No matter what social class they were from, they just wanted to get out of Taiwan. "Chang Wen-yi adds that for most Taiwanese the events in Manchuria were thousands of miles away, far removed from mundane concerns.
張文義也認為，或許對多數的台灣人來說，九一八事變「畢竟是相隔千里以外的戰場」，他說，感覺似乎是很冷淡的。