Manchuria Dandelion
Augustus.Lee

Last year, a 5 episode documentary called Taiwanese in Manchuria was aired in Taiwan. As many as some 5000 Taiwanese worked and lived in Manchuria before the end of WWII, out of which 1000 were doctors, thus Taiwan was often referred to in Manchuria as the Island of Doctors back then. There was even such presence in my own life. I could remember a tall handsome charming elderly middle aged man working in my mother’s hospital like 25 years ago whom I called Uncle Tao. He was the radiologist in the hospital, and his name was Tao Tai-sheng. Tai-sheng literally means Taiwanese born. His entire family moved to Manchuia before the end of the war, and never left.

The first foreign minister of Manchuria was also a Taiwanese, whose success story stirred up the island a little bit and ignited a Manchuria fever among the educated young Taiwanese desperately seeking promising opportunities, and Manchuria provided them with a stage.

Tsai Ing-wen, the former DPP leader and presidential candidate was born into a businessman’s family, and the father worked in Manchuria as a mechanic in an airbase. He went back to Taiwan after the war and started his own car repair business in Taipei. Mr. Tsai accumulated some wealth from his garage and ventured into real estate which proved to be a huge success.
And Lee Teng-hui, the very founding father of modern Taiwan himself, also aimed at Manchuria with his own future. He majored in agricultural economics at Kyoto Imperial University both because of the booming agricultural development in Manchuria and his Alma Mater’s strong alumni network there. Unfortunately, the war ended so early that we missed this great man.

By the way. Park Chung Hee, the former president of South Korea who lead the country for 19 years before his assasination, studied at and graduated from Shinkyo (my home city, the name 新京 Hsinking means New Capital in Japanese and Mandarin) Army Acadamy. Having served as a lieutenant in the Manchurian Army for four years before the end of the war, Mr. Park went back to Korea, fought in the Korean War and somehow became the president of South Korea through a coup d’état. His leadership was strong and effective, thus brought the country prosperity and gained him popularity. His only daughter now is the incumbent President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye.
And you already knew the family story of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo of Japan.

We may be ignored and left forgotten in rust and dust today. But every leadership in the developed East Asia today has a proud family history of service in Manchuria. We were like the United States for East Asians back then. We also had tens of thousands of Jews who were equally treated as everyone else was. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose father grew up in Manchuria and spoke fluent Mandarin, visited his family graveyard in Harbin, Manchuria a few years ago. I also have a friend and fellow country man at Columbia doing his MBA with whom I dine out weekly. He has 1/8 Jewish blood from his mothers side, and is proud of our country as much as I am. Communism may have wiped out many things, but as humans we could as well preserve something valuable and pass it down our bloodline to make it endure, as those great people I mentioned above did.
