By Li Thian-hokˇ]Updated on March 2, 2006ˇ^
ˇ]Written for the newsletter of Formosans for Free Formosa January 1956 through April 1956ˇ^
I can still recall vividly the excitement and rejoicing we all enjoyed over the defeat of Japan. The whole island was stirring under the thundering shouts of joy. Beautifully decorated, welcome arches, posters and the "national" flags were all over the streets, and a "Liberation Song" was to be heard on every corner of the city. Pasted on the front door of every house were slips of red paper on which slogans such as:
were neatly written with Chinese brush. At night, we had lantern parades. Several tens of thousands of people joined the march, and the city looked like a sea of people. The streets were full of people, gay and jubilant, singing, yelling and laughing in the exultation of this "great" moment.
Next morning, a crowd of several thousand people in their best holiday clothes including students, businessmen, representatives from public and private organizations of the city, gathered in front of the railway station to welcome our "brethren" from China. People lined up on both sides of the street to the business center of the city. After waiting for a couple of hours the train finally arrived. For the first time in their life the Formosans witnessed "their" Chinese army "on march."
The soldiers wore threadbare, filthy khaki uniforms and looked pale and exhausted. They appeared expressionless and did not seem to be aware of the people surrounding them. Their formation was in confusion and their pace disorderly. Some of them were carrying rice-pot and firewood with a pole. At first, some people waved the "national" flag and started to sing. There was no response. Soon everybody was watching the procession in silence. It was a strange sight. And disheartening. To the eyes so accustomed to the gay spirit, dashing form and orderly formation of the Japanese soldiers, this appeared indeed too shabby to represent the "fatherland" people were so proud of. It was supposedly a joyful occasion, but everybody's heart sank.
Yet people were still hopeful. Some argued that China has been under a most devastating calamity, fighting against the brutal Japanese aggressors for such a long period that this was only inevitable, and that it was our duty to help build up a new China. This sounded plausible and people tried to get over their initial shock. Then followed a fervent "national language movement." People eagerly attended Mandarin classes in churches, temples, public buildings and private homes. Three People's Principles, by Sun Yat-sen, was sought after everywhere. It became the ambition of many young men to study in the leading universities in China.
This was the period of dreamy optimism. The aftermath of the excitement over deliverance from the Japanese yoke was still lingering; and the Formosans took it for granted that once united with the Chinese they would enjoy equal status with them. The Formosan people were also naive enough to take the Chinese slogans of freedom and democracy literally. They expected a new era of peace, democracy and prosperity. Yet a few weeks after the arrival in October 1945 of General Chen Yi, the Formosans began to say "The dogs left and the pigs came." After eighteen months under Chen Yi, the Formosan economy was on the verge of collapse. By March 1947, more than 28,000 Formosans had been massacred by the Chinese administration; the islanders were awakened to a Formosan NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
PART I. PARADISE LOST
1. Chen Yi and his Associates
Chen Yi, a member of the "liberal" Political Science Group within Kuomintang (National Party), had outstripped his own record of economic ruin and bloodshed as governor of Fukien Province from 1934 to 1942. The Generalissimo's recall of Chen Yi from Formosa contained no hint of official disgrace. And yet, under Chen Yi Formosa had become a problem not of rehabilitation but of desperate relief and potential civil war.
Around Chen Yi, the Governor General of Formosa, were the Commissioners, his "cabinet." Among them the key men were the Commissioners of Mining and Industry, of Finance, of Civil Affairs, and of Communications. Undeniably talented, these men had been trained in France and Germany during the ascendancy of Hitler's National Socialism. They were contemptuous of Formosans, amiable toward Occidentals, plausible in their conversation and full of cant about the Three People's Principles.
Lack of public spirit on the part of KMT (Kuomintang) executive was the basic cause of the speedy and spectacular collapse of the KMT army and economy in postwar China. To make easy money, most of the take-over officials, who had impatiently suffered poverty and misery in the interior during the war, now resorted to the practice of mercilessly "killing the chicken for eggs." They boasted of the quantities of the taken-over raw materials and finished products, trucks and boats, factories and machinery. Yet instead of utilizing them for public interests and productive purposes they either grabbed or wasted them. No earnest effort was made for reconstruction and rehabilitation. By forcing the people to convert their gold bars and foreign currencies into the Gold Yuan half a year before they absconded from Nanking, the Nationalists stripped many earnest citizens naked. By their civic control and economic restrictions they created numerous new chances to grab. The susceptibility to such temptation has always been due to their system of public service notorious for its underpayment, absence of present stability and future security. Since old dogs can neither learn new tricks nor change fixed habits, what was true in China has been even more true in Formosa.
2. Structure of Syndicates and Nepotism
Chen Yi and his associates reorganized all Japanese enterprises. Independent or single units--the individual factory, shops or plantation--were made branches of functional companies. For example, each independent paper mill became a branch of the Taiwan Paper Manufacturing Company, each sugar company became a branch of the Taiwan Sugar Company. These monopolistic companies were in turn brought under the absolute control of overall companies or syndicates. Friends and relatives of the controlling group became managers, directors, superintendents, auditors, drawing salaries, bonuses and "colonial allowance." Dismissal of Formosans who had become skilled under Japanese management became common to make way for unskilled relatives and friends from China. Nepotism prevailed to such an extent that not only concubines and minors were often appointed to high-paying posts but sinecures were reserved for "ghost incumbents" and "paper soldiers" scheduled to appear from China but forever deferred from assuming office. Similarly just as many police stations came to have a Chinese head under 20 years old but a Formosan sergeant about age 40, so has many a factory had a 25-year-old superintendent from China who has never attended any college but a 50-year-old Formosan deputy director and chief engineer--a graduate with honor from the Technical College of an Imperial University in Japan.
Capital assets, if movable or salable, began to vanish. The administration poured subsidies into the favored companies as long as it could. Some companies did not resume operation after the surrender of Japan but marked time under the new management while the staff received pay.
[Comment1]The group at the top of the syndicates dealt generously with each other in regard to supplies, subsidies, transportation, and exchange permits. The Commissioner of Industry and Mining led with a syndicate of twelve companies with a government subsidy of two billion Taiwan yen. The syndicate included the following companies, each with the name Taiwan:
Ironworks, Steel Works, Chemicals, Printing Press and Accessories, Electrical Engineering, Construction Engineering, Glass Works, Industrial and Mining Supplies, Coal Mining, Kiln Industries, Textiles, Oils and Fats.
The Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner's syndicate included, with the name Taiwan prefixed in each instance, the following companies:
Agricultural Products, Marine Products, Livestock, Tea, Pineapple, Timber.
Each Commissioner controlled the licensing power and privileges associated with his field of administration. Independent Formosans--the private manufacturers, the shop keepers, the agriculturists, the professional men-- had to have a permit for every activity. Though the law might not require a fee, "unfortunate delays" could be avoided by payment to one or more officials through whom applications and permits passed. Permits were needed to move goods, to store them, to legalize internal sales, to arrange credits, and so on. Within a year the middle class Formosan reached the edge of bankruptcy.
3. Government by Merchants
Blind to the meaning of the words "rehabilitation" and "production," the men from China were obsessed with a desire to obtain excessive profits through buying and selling. The administration was one of merchants, not of administrators. At the end of the War, 58% of the outstanding loans were for industrial purposes and only 28% for commerce. In November 1946, bank loans, standing at about 5.2 billion Taiwan yens, were approximately double the loans outstanding in November 1945. By January 1947 loans to industry had dropped to 26% the total; loans for commerce were at 48%. The emphasis had shifted radically from production to buying and selling. Formosans were unable to obtain loans for either industrial or commercial purposes unless men from China shared the activities.
The variety of goods shipped out of Formosa was endless. At the top were such instances as the 500,000 tons of sugar shipped immediately after the surrender at the order of the Executive Yuan. At the bottom was the export of lighting-fixtures, doorknobs, and water-meters stripped from unwatched house and sewer pipes ripped up from the streets after nightfall.
UNRRA supplies as distributed in Formosa also proved profitable to the men from China. Foreign observers estimated that the administration profited 100% on the distribution of UNRRA donated fertilizers. When it became known that famine condition existed on the Pescadores, UNRRA supplies were assembled for shipment by small craft across the 25 miles of separating water. Those supplies had to pass through certain inspection agencies and it was reliably reported that each agency had to receive its cut for inspections, license or permit. The agencies included: the Taiwan Marine Police, the Taiwan Channel Customs House, the Anping Marines Police, the Pescadores Marine Police, the Pescadores Revenue Office, the Pescadores Police Station, and Office of the Pescadores Naval Base Command.
A secretary strategically placed in the Pescadores administration was able to send home 150,000 Taiwan yen as "saving" after his first fortnight of service in this position.
4. Manipulation of Money and Inflation
Government officials also enriched themselves by activities in the black market by manipulation of the money press and access to fresh crisp notes direct from Shanghai. Inflation was the sole productive industry the Chinese introduced into Formosa.
The Bank of Taiwan had issued notes amounting to 2,613,010,024 yen by November 1945. One year later, Finance Commissioner, Yen Chia-kan promised to circulate no more than 6,000,000,000 yen when the value of Yen had fallen from 15 yen for US$1 at the Japanese surrender to 150 yen. One more year later the Taiwan Bank notes amounted to about 15,000,000,000 yen, so that one US dollar soared beyond 1,500 yen. By the end of 1948 this figure had risen to more than 180,000,000,000 yen and one US dollar had risen above 30,000 yen. In the words of an American official on the island, this was a "crime against the people of Formosa," deliberately committed with the intention of fleecing the islanders and also done with the intention of creating a fluctuating exchange behind which all sort of illegal manipulation would be carried out.
So intent were the Chinese "carpetbaggers" upon achieving quick profits that they paid little attention to the pressing need for rehabilitation as a means of restoring the productive capacity of the island. The Bank of Taiwan wholesale price indexes, based on June 1937, showed advances between November 1945 and January 1947 as follows: foodstuffs 3,323 to 21,058; clothing 5,741 to 24,483, fuel 963 to 14,091, fertilizers 129 to 37,559 and building materials 949 to 13,613.
This exploitation had profound effects on the living conditions of the people. Under the Japanese, the laboring classes had been able to eat fish, eggs and some meat on an average wage of a hundred yen a month. By 1947, workers were receiving an equivalent of only twenty-five yen. Ninety percent of their pay went for food. Nor were the middle classes any better. Unable to live on their salaries, they first sold their furniture, then as their savings disappeared, some of them sent their daughters into whorehouses and their sons to peddle cigarettes on the streets.
Every phase of Formosan life now began to collapse. With the decline in living conditions now a parallel decline occurred in education and morals. As if by a slow wasting poison some of the Formosans themselves were corrupted to the level of their Chinese rulers. Gambling, juvenile delinquency, licentiousness and prostitution spread everywhere. Morality fell to a new low. Noting this tendency, saddened Formosans remarked among themselves: "In a few years we will be the same as the Chinese pigs."
5. The Epidemics
The unemployment of Formosans deriving from dismissals and the closing of enterprises was augmented by the return from overseas of more than 100,000 Formosans. Furthermore, the first wave of Chinese which had brought government officials was followed by a second wave of relatives and friends seeking jobs previously held by Formosans; and the second wave followed by a third composed of coolies from the diseased and illiterate masses of Shanghai's slums. The Chinese were also conducting a thriving smuggling trade between China and Formosa. Customs and quarantine barriers were ignored or crossed by bribery.
Under these conditions, it was not surprising that a cholera epidemic broke out in 1946. The epidemic was particularly severe in southern Formosa and the death rate soon rose to 80% of all cases. UNRRA dispatched all of its nurses and doctors to the threatened area, with the intention of putting the isolation hospitals in decent shape and cleaning up foul conditions. At this time there were only one Chinese doctor and five nurses in the cholera hospitals. In a nearby provincial hospital however, there were fourteen Chinese doctors and thirty nurses to look after fifteen patients. All of these refused to go into the cholera hospitals. Conditions became so bad that patients were found dead in furnace rooms and in woodsheds behind the hospitals. Further difficulties were encountered. The usual way of curing cholera is to give intravenous saline injections of Ringer solution. This is a very simple solution to make. At the very height of the epidemic, however, a Chinese medical official issued an order to be sparing in the use of the solution. UNRRA officials protested violently against this order, which could result in the death of the victims who could be saved. One Chinese official answered: "Those cholera victims are only poor and unimportant people."
Before the coming of the Chinese government, there had never been a case of smallpox on the island for over fifteen years. By 1947 there were 4193 cases with the death rate of 37% in five months. Bubonic plague also broke out in 1947. When UNRRA made repeated representations to the medical authorities to stop the smuggling, Chinese doctors replied that it was difficult because the smugglers were armed. At this time there were forty thousand soldiers on the island. Later they were used to suppress the Formosan people, but now they could not halt a few armed smugglers. Said Jack Belden: "When I was in Formosa, UNRRA claimed there were one thousand lepers loose on the island. Formerly they had been in a government leper colony, subsidized by the Japanese, but with the arrival of Chinese government, no one was prepared to pay their expenses and they had been shipped home."
6. Courts versus Administration
In spite of efforts of the administration to muzzle the people's Political Council, composed primarily of Formosans of conservative leadership, its members strongly criticized the administration in May and again in December 1946. In December the Council published evidence that the abuses revealed in May had not been corrected but had been compounded. This meant loss of face; the harshness of the men from China increased.
A struggle developed between the courts and the public prosecutors on one hand and the administration on the other. Formosan lawyers had moved into the courts because their training under the Japanese enabled them to carry on under a legal system not yet translated from Japanese to Chinese terms. The police, however, were independent of the courts and were controlled by the Chinese administration.
From the first the struggle was hopeless since the Commissioner of Civil Affairs controlled the ordinary civil and secret police. The commissioner of Mining and Industry, the Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry, the Chief of the Railway Administration, the Commissioner of Communication, and the Director of the Monopoly Bureau each had an independent armed police organization under his control, operating freely, parallel to, though often in rivalry with one another. There were also the regular Military Police, with each gendarmerie unit a rival of every other, and the dread agents of the late Tai Li. Bad as the Japanese police tyranny had been, it had never been so evil as this, for each police unit under the postwar dispensation was determined to have its share and to expand its field of exaction, blackmail, bribery and squeeze. When a propertied or prominent Formosan was successfully exploited by one unit, other units soon moved in on the man. By the end of 1946 it was evident that the courts had lost their battle.
One instance of the behavior of the police may be given. A certain policeman from China, already notorious, beat up a Formosan who had refused to pay bribes or squeeze. The latter brought an action against the policeman. The Chief Judge of the County Court ordered the policeman held for examination and sent court aides to apprehend him. Those aides, some ten in number, were invited to have a cup of tea at the police headquarters. Once inside, they were beaten and robbed, one was killed, another wounded; all were held for several days despite public outcry and official orders. The police officer was finally sentenced to confinement; the Judge, a Formosan, was removed from office. Later when Chen Yi felt more secure because of the presence on the island of fifty thousand well-armed troops, the police officer was released, the Judge was seized and presumably killed, and other Formosans connected with the case disappeared.
The Formosans sturdily and often at great risk continued to attempt to assert their legal rights. The Formosan press was critical of the administration. It was apparent that the men from China were amazed and baffled to find these despised "colonials" insist on their rights before the law. These were not the docile, illiterate peasants and coolies in China. Nor were they so susceptible to bribery or threat, refusing to pay off readily for "protection" and ever ready to make a public issue of malfeasance in the government.
Chen Yi and his commissioners became more and more openly antagonistic toward all Formosans as each month brought fresh humiliations in exposures of graft, humiliations at the hands of a people to whom Chen Yi referred publicly as "backward" or "politically retarded."
7. The Growing Anger
Conservative Formosan leaders were under strong pressure throughout late 1946 to join in some popular demonstration against Chen Yi which would bring the corruption of his regime forcibly to the attention of Chiang Kai-Shek and the world. These leaders, however, steadfastly refused to sanction violence. One of those leaders was Wang Tien-teng, an ex-editor and president of the Taiwan Tea Merchant's Guild, an outspoken critic of Chen Yi, who had been barred from further editorship after his arrest for "undermining public confidence in the government" by opposing a vicious instance of police graft. He refused to lead a demonstration on the ground that the new Chinese Constitution would bring sufficient power to Formosans to enable them to clean out the worst of the police abuses. On January 10, 1947, however, Chen Yi announced that, although the new Constitution would become effective on the Chinese mainland at the end of 1947, the Formosans were too retarded politically to enjoy its full benefits before 1950. The Formosans were amazed and angry.
Three weeks later the administration announced its policy with regard to the sale and assignment of certain classes of Japanese real estate, principally shops and dwellings, into which low-income Formosans had moved after the departure of the Japanese. Under this policy few Formosans would have the wealth and influence to buy, while absentee Chinese landlords would acquire title. The cities of Formosa buzzed with discontent. Already the Formosans had seen, month after month, former Japanese properties pass into control of men from China despite protests that the Japanese had taken the property from Formosans in the first place. The local people had expected that they would have at least an equal competitive opportunity to regain losses sustained over a period of fifty years.
By mid-February 1947 the economic crisis in China threatened a general breakdown of China's economic structure. Venal officials in Formosa saw an opportunity for new ways to gain wealth if Nanking became too busy or too weak to intervene. A set of astonishing new rules and regulations were made known whereby every economic activity would be concentrated in the hands of Chen Yi's commissioners, giving them control over every ship movement in and out of Formosa, every movement of goods within the island, and every major business transaction. When a few days later it became apparent that the Chinese economy was not yet going to collapse, the rules and regulations were rescinded or modified. They had revealed completely, however, Chen Yi's intent to form as economic state in which the Formosans would be denied free enterprise in fact if not in words of law.
Meanwhile, the Kuomintang looting of Formosan food went to criminal and even murderous length. In September 1946, due to the export of rice, prices went up with alarming speed. Purchase of barely enough rice was allowed for each family, and rice lines were formed in all the cities. As the people became poorer and thinner their anger began to rise.
PART II: THE MARCH MASSACRES
Chen Yi's determination to establish a monopoly police-state brought the Formosans increasing insecurity of property, livelihood, and life. By the latter days of February 1947, the sense of outrage on the part of the people was ready to erupt in violence.
1. The Impetus
On the night of February 27th several armed "special agents" of the Tobacco Monopoly seized the cigarettes and small cash savings of a window, who, with her two children, was peddling tobacco in front of the Tien-ma tea shop near crowded Round Park. When she protested, she was brutally pistol-whipped about the head. She was struck down, bleeding profusely. Angry spectators closed in and the agents, frightened, shot wildly, killing at least one man before they were chased to a nearby civil police box and their Monopoly Bureau truck was destroyed.
Through the night reports of the incident spread. A local committee drew up a resolution addressed to the Chief of the Monopoly Bureau demanding his resignation, abolition of the special armed police, and compensation to the wounded and the families of the dead.
2. Demonstration Fired On
The next morning a crowd of perhaps 2,000, unarmed and carrying banners displaying the demands, marched through the main street to the Monopoly Office, but were turned away without a hearing. Approaching the Governor General's Office, petitioners and bystanders alike were struck down by machine-gun fire. Elsewhere in the city, angry citizens had discovered two Monopoly agents molesting children hawking tobacco. Two of the agents were clubbed to death and a nearby branch office and warehouse of the Monopoly bureau was sacked. Pent-up anger was released throughout the city. Military police squads and patrols began to appear at important points in the city's central administrative district. Some shooting occurred and during the night martial law was declared. The government denied that any shooting had taken place in front of the Governor's Office and promised consolation money for those involved in the initial incident.
A small group of leading Formosans called on the Governor General on March 1, stating that the situation was too serious for a mere solatium to avail and suggested that this would be a good time to announce certain government reforms long publicly demanded, reforms in the Monopoly and Trading Bureaus, for example. As Chen Yi had only 2,000 troops in and near the capital at that time, he had to acquiesce. He requested that the committed enlarge its representation to include all sections and interests of the island and to prepare reform proposals for his consideration. The Settlement Committee demanded, in return for guarantee of cessation of violence on the part of Formosans, that police functions be placed temporarily in the hands of a Formosan student organization, and that the Governor General move no troops into the city and gradually eliminate the military police patrols.
While Chen Yi himself broadcast promises that afternoon, they were already being broken. Troops were on their way into the city from the south. During the broadcast machine-gun fire felled 123 unarmed persons idly watching military police set up a guard station.
The committee of Formosans worked feverishly during the first week of March to prepare its proposals. Members of the committee were principally conservatives who, although detesting Chen Yi as a person, trusted him as the responsible appointee of Chiang Kai-Shek. They were determined to do all possible to obtain an orderly settlement while pressing for reforms. Meanwhile, in every town and village Formosans demanded that the men from China hand over their offices. This many of them did. In some instances there was bloodshed. Many Chinese were beaten as community after community vented accumulated hatred of the carpetbaggers. Events of the week also demonstrated that the Formosans could operate the technical economy of the island by themselves, thus destroying Chen Yi's argument that they were a "backward" people requiring constant guidance.
3. Reform Program Betrayed
On March 6, after tense public debates the proposals for reform were ready. By this time the situation in Taipei had improved. Primary schools were reopened on March 5 and shops resumed trade. The proposals were submitted to Chen Yi on March 7. Thirty-two points were raised, some minor and obviously negotiable. The major reforms called for election by Formosans of their own magistrates and mayors (in order to obtain control of police), the abolition of special armed police forces under the commissioners, the appointment of Formosans to high posts in the administration, and the breakup of Chen Yi's monopolies. On the following day the Chief of the Gendarmerie met the committee and on behalf of the Governor General stated that the proposals would certainly be implemented and the welfare of Formosans thereby promoted.
That night, by 8 o'clock, the debarkation area at Keelung, port of the capital city, was cleared by machine gun fire and thousands of Kuomintang army forces landed and swarmed toward the capital. Chen Yi was ready for his revenge and the massacre began.
A correlation of all foreigners' reports and reputable Formosans and of some mainlanders shocked by Chen Yi's brutality indicates that approximately 28,000 unarmed Formosa men and women were slaughtered or disappeared, presumed dead. It is reliably estimated that from 50,000 to 70,000 troops were moved to Formosa in March.
4. The Massacre and its Aftermath
Members of the Settlement Committee were among the first to be sought out and killed. From the capital the pattern of massacre spread throughout the island. On March 8 and 9 there was general terrorization of the people between the port and the capital. There was indiscriminate bayoneting and shooting in the streets and rape and robbery during house to house searches. On March 12 and 13, the killings became more systematic as soldiers and gendarmes, acting on grudge lists supplied by mainland Chinese, searched out personal enemies, particularly newspapermen, school teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and committee members. Often such men were shot on the spot. Others were taken away and never heard of again. If they could not be found, their families were taken as hostages.
Judge Wu Fan-chi, who had sentenced a corrupt Chinese policeman to a jail sentence, was taken from his home, thrown under a bridge and killed. This same thing happened to an official of the Tobacco Bureau and eight other Formosans who were likewise thrown under the bridge, where their noses were slit, their faces scarred and they were castrated. A seventy-two-year-old member of the People's Political Council was dragged from a sick bed and murdered with his two sons. He had criticized Chinese corruption in public speeches.
Hundreds of bodies of students and others were discovered in shallow mass graves or washed ashore after being dumped into the sea. Roadside ditches and riverbanks were strewn with bodies which indicated death by beating, bayoneting, shooting and mutilation.
The rebellion and its bloody suppression gave gendarmes a new method of enriching themselves. Secret service men and party thugs arrested many well-to-do Formosans, accused them of being connected with the rebellion and extorted money from them on pain of death. If people were too poor to pay much, they bought themselves free in groups. Thus, in Keelung seventeen people bought themselves out of jail by paying one hundred thousand yens to Chiang's gendarmes. In northern Taiwan, thirteen people were given three days' time to supply four thousand bags of rice in exchange for their lives. As rice was then selling at ten thousand yen, or ten US dollars a bag, this ransom was respectable even by American standards.
By the end of March the island had been terrorized into bitter submission. Just to make sure that the people were kept on the quivive, the gendarmes once in a while held public executions long after the suppression of rebellion in most of the cities. The victims were usually shot in the main square of the city in the presence of their families who were forced to watch the execution.
Later in March, Chiang Kai-shek dispatched the Minister of Defense, General Pai Chung-hsi to Formosa to report on conditions there. He had a pleasant social visit, with brass bands, dinners, a visit to a hot spring resort and another to the zoological gardens. The Minister made a public announcement afterwards in which be gave a detailed account of the "atrocities" done by the Formosans, declared that the incident was due to the instigation of "communist spies" and the machinations of ambitious Formosan politicians, and promised to the "majority of loyal and patriotic Formosans" that those who participated in the rebellion would be severely punished.
Said Chiang Kai-shek: "The trouble was instigated by Formosan communists who had been drafted by the Japanese to fight in the South Seas." Said a publicity handout about Governor Chen Yi: "He was a champion of democratic administration.... He recruited honest and experienced aides from the mainland, and those who came did so at great personal sacrifice. Because he was too liberal, the Formosans lost control of themselves. "However an American journalist, Jack Belden, who was on the island before and during the February 28th Incident, was of a different opinion. Said he in his book China Shakes the World, "With every desire not to bring a subjective note into a discussion of the practices of dictatorship, the writer cannot help remarking that what Chiang Kai-shek's regime did to the Formosan people was nothing but a crime against humanity."
PART III: HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The historical significance of the February 28 Incident may be considered in various different contexts. Viewed against the unique historical heritage of Formosa, the February 28 Incident reflects the ultimate culmination of the evolution of a Formosan race over a period of four centuries.
Many factors have contributed to this slow process of evolution. First, the heterogeneous racial, social, and cultural origins of the early settlers. To our promised island came Polynesians, Chinese, Japanese, of Oriental origins; Portuguese, Spaniards and Dutch of Occidental extraction. Although later Chinese blood and cultural patterns became predominant, the absorption of other racial elements in the remote past is indisputably a factor in differentiating the present-day Formosan from the Chinese both in race psychology and physical appearance. Second, the modifying influence of geographical environment. By crossing the Formosan Straits and settling in a wild country, the early immigrants led a very different life from their cousins left behind. In Formosa they worked as pioneers, in constant contact and conflict with aboriginal tribesmen and therefore had to be more alert, frugal and industrious than the Chinese people.
Third, the strategic geopolitical position of Formosan had made the island historically an object of contest among great powers. Thus "the history of Formosa reflects a history of endurance by the Formosan people to combat and resist the control of alien regimes." This turbulent past has also implanted in them an inherent disposition to fight for their liberty.
Fourth, through half century of Japanese rule, despite all its entailing evils, Formosans had come to enjoy a much higher standard of living, literacy, technical advancement, and a rule of law, all of which were virtually unknown in China. (Have you ever heard of the Chinese soldiers who stole bicycles but, unable to ride, carried them on their backs, or the Chinese army communications unit which strung a field line across a main railroad track without allowance for the passing of trains?)
On account of these factors and also because of the fact that Formosans have been isolated from China most of the time since the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of Formosa have slowly transformed into a new ethnic group, although they never had an opportunity to discover their new identity. The postwar events and the February 28 Incident served as an impetus to the self-discovery of the Formosans.
In his article "Earth is Thicker Than Blood," which appeared in the December 1955 issue of the Bungei-Shunju, Mr. Shimizu of the Japanese Foreign Service narrated an illuminating episode.
"Are you a Japanese?"
Viewed against the background of the Chinese Civil War, the February 28 Incident and the ensuing March massacres also proved with brutal finality that the Chinese Communists did not win China, but that Chiang Kai-shek and his entourage lost it by their corruption, inefficiency, suppression and murder. The island, when Chiang Kai-shek took over, was a going concern with little or no Communist influence. A few months later, it was little more than a prison house, a paradise turned into a Devil's Island. Said Mr. George Kerr, American Vice Consul in Taipei in 1947, "...Chen Yi and the Generalissimo have given the Chinese Communists immense advantages in Formosa without Communists having lifted a finger. Every educated Formosan now has ample reason to tremble for his life and property; they anticipate a period of violent military suppression, complete economic disruption, uprising and anarchy, all making a fertile field for communism where before Communism was practically nonexistent."
However, it is in global perspective that the February 28 Incident has its REVOLUTIONARY significance. Prime Minister U Nu of Burma said at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on July 3, 1955: "The ideas and ideals, the ringing words and slogans of the American Revolution, have a tremendous emotional importance to all men who struggle for Liberty. In all parts of the world where men live under tyranny, or under foreign domination or in feudal bondage, those who dream and plot and fight for freedom, do so in the name of the eternal principles for which your (American ) Revolution was fought. In those parts of the world, the ideas of the America Revolution are today the most explosive of all forces, more explosive in their capacity to change the world than B-52's or even atomic bombs."
This is what Adlai Stevenson called the "revolution of rising expectations among the awakening people of the world" which prompted more than 635 million people to fight for, and attain their independence after the Second World War.
For us Formosans the February 28 Incident marked the beginning of our struggle for Third Independence, which is actually a part of the global revolution of this mid-century. Although we have a glorious historical past, in which we were the first Asian people to defeat and expel Western colonialism (First Independence of 1661) and the first Asian people to build a republic in the Far East (Second Independence of 1895) and again declared independence on the 9th anniversary of the February 28 Incident by the Provisional Government of the Republic of Taiwan established in Tokyo on February 28, 1956, our eight million fellow Formosans are still suffering under the yoke of Chinese colonialism. In Asia, Mid-East and Africa the peoples of the former colonies are striving for peace, freedom and betterment of human life. This is a century of awakening, a century of revolution. Let us not be left behind! Let us again make our beautiful island the country of the free and home of the brave!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ballantine, Joseph W., Formosa: A Problem for United States Foreign Policy, George Banta, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1952.
Belden, Jack, China Shakes the World, Harper, 1949.
Kerr, George, "Formosa's Return to China." Far Eastern Survey XVI, October 15, 1947.
Kerr, George, "Formosa: The March Massacres." Far Eastern Survey XVI, November 5, 1947.
Liao, Joshua, Formosa Speaks, Graphic Press, Hong Kong, 1950.
"REJOICE OVER THE GLORIOUS RETURN TO OUR FATHERLAND" and "WELCOME GENERAL CHEN YI TO FORMOSA"
"Once I made a trip to Takao where I stayed overnight. Because a maid in the hotel spoke such excellent Japanese, and looked like Japanese, I asked:
"No. She answered."
"A Chinese, then?"
"No. certainly not!", then I further inquired:
"Then what are you? If you are neither Japanese nor Chinese?"
She suddenly became serious, and declared:
"I am a Formosan."