Monday, November 30, 2015

Blast From The Past: Taiwanese are Hardworking

A Japanese era pusher railroad.

From Robert Frank's Guadalcanal, a superb history of the Battle of Guadalcanal, discussing Japanese army deployments to the island (p, 253)...
The 17th Army petitioned Imperial Headquarters for reinforcements, including another infantry division, a tank regiment, and many artillery, supply, and communication units.1

1Incorporated in this list were several thousand laborers to porter supplies on Guadalcanal. The 17th Army specified it wanted only Taiwanese for this role, because, notes the Defense Agency history volume, it was a Japanese belief that the Taiwanese had the "strongest backs" among the subject peoples in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
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