NZ manuscript tells about 228

"I had absolutely no idea about the manuscript whatsoever before I made the phone call," Liao said.

Liao said it took him sometime to shake off Colin's suspicion about his proposal that the manuscript should be published.

Colin admitted that he was very "careful" when talking to Liao the first few times.

Colin recalled his father's warning given to him in the mid-1980s before the old man passed away.

"Father had once told me, `be very careful, Colin, if you ever go to Taiwan. You may be put in jail on account of the manuscript.' The name Shackleton would be persona non grata in Taiwan because father was known to be against the [KMT] regime," he said.

"So I thought if somebody wanted the manuscript, it could be dangerous," he added, laughing, sitting in his hotel room in downtown Taipei on Thursday evening during his first visit to Taiwan.

Colin said it was Liao's explanation about how limited the related information was that made him change his mind.

"We didn't realize that history was being lost and the document was valuable as a result ... So when [Liao] wanted to have it published, we agreed," he said.

In fact, back at the time when Allan Shackleton endeavored to write about what he witnessed and attempted to have the manuscript published, neither his wife Mildred nor publishers appreciated his effort.

Third party account

But more than a decade after Allan passed away, his battle to publish his account of the bloody uprising in Taiwan was finally won, although it is a delayed victory. When the Mandarin version of the book was published in Taiwan last June, historians like Wu Mi-cha (吳密察) were thrilled.

Wu, a specialist in Taiwan history at National Taiwan University, said Shackleton's book offered locals a fresh angle on the 1947 tragedy.

"But for these accounts made by foreigners as third parties to the incident, all one can only hear in Taiwan are arguments between victims and persecutors," Wu said.

"Relatives of the victims of the incident will accuse the KMT of atrocities, while the KMT nowadays would say it's a tragedy that happened in the past and they had no part in any misdeeds. A third-party account such as this could enable us to shake off that constraint in looking at history," he said.

He also said third-party accounts would counter government attempts to erase the past.

"These accounts of the events surrounding the incident were valuable because they helped prevent the KMT's attempts to cover up the atrocities. And more than 50 years later, the publication of Shackleton's book can also prevent the KMT from trying to erase memories of past horrors," he added.

As Colin said, "if [the book] helps with the reconciliation process, then it would be of great benefit to the people of Taiwan."