USA Today
Date: July 4, 2015
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan marched out thousands of troops and displayed its most
Taiwan’s military starts its massive parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, with cannon salutes at the military base in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, Saturday, July 4, 2015.(Photo: Wally Santana, AP)
modern military hardware Saturday to spotlight an old but often forgotten claim that its forces, not the Chinese Communists, led the campaign that routed imperial Japan from China 70 years ago.
The military staged an unusually large two-hour parade of homegrown missiles, Apache attack helicopters and a mountain bike team designed for stealth missions, followed by awards for aged World War II veterans in their attire from the 1940s.
China and Taiwan split during civil war in 1949 and today’s China — more militarily and economically powerful than Taiwan — claims that the Chinese Communists had directed the resistance against the Japanese. Mainland officials have argued that the Communists’ advice and fighting skills were crucial to the victory.
Taiwan’s Nationalist Party ruled all of China when Japan invaded parts of the country from 1931, forming a central stage of the Asian World War II theater. In one attack, the Japanese massacred between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese in what has become known as the Nanjing Massacre. [FULL STORY]
