A recent Taiwanese court ruling that found a Japanese man was entitled to compensation over his father's presumed death during the so-called 228 Incident has reignited calls for Japan to redress the former colony's few remaining "comfort women."
In a first for a non-Taiwanese national, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled on Feb. 17 that 72-year-old Keisho Aoyama, from Urasoe in Okinawa Prefecture, should be paid 6 million New Taiwan dollars (about ¥21 million) by the state-funded Memorial Foundation of 228 over the wrongful death of his father, Eisaki, in 1947.
Aoyama's father is believed to be one of more than 20,000 people killed in the anti-government uprising that began on Feb. 28 that year, following a crackdown on unauthorized tobacco sales in Taipei, and which inflamed underlying tensions between Taiwanese and the nascent Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.