A Member of China’s Greatest Generation Passes Away

Taiwan’s former Prime Minister Hau Pei-tsun passed away in Taipei Monday, at the age of 100. Also a former defense minister, Hau played an important role in the post-war development of Taiwan society. What is less well-known is the fact that he was also a World War Two veteran.

Hau was born in Jiangsu province on August 8, 1919, less than a decade after China’s 2,000-year-old imperial system had been replaced with a republic based on modern principles of governance. Like many other idealistic young men of his generation, he chose a military career, graduating early in 1938 because the nation needed soldiers for the war with Japan.

Hau Pei-tsun postwar

He became an artillery officer and initially specialized in the use of guns received from the Soviet Union as part of comprehensive military aid sent from Moscow for use in the struggle against the common Japanese foe. During one of his first engagements in south China’s Guangdong province in 1938, the sustained injuries and was hospitalized.

The following years, he received further artillery training, and in the period from 1942 to 1945, he was stationed in India and Burma, where China and the United States had entered into close military cooperation.

The victory in 1945 left an indelible mark on him. “China’s rise in today’s world, and its growing wealth, is based on the victory over Japan,” he wrote in his last book, published in November 2019. “It is the proudest moment in the history of the Chinese nation, and the moment that more clearly than anything else brings to the fore the Chinese spirit.”

 

Categories: War, Witnesses

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