¡@¡@Mr. Paine was born in California on December 14, 1919. From 1939 to early 1942, he engaged in public broadcasting and once worked for CBS in Hollywood. He enlisted in the Air Force in March 1942 and graduated from Air Corps Officer's Candidate School as well as Air Force Intelligence School. He was then assigned to overseas duty in the China Theater. Serving initially as an Intelligence Officer and later as an Executive Officer, he was advanced to the rank of major. At the end of the war, he returne d to the States after serving overseas for two and a half years. He was discharged in 1946. He then returned to China for over a year with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration(UNRRA) as Reports Officer and Economic Analyst. He spent one year, a period prior and during the 2/28 incident of 1947, on Taiwan. In May 1947 he left UNRRA.

¡@¡@When the 2/28 incident took place, Mr. Paine, who at 27 was the youngest member of the UNRRA , was in charge of the regional office on the island in the absence of the director who was in Shanghai on a business trip. The UNRRA staff members resided in Peitou. Their office was in Taipei. When the revolt broke out, they were unable to carry out their work. For safety reasons, most staff remained in Peitou. Mr. Paine and Mr. George Kerr were living in a house owned by some foreign missionaries on Jong Shan Road North. He would drive each day between Taipei and Peitou to keep staff abreast of the situation in Taipei and to ensure staff's needs were met. At the onset of the incident, Mr. Paine found himself rescuing the wounded after Government troops had fired on unarmed demonstrators. It was an heroic act by any measure. Mr. Paine, however, recalled it merely as a spontaneous reaction to the inexcusable shooting by the troops. This episode was depicted in Kerr's book, Formosa Betrayed.

¡@¡@Later when the Nationalist troops arrived from China, Mr. Paine saw how they used their machine guns shooting indiscriminately every one in sight. Mr. Paine himself had a close call one day while in a jeep on his way back to Taipei from Peitou. A military truck with riflemen and machine-gunners aboard shooting at random was in front of him but went into a side road and came out behind him from another end of the side road. Bullets were flying over his head. To avoid being hit, he had to drive with his body leaning toward one side so as to keep his head down.

¡@¡@Mr. Paine arrived in Taiwan in April 1946. Being extremely knowledgeable in terms of history of Taiwan, its resources, and post-WWII social and economic conditions, he was enraged to see the island looted by Kuomintang(KMT) carpetbaggers. An economy that could have been rehabilitated within a short time quickly deteriorated to the verge of collapse. People were infinitely worse off than they had been under the Japanese rule. Even prior to the incident, Mr. Paine was doing his best to reflect to the U. S. authorities in Washington D. C. the corruption and incompetence of the KMT administration and the fact that the Chinese administrators looked and acted upon Taiwan as their personal loot from the war.

¡@¡@After returning to the States, from April 1947 to February 1949, he wrote letters by the hundred, reprinted articles on the subject and distributed them, and spoke to groups of local people in an effort to present the true condition of Taiwan to Americans. He traveled (ten times across the continent) to New York and Washington, talking, talking, talking, trying to convince congressmen, Central Intelligence Agency, State, all the military departments and the United Nations(UN) that something had to be done about Taiwan. He pointed out that of all the atrocities the Chinese government committed against the Taiwanese people, they were on the island without legal right *. He called on the U.S. government to discontinue giving loans and ammunition to Chiang Kai- Shek. Also, he strongly supported the idea advanced by the Taiwanese at the time of the incident: that the UN take over the island under the trusteeship system, possibly with a temporary mandate to the U.S.

¡@¡@Having lived on Taiwan in that particular period, Mr. Paine found it impossible not to have been impressed with the island's beauty and productiveness and the fine character of its people. Having witnessed the brutal butchery of innocent Taiwanese during the incident, he acted on his own to speak for them. As a U.S. citizen, he also felt a sense of moral responsibility to do something. After all, it was President Roosevelt who promised to give the island back to China in 1943 at the Cairo Conference **. This led to the KMT using U.S. armed and equipped troops slaughtering Formosans. All in all, what Mr. Paine tried to do was to expose the true KMT and to prevent Taiwan from being simply signed away to China in the peace treaty with Japan.

¡@¡@For the same reason, Mr. Paine collaborated with Mr. Kerr in 1948 with the intention to publish what they witnessed in Taiwan in 1946 and 1947. At the time Mr. Kerr had accepted an advance from a prominent American publishing house but later changed his mind and returned the advance. Supposedly, Mr. Kerr felt that he could do more for Taiwan by working with his high-ranking friends in the State Department rather than publishing the book which would embarrass the State Department. Mr. Paine consequent ly left angrily and went separate ways from Mr. Kerr.

¡@¡@In 1964 Mr. Kerr, reportedly, in his teaching capacity, was in need of publication and requested Mr. Paine's permission to use the materials he had assembled. Although it was no longer the most opportune time for the book, Mr. Paine gave his consent to Mr. Kerr. The book, Formosan Betrayed, was finally published in 1965. Subsequently the KMT bought the copy right of the English edition from the publisher. The book, therefore, did not go beyond the first printing until 1992 when the second English edit ion was published by Taiwan Publishing Co. in the U.S. following Mr. Kerr's death earlier that year. One cannot help wondering what effects the book might have had if it were published, as initially intended, in 1949 before the Korean Conflict.

¡@¡@Mr. Paine devoted himself to the cause of Taiwanese people with no economic nor political self interest. After February 1949, he was forced to give up his "crusading" for financial reasons. In the ensuing years he often worked overseas such as Algeria and Saudi Arabia, and he continued to have the fondest regards for Taiwan. He has since returned to the States for retirement. His home is full of paintings depicting countryside of Taiwan and he has acquired a lot of articles while in Taiwan. Most signifi cantly, Mr. Paine has kept for us this important evidence, the book and the bullet, that the Nationalist troops did use illegal dum-dum bullets on the Taiwanese people.

¡@¡@As we remember the 2/28 incident, it is most appropriate that we know of Mr. Paine. He is a man who is not interested in spotlight. Still, his actions speak for themselves and shall serve as an inspiration for all of us. We cannot care or do less than Mr. Paine. As we look back, we know that the future of Taiwan rests in the hands of its people, that is, people who identify with Taiwan. To begin with, we must know our history and examine the intricate relations between the Taiwanese people and the Chine se people. By so doing we shall come to realize the fact that we are indeed separate peoples. Once we are willing and able to wake up to the reality, we shall be able to unite and move forward for a free and independent country of our own, as many enlightened peoples have done since the end of WWII. Only then can we proclaim that Mr. Paine's efforts were not in vain and that Formosa will not be betrayed again, never ever!

¡@¡@ * The peace treaty with Japan was not signed until 1951 in San Francisco. Japan relinquished all its claims to Taiwan, but sovereignty of the island was not specified in the treaty.

¡@¡@ ** Careful studies of documents on the Cairo Conference in recent years have revealed that participants did not sign any paper to make such a "promise" legally binding. The much publicized "Cairo Declaration" was actually a press communiqué with no signature at all.