By C.J. Anderson-Wu

On the northwest side of the prison was a public graveyard, officially called the 6th Public Cemetery. The people buried here were not originally interred at this location; they were relocated from graves in Kakawasan, a branch of the Amis tribe, 39 kilometers away. Around two decades after the exiled government retreated from the continent to the island, it determined that the air force bases on the northern and western coasts were too exposed to the enemy across the strait. An empty site on the southeastern coast was selected for the new air force base. However, while the site appeared empty above ground, it was not empty below. Shortly after groundbreaking, hundreds of human remains were unearthed.

If this were happening today, according to laws regarding the preservation of historical assets, all construction would need to be halted immediately. Experts in cultural heritage would be summoned to conduct a thorough investigation of the remains to determine the appropriate course of action. In many cases, construction cannot bypass the graves and must abandon the site altogether.

However, more than seven decades ago, there was no concept of historical heritage preservation, national security was paramount. The Department of National Defense announced a three-month period for people to claim their ancestors. Any unclaimed skeletons would be incinerated, and their graves destroyed.

With no headstones, plaques, or any documents about the deceased, such as names or dates, the Department of National Defense assumed the graves were too old to be recognized and decided to resume construction soon. However, a small group of Mountain People suddenly appeared, claiming the site belonged to their traditional territory and was sacred because their ancestors had been carried there from the mountains to rest by the sea.

Evidence?

We don’t have it.

Then how do we know you are telling the truth?

We don’t lie about our ancestors; the consequences of such misconduct are severe.

You need to present documents to prove it, not make such meaningless swearing.

Look, we don’t have written words, thus we don’t have documents. If you don’t believe us, the misfortune imposed by our ancestors will be on you as well.

Don’t threaten us. We are responsible for national security.

If they had searched the archive left in the village office, they might have found something useful. It wasn’t the first time their ancestors were forced to move; representatives sent by the imperial ruler from the continent, as well as Japanese colonists, had expelled them from their traditional habitat many times. Because they were ordered to use Han or Japanese names, their births and deaths were recorded, often with the note “barbaric” beside their converted names.

This is why the significance of the archive shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s crucial for issues of historical interpretation, decolonization, archaeology, and anthropology.

The Department of National Defense insisted that all the remains be removed, despite warnings from the Mountain People. Soon enough, the construction team began to see the “consequences.” Although the groundbreaking date was chosen as auspicious according to zodiac signs, the area was hit by two tropical cyclones in one summer. Roads transporting building materials were cut off by flooding or landslides.

In addition to natural disasters, the builders faced constant accidents at the construction site—injuries due to negligence and delays caused by mistakes.

At last the construction team had to admit that the warnings of those Mountain People were not their imagination. They asked the Department of National Defense to negotiate with them. It was a faceless matter for the authorities to negotiate with the Mountain People, so they called on an Amis tribal priest. The conversation began:

Out of our respect to your ancestors, the national leader instructed us to find a solution for the relocation of your ancestors’ graves.

We are not moving. Our ancestors have rested here for centuries.

If our national security is compromised, no one is resting in peace.

We are not entitled to move them. It’s not allowed.

Come on, can you throw lots to summon their spirits and ask for permission?

Thus, a tribal wizard was engaged to communicate with their ancestral spirits. For Han people, there are two methods to communicate with spirits: asking Yes/No questions by throwing lots, or talking to them through a divine medium. For the Mountain Peoples, who now call themselves Indigenous Peoples, communication with spirits is done through tribal wizards or witches, whose functions are similar to shamans.

The negotiation with the spirits seemed to drag on, testing the patience of the delegates from the Department of National Defense. They began to suspect that the tribal priest and wizard were deceiving them. The wizard chanted in an unfamiliar language, his voice fluctuating between low and high tones. At times, he spoke as if in conversation; at other times, he sang. Occasionally, he moved the beads arranged on the ground.

After four days of the intriguing ritual, the wizard finally concluded the matter with a site appointed by the Amis spirits, located 39 kilometers from their current position. Thus the reburial began, accompanied by various rites, chanting, and even dance-like movements. However, officers from the Department of National Defense noticed that not all of the graves were excavated; in fact, many remained untouched.

Why are there still so many?

They are not our people.

What? Then who are they?

The priest shrugged.

Can you rebury them with your people? One of the delegates, Cheng Sir, restrained himself from losing his temper.

Of course not. They are strangers, they might be Han people, or Hakka people, they are not us.

Cheng Sir was on the verge of exploding, but he held himself back for a second as a good idea crossed his mind.

They might be strangers to you, but not to your ancestors. After all, they’ve been resting in the same place for decades. Talk to your ancestors; they might want to move with their roommates.

The priest considered this for a moment and then went to speak with the wizard. They agreed to communicate with their ancestral spirits, though they couldn’t guarantee any results.

The ritual began again. Fortunately, it was much shorter than the first.

Our ancestors said they can’t make decisions for others.

Now Cheng Sir was really mad.

If you don’t relocate all of them, I will pack them all up and burn them in the incinerator, including the bones of your ancestors, and prosecute you for obstruction of national security according to The Temporary Provisions Effective during the Period of Communist Rebellion!

The priest, wizard, and their followers did not know what this long-named law meant, but from Cheng Sir’s grave expression, they figured it was not negotiable. They quickly picked up their tools and dug up the human remains as fast as possible, ancestors or not.

Thus the air force base occupies the site of a former cemetery for Indigenous people and unknown Han or Hakka individuals. However, no one knows why they were buried there in the first place. Were they enemies or friends? Were they relocated from other sites?

Considering the gaps between the written documents stored in the village office and the oral history passed down by the Amis people, field investigations became necessary to address indigenous matters. The memories and teachings of the elders were more reliable than the interpretations of the written documents from an official perspective. According to some Amis elders, people in Kakawasan were forced to relocate by the Japanese colonial regime, which planned to construct a harbor around their land. The harbor was never constructed before Japan’s imperial military was defeated.

After WWII, the Nationalist government repurposed the old Japanese ammunition building to establish a prison for imprisoning Communists, national traitors, or their sympathizers, and again expelled the indigenous people to grow sugar cane on their territory. The forests they once hunted for food or felled for building materials became state property, and they were no longer allowed to use these natural resources.

The extension of the runways for aircrafts several years after the construction of the air force base had removed more graves, but not all of them. The bones of the Pasawali and Kararuan people’s ancestors still lie beneath the runways. After a long time of negotiation, they finally are allowed to conduct their traditional rituals for their ancestral spirits. Each year, they have to take turns to enter the air force base and worship their ancestors because part of the graves are under the area where the air fighters T-BE5A Brave Eagles are parked, leaving no space for all the worshippers to be present at one time.

Having missed the timing for reburial seventy years ago, the Pasawali and Kararuan people’s annual ancestor worship and chanting take place against the backdrop of the deafening sound of F-5E or F-16 jets taking off and landing.

Quite a heartwarming scene, isn’t it?

By the way, Kararuan in Amis language means where the Amis people wash their hair, Pasawali means enjoying sunlight from the east, and Kakawasan means where spirits gather.

C. J. ANDERSON-WU (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published fiction collections about Taiwan’s military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2021). Her third book Endangered Youth—Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine was published in April 2025. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the International Human Rights Art Festival and the 2024 Flying Island Poetry Manuscript Competition. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.