A countryside boy
I was born in 1941, or the 16th year of the Shiowa era in the Japanese calendar, in Dingden, a small village of Tachia Township near the western coast in Central Taiwan. There were about one hundred families in this village. Most of them were poor farmers. They did not own the farmland and had to pay high rent to the landlords.
At that time Taiwan was part of Japan. My father gave me a Japanese name “Teruo” which meant a brilliant hero. He always called me Teruo until he passed away in 1997.
About one month after I was born, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War exploded. When the Japanese Emperor Shiowa announced surrender to the Allied Forces on radio at noon, August 15, 1945, I was not yet four years old. But I can still remember several things during the war.