More than 100 people marched in Keelung yesterday in remembrance of those killed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops that landed on March 8, 1947, in the aftermath of the 228 Incident.
“It’s raining today [yesterday], and so it was on this day 62 years ago when the KMT troops landed at Keelung in the afternoon,” Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲), chairman of the 228 Care Association and a historian specializing in modern Taiwanese history, told people gathered at Keelung Harbor’s west pier.
“As soon as they disembarked, soldiers started shooting indiscriminately at people. There were dead bodies everywhere, in the city and floating in the harbor,” Chang said.
PHOTO: WENG YU-HUANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The troops were sent by dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to quell an uprising against KMT rule that broke out in Taipei on Feb. 28, 1947, and quickly spread.
Chou Chen-tsai (周振才) recalled the trauma.
“The KMT troops began to knock on doors randomly on the morning of March 9 searching for young people [who may have been involved in the uprising] and arrested my uncle and brother,” Chou said, adding that his uncle and brother had not taken part in the uprising and that his father was a KMT Keelung City councilor at the time.
“As soon as my mother — who was pregnant at the time — heard the news, she took a large sum of money and rushed to ‘buy’ their lives,” Chou said.
Chou’s brother returned after his mother bribed officials, but it was too late to save his uncle, who had already been executed and thrown into Tianliao River.
Although Chou’s father was a KMT member, he remained in hiding for months because the government accused him of helping anti-KMT guerillas by stockpiling rice.
“In reality he was handing out rice to poverty-stricken Keelung residents hit by the severe inflation at the time,” Chou said.
After observing a minute of silence, the marchers — holding flowers — proceeded through the city, recounting the details of massacre through a loudspeaker.
The march concluded on a bridge near the mouth of Tianliao River at Keelung Harbor, where marchers threw their flowers into the river to remember those who died.
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