiwan political prisoners, came again to Taiwan to perform at a peace music festival put on by a local NGO. Another who had participated in Taiwan political prisoner rescue work in the 1970s and 1980s, the revered Miyake Kiyoko, has since become friends with the three old protagonists whose stories figure below, thanks to her long-standing concern for human rights and despite their age differences. Their transnational kindred feelings have resulted in intimate correspondence between nationals of two countries, and the true tales that follow are stories engendered by NGO activities, and are vital contributions as told by the peace-related museums.

Three Stories

Story number one: Miyake visited Taiwan in June 2008 to participate in the memorial service held in Fengshan for Hsu Chao-jung (1928-2008). On 20 May 2008, as the sun was setting over the Taiwan Strait, Hsu, formerly a Japanese soldier at the time of Japan’s colonization of Taiwan, and following the Second World War a navy man and White Terror political prisoner (from 1958 to 1968), immolated himself at the War and Peace Park at Chijin Beach, Kaohsiung. Hsu was protesting that “Taiwan does not seem like a country, where the government ignores the fact that former soldiers who are Taiwan nationals have not received just treatment” and that “the Koahsiung Municipal Council has renamed the ‘War and Peace Memorial Park’ as the ‘Peace Memorial Park.’” The news was reported the next day on the society pages of the local newspapers.
　　　　◆Hsu Chao-jung (1928-2008)(photo by Ronald Tsao)

Story number two: On the cold wintry day of 28 February 2008, Lu chao-lin (1929-2008), who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and served 25 years, was at the Taipei Race Track Memorial Park, where political prisoners had been executed during the White Terror. He was explaining to young friends the history of the February 28 (1947) Incident and the White Terror when he suddenly collapsed. Vital signs were lacking when he arrived at the hospital, and he died the next day. Taiwan’s papers reported this news as “death of the explainer.”
　　　　◆Lu chao-lin (1929-2008)(photo by Ronald Tsao)

Story number three: Early this year, Tsai Kun-lin (1930- ), while walking 20 kilometers a day in a march held during the presidential election campaign, carried at his breast two memorial photographs. They were of two young idealists, one of whom came to harm in the 1980s, the other in the 1950s. The former, Dr. Chen Wen-cheng, died after being called in by the authorities for questioning, while the latter, Yang Chun-lung, a fellow alumni of Tsai’s at Taichung First High School, had been sent to Green Island in 1950 to serve a ten-year term during the period of the White Terror. In 1950, when he took up studies at the Tainan Industrial College (now Cheng Kung University), he pursued philosophy, history, music and aboriginal art, was implicated in a “rebellion case” for participating in a book discussion group, was sentenced to ten years, and was sent to the Green Island New Life Correctional Center, where he was subjected to thought reform and forced labor. For his part in the 1953 Green Island New Life Correctional Center Recidivist Case, Yang was sent back to Taiwan and on 13 January 1956 was executed. He was 27 at the time. This story made the rounds of the Internet during the presidential election campaign, and was bandied about by the 300 Taiwanese and Japanese participants of the May 2008 Taichung First High School alumni reunion in Tokyo.

    It is the amity between the nationals of Taiwan and Japan that stands out in the foregoing stories, and the expression of spontaneous, humanist activity on the part of NGOs and individuals alike. As we examine the influence of the Japanese colonial legacy on two different generations of Taiwanese, these stories are certainly of far-reaching importance in their relation to the historical context underlying the mutual understanding between the Taiwanese and Japanese citizenries. The three old protagonists had all been educated under the Japanese colonial regime, had all been victimized by the February 28 Incident and the White Terror, and had all been incarcerated on Green Island, which lies off the southeast coast of Taiwan. They are the historical witnesses to Taiwan’s 20th century.

    Background to these stories covers the last one hundred years of Taiwan history: turnover of ruling regimes, linguistic vicissitudes, national identity of the people, modernization, culture gaps, social responses, perspectives of the media, and many other social and cultural topics that await more penetrating analysis. The stories reveal how the three old protagonists, themselves historical actors and witnesses, hoped that their actions would bring society to acknowledge its “not too remote” history. The cultural significance of their actions has sadly been lost on most Taiwanese today. The main reason for this is the systematic influence of the long period of martial law (1949-1987), while in the process of democratization neither government nor society gave transitional justice appropriate treatment. Long concerned about the victims of the White Terror, NGOs, on the other hand, have grasped the connection between the characters in the stories and history, and have provided the human rights memorial facilities with priceless raw material.

Historical Context

    The author believes that a penetrating understanding of the historical context with these three old protagonists must be attempted from at least two directions.

    First, important comparative historical research of their East Asian neighbors should not be ignored by peace-related museums in East Asia, especially the cumulative mutual relations produced by regional factors, such as the historical contexts in Japan, the Ryukyus, Korea, China and Taiwan. With the Yasukuni Shrine’s Yushukan Museum displaying a picture of Lee Teng-chi, brother of the former president Lee Teng-hui, and the museum at the War Memorial of Korea showing how the Republic of China (Taiwan) participated in the Vietnam War, just how the peoples of Taiwan and Japan understand the exhibition narrative of the former, and the peoples of Taiwan and Korea understand that of the latter, deserve treatment in another paper.

    The second approach is to interpret the Taiwan historical context from the standpoint of human rights. As seen by the victims, Taiwan’s postwar history is both a prolonged history of human rights violations and a history of the people’s struggle for human rights in which both the subjective and objective environments forced the 20-year democratization process, producing all sorts of NGOs which raised broad demands for human rights. These organizations took part in the human rights movement at home and abroad, including rescuing political prisoners and the movements for historical redress. Although the abstract concept of human rights derived from western culture and from the historical context, the real content of Taiwan’s postwar history contains countless incidents of human rights violations and struggles for human rights.

    Upon the advent of democracy in the 1990s, museums were established one after another to promote human rights: the February 28 Memorial Museum (Taipei, 1997), the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park to commemorate the White Terror (Taitung County, 2002), and the Jingmei Taiwan Human Rights Park (Taipei, 2007). With the people demanding to know what took place in the democratization process of the past, these museums became the places where modern history could be remembered.

    A simple understanding of the last one hundred years of Taiwan history must recognize the influence that war has had on the fate of Taiwan’s residents. In 1895, at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War and the defeat of the Qing empire, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in perpetuity. In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) government occupied the Japanese colony. This was followed by the civil war in China, the KMT retreat to Taiwan, and the onset of the Cold War. 1949 saw the beginning of 38 years of rule by martial law, with the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party continually mired in their civil dispute. Today, although Taiwan is a democratic society, it is still faced with such destabilizing factors as the missiles that China has aimed at Taiwan and the Anti-secession Law that they passed on 14 March 2005, which brought tens of thousands of people out into the streets in protest. The threat of war remains a constant threat, not only to Taiwan but to peace in East Asia. While the will to self-determination by the people has been gradually strengthening with each democratic election, with the March 2008 presidential election the reins of power returned to the same KMT that had formerly ruled through martial law. The KMT has a policy of opening wide the doors to China, avoiding the topic of transitional justice, and allowing the substantive utility of the human rights memorial parks to atrophy.

    There are three aspects to our understanding of what Taiwan’s memorial parks are able to do, how they can help Taiwan’s social self-awareness, and how they can promote understanding among neighboring countries and sharing of both the freedoms and human rights brought through democratization, on the one hand, and the hurdles yet to be overcome, on the other.

    One aspect is the historical context: while after 1895 the Japanese colonial rulers established Japanese citizenship for Taiwan residents, and after the Second World War the KMT ruling establishment tried to set up a process by which they would become Chinese, the two governments never successfully used museums in the forging of an “imagined communities.” As pointed out by Benedict Anderson, the western colonial powers in Southeast Asia used three strategies to legitimize their rule: population census, mapping, and museums. (Anderson 1991: chapter 10) In surveying the historical roles played by museums during the two colonial systems originating from abroad during the twentieth century, they are far from solid.

    Secondly, Taiwan has no war museum that is national in name, which it could have used to solidify the nation’s collective memory and to construct an “imagined communities” on the part of the Taiwan citizenry. Perhaps Taiwan could use the human rights memorial parks already established to explore the subject of human rights, and creative ideas concerning the connectedness of war and peace issues so as to construct a peace culture. Such are the forward-looking visions of the human rights memorial parks.

    Third, so many discussants have raised the ideals and practice of human rights, and their obvious advancement in the last century following the Second World War. Whether human rights are universal values, in academic discourse and the experience of realizing human rights in each country, no one can ignore local cultural tradition; the inherent legitimacy of cross-cultural human rights perspectives and their external universality have been accorded broad discussion in this century. Therefore, human rights concepts and their realization, which form the basis of peace ideas and action, are important themes for the peace-related museums.

    In the vicissitudes of Taiwan’s fate in the past and the results of decisions to go to war with its neighbors, never was it Taiwan which went to war; rather, Taiwan was always the victim of war. Currently Taiwan has no nation-centered war museum, nor does it have any museum carrying the title of “peace.” In the human vocabulary, “peace” is ordinarily used in contradistinction to “war” as a way to understanding each of the concepts. Although Taiwan has no war or peace museums, it does have human rights memorial parks. With human rights as their basic articulation, hereafter it will be necessary for them to communicate the peace message. With their agenda of human rights and peace, the memorial parks and NGOs will cooperate in adhering to the social realities, thereby responding to the subject matter reflected in the foregoing stories.

Historical Interpretation and Contemporary Society

    Taiwan’s human rights memorial parks must first get into penetrating analysis and exposition of cases of both human rights abridgement and the struggle for rights. Only from macro- and micro-analysis of these cases will we: get a grasp of the whole picture of the individual, collective and common terrain in a society under 38 long years of martial law; understand the influence, both material and immaterial, engendered by a closed society; and recognize that all questions associated with transitional justice pose a collective challenge for contemporary society, and that the experience of together overcoming these difficult questions is the new experience of a democratizing society bounding towards mutual trust and understanding. Opening their doors and interacting with the public, the human rights memorial parks are the ideal places to use historical experience to study the methods of forging social harmony. Human rights memorial parks may be said to be the dispatch centers for spreading the news of human rights and peace, and educational institutions for establishing peace and democratizing.

    There are many good methods and media for transmitting the peace message. Aside from story telling and historical interpretation, multimedia artistic creation offers many good methods. In addition to facilities construction and commemorative activities undertaken from an official point of view, there have been attempts by NGOs to bridge the gap in understanding between the former victims and the young generation, to make up for the loss in feeling from society’s historical amnesia. Concrete measures include: visiting historical sites; a “Taiwan Will Never Forget” tour of Japan’s peace museums and visits with human rights rescue workers; production of films on the rescue work and children’s educational films; publishing of The Road to Freedom in Chinese, English and Japanese; exhibitions of historical human rights cases; face-to-face forums involving young people and the victims; oral history studios; and music and art festivals and performances. All of these form the core of activities linking up the public.

    It is estimated that Taiwan still has several thousand White Terror victims who have not been interviewed. Subjected to inter-disciplinary research involving historians, political and law students, anthropologists and sociologists, their stories would be a bountiful contribution to the human rights memorial museum. As the work of the NGOs has shown, the inter-disciplinary academic world is extremely important, so the writer imagines that the shuttling between NGO groups and the various disciplines would give off sparks of life experience and knowledge.

Conclusion
    Taiwan recently published translation of a new book by the winner of the 1994 Nobel prize in literature, Oe Kenzaburo, Author Oe Kenzaburo Talks about Himself, in which the novelist says that his greatest desire is for a “nuclear-free East Asia.” As a Taiwanese reader I understand this desire as coming from one whose historical context is the staunch rejection of the nuclear system by those who had suffered the atomic bombing of two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m certain that my fellow conferees each have the same desire for peace, born of the historical contexts of each of their countries. This empathetic wish works as a concentric ripple effect, like the surface of water moving outward. Peace museums are the central messengers of peace culture, just as each visitor is a central peace-maker. The more the centers, the greater the outward circling. At the meshing of these circles appear global hopes and actions for peace. The foundation of these dreams must be built on our mutual understanding of each of our historical contexts. In his visits to the peace museums of China, Korea, Japan and Okinawa, the author felt deeply that each of us must utilize the positive transmissions of the peace message to take the first step forward from the understanding of our mutual historical contexts, using them to establish a firm basis for peaceful dialogue.（Translated by Lynn Miles）