O Kao

2024

Video

23‘00”

During my upbringing, I occasionally heard stories about my grandfather. However, having never met him, our relationship remained that of distant relatives. This led me to wonder whether it was possible to fully depict someone I had never seen before. With this question in mind, I asked my father about my grandfather and later visited my uncle’s house to look at the family photo album. That was the first time I saw my grandfather’s face and also the first time I learned about his experiences during World War II.

​

My grandfather was conscripted as a volunteer soldier when Taiwan was a colony of Japan, and he later participated in the war in the South Pacific. Eventually, he was discovered by American troops and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Australia. After the war, he returned to Taiwan.

​

Upon hearing these stories, I felt a profound disconnect from history, realizing how difficult it was for me to truly comprehend the fear and emotions of that time. As a result, I began searching for records in Australian archives. However, when I searched for “TAIWAN,” I found no relevant information. It was only later that I discovered I needed to search using the term “FORMOSA.”

​

This made me realize that the Western perspective on Taiwan still persists to this day, reinforcing my belief that war does not simply end at the moment of ceasefire.

 

Through the process of tracing my family history, I was compelled to reconsider the relationships between family, war, nations, and land.