在國際戰犯審判中的台籍戰犯: 被殖民者的戰爭與對「殖民戰爭責任」的一個新思考

Abstract

在第二次世界大戰之後，有一百七十餘名台灣人在遭各個盟國以B/C級戰犯來審判並因而服刑，分別是澳大利亞(95名台籍戰犯; 超過台籍戰犯總數的55%)、中國、荷蘭、英國和美國。其中21名被判處並執行死刑。遭判處死刑的台籍戰犯以在澳大利亞與英國軍事法庭中最多。本研究發現，他們大多數在戰爭當中擔任的是「通譯」的工作。而之所以這些臺灣人被指派在東南亞各戰地擔任正式或非正式的翻譯工作，主要是因爲他們身爲日本帝國的被殖民者所具備的特殊語言能力。他們的語言能力提供了這些臺灣人在戰爭的發展之下特別的（工作）機會；卻也導致了部分臺灣人被帶入他們無法抗拒的工作環境，進而涉入戰爭犯罪。身爲日本帝國的被殖民者的「台籍戰犯」，凸顯了在日本帝國與歐洲殖民帝國的競爭衝突之下所衍生出來的一種特殊的「殖民戰爭責任」。從跨國的脈絡之下來重建的「台籍戰犯」歷史, 同時也顯現了戰後英法荷等殖民國透過戰犯審判和其他針對其「被殖民者」的補償手段，來重新建立其在東南亞各地殖民統治的過程。 After the Second World War, 173 Taiwanese who were recruited to serve in the Japanese military across Asia-Pacific during the war were convicted as war criminals. Based on studies of trial records and archival materials, this paper finds that among the 21 executed Taiwanese war criminals, at least 13 of them were convicted and consequently executed for crimes committed while serving as interpreters—formal and informal—during the war. In addition, a handful of Taiwanese interpreters were convicted as war criminals for various degrees of prison terms. While their number is small, the trials and punishment of these Taiwanese interpreters as war criminals provide a new perspective to understand the history of interpretation/interpreters in colonial/post-colonial and wartime context. Trial records— particularly the details of “victims” and convicted “crime”—of British courts set up in Singapore, Penang, and Kuala Lumpar and Dutch courts in the present-day Indonesia shows that most Taiwanese interpreters were convicted of crimes committed against “local civilians”. This paper argues that it was their language proficiency and interpretation duty brought/forced many Taiwanese serving in the Japanese military into close and frequent contact with the local population, particularly the Chinese, and thereby led to occasions in which these Taiwanese interpreters were involved in the alleged crime. In addition, this paper studies several cases of Taiwanese informal interpreters who committed crimes against Chinese prisoners of war (POWs) and were put on trial in the Australian courts held in Rabaul. It finds that while these Taiwanese were originally recruited as laborers, they were assigned to ad hoc interpretation duty because of their language proficiency under the contingency in the battlefields.