Ethnic Taiwanese Imperial Japan Serviceman

A Taiwanese Imperial Japan Serviceman (Chinese: 台籍日本兵; Japanese: 台湾人日本兵) is any Taiwanese person who served in the Imperial Japanese Army or Navy during World War II whether as a soldier, a sailor, or in another non-combat capacity. According to statistics provided by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent World War II, a total of 207,183 Taiwanese served in the military of Imperial Japan and 30,304 of them were declared killed or missing in action.

In the fall of 1937, the Empire of Japan began recruiting Taiwanese into its military; prior to that, Taiwanese were banned from serving in the military of Imperial Japan. As the war continued, there was an increasing need of translators for conducting military operations in China, and many Taiwanese volunteers were given training courses in Min, Cantonese and Mandarin languages, and served as translators for the Imperial Japanese Army operating in China. The number of Taiwanese serving in this capacity was classified, and remains unknown.

In 1942, after the United States entered the war on the Allied side, Japan lifted its ban on Taiwanese serving in a combat capacity, and began the Army Special Volunteers Act (Japanese: 陸軍特別志願兵令) in Taiwan. This act allowed the residents of Japan's overseas territories and colonies to serve in its army, and was first enacted in Korea in 1938. The first few recruitment drives were limited in scale, with only a few hundred openings available to a relatively large number of applicants. The scale gradually expanded in order to replenish the losses of manpower on the battlefield. A similar program, the Navy Special Volunteers Program (海軍特別志願兵制度^?), was established in 1943 in both Taiwan and Korea to allow non-Japanese to serve in the Navy.

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