Nancy Kao (高陳雙適), 86, on Saturday said that the idea to record the life story of her father, Chen Hsin (陳炘), a victim of the 228 Massacre, and publish it to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the 1947 crackdown came from her concern over the lack of understanding among the young generation about history.
“There are way too many people who still don’t understand the 228 Incident. With the book published, I hope to bring to light the truth about the events of the past,” Kao said of the book, Until Dawn (靜待黎明), at its launch event. “Because only when we have learned history’s lessons can we can avoid repeating past mistakes.”
The book’s title was chosen because Kao and her family still do not know why Chen was killed, and they are still waiting for the arrival of dawn — the truth.
“Why was he killed, under what circumstances, in what manner, when and how was his body dealt with? That is what we are most concerned about, but we have not found anything in the files released by the government,” Kao wrote in the book.
Her father was taken away at about 6am on March 11, 1947.
“Nothing was heard of him after that,” Kao said.
“Before my father was taken away, he asked us to ‘listen to mother.’ I did not know that it was the last time he would look at us with love,” Kao said.
She was 18 at the time.
“One day, Yen Tsang-hai (顏滄海), who was arrested, but then released, told us that he heard gunshots after he encountered my father at the Military Judicial Division [under the then-Garrison Command] that morning and soldiers saying that ‘the entrepreneurs were shot to death,’” she wrote in the book.
An economist educated at Columbia University in New York City, Chen was one of many Taiwanese intellectuals arrested and executed during the crackdown, which was triggered by a dispute between unlicensed cigarette vendor Lin Chiang-mai (林江邁) and Monopoly Bureau officers on Feb. 27, 1947.
Chen returned to Taiwan in 1925 after receiving his degree. Known for his anti-Japan stance, Chen founded Daito Trust Co (大東信托株式會社) with Lin Hsien-tang (林獻堂), a founder of the Taiwan People’s Party, and participated in political and social movements, including the Taiwan Local Autonomy Alliance.
Chen also participated in Chiang Wei-shui’s (蔣渭水) Taiwan Provincial Political Development Association.
At the book launch, Hsu Yueh-mei (許月梅), a pre-school teacher who wrote the book with Kao, said she finally understood why Kao had told her that she could not figure out why her father was killed, as he had done nothing wrong, after spending three years researching to try to find out what Chen did wrong between Feb. 27 and March 11, 1947.
“It’s really hard to ask her [Kao] to forget the past and to not ask why her father had to die when he had done nothing wrong,” Hsu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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