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Taiwan's deepest scar

By Dan Nystedt
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Feb 25, 2001, Page 17

Though no one knows the exact number of dead, an estimated 30,000 people were killed 54 years ago at the hands of KMT-government troops in the wake of an incident which occurred on Feb. 28, 1947. The "228 Incident," often simply called 228, and its lasting memory cut to the core of native Taiwanese people's fear of reunification with China.

The massacre was triggered when officials from the wine and tobacco monopoly bureau accosted a woman for selling outlawed foreign-brand cigarettes. As the officials took possession of the contraband and some coins, the woman grabbed the arm of one officer in protest. Smacking her away, the officer took out his pistol and began beating her with the butt of the gun.

The ruckus drew a crowd of Taiwanese who, tired of suffering abuse under the newly-installed KMT government, chased the officials back to the monopoly bureau and burned it down. The conflagration marked the beginning of Taiwan's first rebellion against the KMT government which had regained sovereignty over Taiwan following Japan's defeat in World War II.

Governor general of Taiwan Chen Yi accepts the surrender of Taiwan from Japanese general Ando Rikichi. PHOTO COURTESY OF 228 PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM

The 228 Incident "shattered people's hopes and dreams" for Taiwan's retrocession to China says Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), senior adviser to president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

Japan gained possession of Taiwan in 1895 under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and spent the next five decades building Taiwan into a productive colony, building bridges, hydro-electric dams, railways, concrete roads and modern industry. By 1920, Taiwan was the most developed area in Asia outside of Japan and far more developed than China. World War II ended all that.

Taiwanese students welcome the arrival of Chinese soldiers in Taiwan after World War II. PHOTO COURTESY OF 228 PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM

Two foreigners living in Taiwan between 1945 and 1947 were moved enough by their experiences to write books about the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, including the 228 Incident and its subsequent bloody crackdown. American political attache George Kerr wrote Formosa Betrayed, and a UN officer from New Zealand, Allan Shackleton, wrote Formosa Calling. Taiwan at the time was commonly referred to as Formosa.

Japanese Imperial Army troops occupied Taiwan for 50 years before the ROC regained the island. PHOTO COURTESY OF 228 PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM

When US transports ships full of Chinese soldiers arrived at the port of Keelung in October, 1945, Taiwanese citizens stood along the roads waving red and blue KMT flags and cheering.

"We had high hopes for reunification," said Lee Wang-tai (李旺台), chairman of the 228 Victims' Association (二二八基金會). "Everyone was full of hope at the time ... some people were so excited they couldn't sleep, others started to study [Mandarin] Chinese because nobody here could speak Chinese, everybody spoke Japanese."

Taipei residents are shown protesting against repressive KMT rule during the 228 Incident. PHOTO COURTESY OF 228 PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM

Although the crowds expected to see troops disembark and march into Taipei, the ships sat at harbor. Hours later, Chinese soldiers finally begin filing out of the ships and the crowds later discovered that the wait had been caused by an argument between the Chinese troop commanders and the US captains of each ship.

The Chinese had refused to leave the ships, believing large numbers of Japanese infantry remaining in Taiwan had taken to the hills and formed suicide squads. They requested that an American contingent move in first to secure the area. Instead the American captain kicked the troops off his ship. And there was no trouble with the Japanese soldiers.

Ruan Mei-su, who helped design the 228 Peace Memorial Museum in Taipei, stands beside a picture of her father who was killed during the crackdown that followed the 228 Incident. PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

Word spread fast about the cowardice of the newcomers. Local Taiwanese also began to joke about the young Chinese conscripts who spent hours gawking at elevators in department stores -- they had never seen one before. Bicycle theft also became a problem, but comically, the Chinese soldiers had to carry the bicycles away on their backs, because they didn't know how to ride them.

Memorabilia from the announcement of Taiwan's retrocession to Chinese rule is exhibited at the 228 Peace Memorial Museum. PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

Shackleton, in his book, says the stories of technical ignorance mirrored the predicament of the new KMT government in Taiwan at the time; former warlords from an agrarian society taking the helm of a modern, albeit war-torn, economy.

Within 16 months of reunification, conditions in Taiwan had become extreme. Whole families were committing suicide to escape hunger, a sharp contrast to the prosperity under Japanese rule of Taiwan. Economic hardship exacerbated the cultural gap between Taiwanese and the KMT government.

A political cartoon at the 228 Peace Memorial Museum depicts KMT officials' abuse of power in Taiwan. PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

The beating of the cigarette vendor seemed minor compared with the thousands of other, more prominent examples of KMT abuse against the Taiwanese. That spark, though, unleashed protests island-wide, forcing mainland Chinese to seek shelter in heavily-armed compounds.

"When the KMT soldiers came to Taiwan, they saw a typical Japanese society. Of course, after the KMT came, if they heard you sing a Japanese song, they threw you in jail."

- Lee Wang-tai, chairman of the 228 Victim's Association

After a few days of angry crowds chasing down Chinese, local Taiwanese leaders compiled a list of complaints to be taken up with the KMT Governor General of Taiwan Chen Yi (陳儀) and his government.

Rampage

Chen asked the committee to organize sub-groups to focus on problem areas. Meantime, he sent word to ROC President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正) of a "Japanese uprising" in Taiwan. Chiang responded by sending the 21st division, a crack marine unit, to Taiwan. Upon landing in Keelung and Kaohsiung, they swept through Taiwan, on what has been called an indiscriminate rampage.

"When the killing started, we took to the mountains and ambushed KMT troops wherever we could," said one Taiwanese gentleman, a former infantry officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. "We were trained soldiers and we were not going to sit by and watch our families die ... [but] we didn't have enough rifles ... so we disbanded. I escaped to Japan on a fishing boat."

Shackleton reports seeing bodies floating in rivers regularly in the aftermath of the crackdown, and hearing reports of mass killings. Chen used the Reform Committee lists to track down "known traitors," which included industrialists, political leaders and intellectuals, rounded them up and shot them.

In one small town outside of Taipei, Shackleton reports that the corpses of 20 youths were found castrated, with their ears cut off and noses slit open. One mass grave found in Kukeng (古坑鄉) in Chiayi County contained the skeletons of over 1,000 people.

At the 228 Memorial Museum, a large white display attempts to explain the crackdown, called the March Massacre. It reads: "Confused identities lead to tragedy" in bold English letters.

"When the KMT soldiers came to Taiwan, they saw a typical Japanese society. People wore kimonos and wooden sandals and we all sang Japanese songs," explains Lee. "Of course, after the KMT came, if they heard you sing a Japanese song, they threw you in jail."

The stage for a major confrontation was set almost immediately with the choice of Chen as governor general of Taiwan. After Chiang's decision to install Chen as the new head of Taiwan, groups from Fujian Province and Taiwanese in China protested.

"It was charged that newly-installed KMT governor of Taiwan Chen Yi would `create a hotbed of fascism in Taiwan, leading to future war.' His crimes in office as Fujian's governor were reviewed in great detail -- they were horrifying and alas, they were for the most part true," wrote George Kerr.

"The Chinese let their hatred of everything Japanese go beyond the bounds of common sense and hastened to ship the Japanese population back to Japan" before they could make effective repairs of war damaged areas, wrote Shackleton.

In charge of the UN's industrial rehabilitation program in Taiwan, Allan Shackleton had first-hand knowledge of the grim situation facing Taiwan's economy after the war.

The Chinese also cut off trade with Japan, Taiwan's primary market for 55 years. Without the Japanese market to sell certain specialized products and the inability to buy replacement parts and factory tools, damaged machinery was left to rust. Factories that could have been running, therefore, were closed and people lost their livelihoods.

Shackleton found no Taiwanese engineers up to the task of the rebuilding efforts, and the ones sent from China "were young and keen but they lacked the training and experience" to help rebuild a modern industrial economy.

He also lamented the fact that funds and equipment were often channeled to KMT factories.

In one of many examples of corruption among soldiers, a group of Chinese officers stole every garbage truck in Taipei to carry stolen goods to Keelung, where it was to be transported to Shanghai. They also dug up newly laid pipes and fire hydrants, and tore plumbing from the sides of buildings to be sold in China.

Taiwan's prized railway system, built by the Japanese, also suffered. While searching for the cause of a number of serious rail accidents, officials discovered automatic switch and signal equipment had been stolen.

Corruption

But these cases of corruption paled in comparison to what Chen and other high-ranking KMT officers were able to pull off.

They began by cleaning out the food reserves and medical supplies piled up for Japan's defense of Taiwan. Two years' worth of rations to feed 200,000 troops along with medical supplies, uniforms, and other necessities were taken back to Shanghai and sold. Chen's men also took Taipei's grain reserves and the grain reserves of most cities in Taiwan and sold it in China. When people complained of shortages, he said it was due to hoarding and ordered everyone to put their home reserves on the market in order to reduce the shortage. People did, and this quickly disappeared as well.

As the economy weakened, health and welfare services began to break down, leading to Cholera and even Bubonic Plague outbreaks.

"My Formosan friends complained bitterly that they might as well give up urban life and go back to tilling the soil. And this, I suspect, was precisely what Chen Yi's commissioners hoped they would be forced to do.

The sooner Formosa could be reduced to the familiar conditions of mainland provincial life, the easier it would be to manage the economy, KMT-style," wrote Kerr.

And after Chiang and his forces lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949, over a million of China's KMT ruling class and soldiers retreated to Taiwan.

The bitterness of the 228 Incident and the tension that accompanied the subsequent 41 years of martial law have largely subsided. But several incidents during martial law reminded the government that discontent festered just beneath the surface of Taiwan's society. On April 24, 1970, Huang Wen-hsiung (黃文雄) attempted to assassinate then president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in New York. And on Oct. 10, 1976, the ROC National Day, vice president Hsieh Tung-min (謝東閔) had his right arm blown off by a package bomb addressed to him. The next year Wang Hsin-nan (王辛男) was arrested for his role in the bombing. Wang is now a legislator with the DPP.

Efforts to wipe out the memories of 228 and smooth relations between native Taiwanese and those of mainland Chinese origin were exemplified by former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) call for an identity among people not as mainlanders or native Taiwanese, but as New Taiwanese.

The New Taiwanese slogan has caught on, as time and intermarriage between ethnic groups has blurred the distinctions between mainlanders and Taiwanese, but 228 remains as a symbol of Taiwan's ongoing identity struggle.
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