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Chen Qian-wu (1922~2012) is an author who experienced the Pacific War as a ‘solder on active duty’ through the ‘Taiwanese Army Special Volunteer’ system implemented in 1942. He wrote novels based on inner introspection of dual identity realized through diverse wartime experiences and encounter with others. While experiencing both ‘elementary school for Taiwanese’ and ‘elementary school for Japanese’ education systems in the Japanese colonial period, he was able to think critically about the meaning of differential treatment against the colonized. In addition, his identity as a Taiwanese person maintained by language (Taiwanese) that was prohibited at the time allowed him to introspect his standing by maintaining certain distance from the situation instead of getting attracted to ‘being promoted to a ruler though modern knowledge.’ He resisted the ‘name changing system’ that took place in Taiwan in 1940. He examined problems of the deteriorating island of Taiwan using nutrients left over by elder authors like Zhang Wenhuan and Yang Kui. At the same time, he could keep a critical attitude toward two-sided (illogical) policies of the Japanese colonial rulers. Such growth process is important because it has many implications about the post-colonial reading strategy in which the colonizer drives cultural development of the colony but the colonized also communicate, resist and create in various ways. When he returned after the end of the Second World War in 1945, national language of Taiwan was changed back to ‘Chinese’ and he was forced to learn Chinese for over 10 years. He was able to resume writing since 1960s. His novels based on wartime experience do not illustrate ‘sex slaves (comfort women) of the Japanese army’ and local natives from the perspective of the Japanese army. On the contrary, his novels show dual identity of Japanese soldiers from Taiwan from the perspective of others, depicting such soldiers as people watched by the militaristic ideology and conspirators who practiced militaristic violence in battlefields. Compared to the Pacific War novels of Japan illustrating similar experiences, his novels are unique in that they do not boil down to the narrative of war humanism that ‘We are all victims of war.’ Also, when compared to the Pacific War novels of Korea that intend to explain pro-Japanese tendencies during the colonial period, Chen’s novels show discriminating views and violence of Japanese soldiers from Taiwan against local natives. Chen Qian-wu presents his own view of the war that even soldiers who were forcibly drafted cannot be freed from the experience of conspiring in the militarism.
