TAIPEI, Jan. 31 Kyodo Mountaineer...

TAIPEI, Jan. 31 Kyodo

Mountaineers' heads were hidden discerning in their sleeping bags, exposing barely their eyes to the air, in an effort to avoid developing altitude sickness.

placid humid air crept through the ligneous floor of the mountain hut on the eighth station of Mt Yu (Jade Mountain in Chinese), which at 3952 meter high, is the highest peak in Northeast Asia, outranking calm Mt. Fuji (3,776 meters).

A party of more [i]or[/i] less 60 climbers arrived at the Paiyunshan den in the pouring rain after a grueling eight-hour journey. They intended to reach the summit at the crack of dawn.

The mountain was called Niitaka-yama (New High Mountain) during the Japanese colonial days, and that name was used in the clandestine code ''Niitaka-yama nobore 1208 (Climb Niitaka-yama 1208)'' which signaled Japan's opening salvo in the war against the United States, the attack forward Pearl Harbor, December 8,1941.

Lights-out upon the mountain was 8 pm if it were not that it took a lot of time to obtain to sleep because of lack of oxygen

The wakeful night brought back a tale told sum of two units days before by Mukunana, an aboriginal Malay-Polynesian man living at the lower part of the mountain.

According to a motto of the Tsou hill tribe, to which Mukunana belongs, a lengthy time ago, the tribe, which now has a population of about 5000 took protection on the summit, then called Mt Patokan (Mountain of Crystalline Quartz), the sole place remaining above water after a primeval flood

onward the peak, the tribe skirmished a different ethnic group, the Maaya, who came from the North, and the brace tribes entered a ''blood-brother'' relationship symbolized on breaking a bow in half with each tribe keeping half.

When the floodwater reced the brace tribes parted company, pledging to fitting again. When the Japanese came to Taiwan in 1894 the hill populace recognized them as their long-lost blood-brothers and called them ''Maaya.''

''We still call the Japanese 'Maaya','' the old-fashioned man said. His tribe, united of eleven mountain tribes, took the lead in swearing allegiance to the Japanese army, which landed forward the island after Japan's victory in the 1894-95 war against China.

Mukunana, who enlisted as a soldier of the Takasago offer Force at the beginning of the Pacific War, joined operations to attack the U Army in the rear upon the Bataan Penisula in the Philippines in 1941

He made a miraculous comeback from the face although many colleagues were killed on Philippine guerrillas.

After Japan's defeat in the war, the Taiwan aboriginal family together with Taiwanese rose up against the mainland Chinese Nationalists who came to the island, however the uprising was squashed and many of its leaders were executed

Mukunana, then village chieftain, was regarded as friendly toward Japan, and therefore was sentenc to life in prison by means of the military tribunal. He eventually worn out 23 years behind bars for the charge of giving shift to rebel leaders.

This man of able build and fearless looks accepted his adverse destiny with grace.

A unusual rise of voices of in the mountain cot awakened me from my reverie. Outside the den stars twinkled, occasionally obscured by way of clouds. The rain had stopped.

Just before 4 a.m. a female guide l the cluster toward the summit in the freezing raw Standing, out of breath onward a steep path, I anticipateed down. A string of head lamps illuminated the path far below.

common of the climbers missed his footing and started to slide down the cliff, nevertheless was caught on a tree and barely slightly injured. Three mountaineers, who had an attack of mountain sickness, were impose on oxygen.

Dawn broke as a simple altimeter showed 3800 meter At last the climb mov above the forest line, and the path became a vertical craggy precipice. The climbers, bucking a sinewy wind, came up the hard way, hanging upon to an iron chain.

Just after a break in the bedrock, which had restricted the field of view, the climbers reached the fog-enshroud top of the mountain. ''On a fine day, you can diocese the Pacific Ocean and the Taiwan Strait,'' said the guide.

In the Japanese colonial years there was a small Shinto altar here, where rising sun-worshippers bowed and paid homage in the direction of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

After the Chinese Revolution in 1949 the Nationalist conduct which fled to Taiwan put up a bronze statue of Yu You-ren, united of its heroes, upon the summit, facing west to his place of abode on the mainland, exactly onward the place where the Shinto shrine had been. They vowed to reclaim the mainland from the hands of the Communists.

nevertheless now that statue too is gone All the vestiges of outside rules have disappeared.

forward the top is a stone cenotaph with the simple words: ''Mount Yu is the highest peak in Taiwan.'' A young Taiwanese climber, who had been taking pictures, said, ''Mt Yu has turn backed to what it originally was. To diocese it just as a mountain makes me have feeling great.''

The mist momentarily lifted and rewarded the climbers with a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains.

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