Yang Kuo-yu (
It was 1945 and World War II had just ended. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) Nationalist troops had taken over Taiwan and many who could not afford formal education formed self-study groups with their peers.
At one point, Yang was tasked with setting up the stage for a play members of the group were performing. The play was about ordinary people's lives after the war and the hardships they endured. One of the characters in the play was too poor to buy food and eventually committed suicide by poisoning himself.
It was a sad story but the play was a great hit and ran for five consecutive days until the authorities put an end to it, arresting several members of the group.
Yang was not arrested until 1950, when he was 18. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "treason" and "joining an illegal organization." In all, 26 members of the group were arrested and nine of them were executed.
"I remember one man shook my hand before he was taken away to be executed. He was a laborer and did not know how to write the word `communist,' but they accused him of being a communist spy," said Yang, now 75.
Insight
Yang said that he recently read declassified documents from the National Archives which indicated that Chiang had been unhappy that only four people had initially been punished for their "act of treason." As a result, a further five members of the group were executed to appease the generalissimo.
Recollecting the night of his arrest, Yang said that he was woken by violent knocking on his door. When he opened it, security officers questioned him about the whereabouts of other members of the group.
Yang's answers failed to satisfy them and he was blindfolded and taken away to the "security bureau" for further questioning. During his one-month interrogation, Yang was kicked, beaten and tortured.
"I was lucky that I survived," he said.
Prison time
He was then sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in a high security prison on Green Island. Yang recalls that his eventual release was not something worth celebrating, as he was placed under constant surveillance and asked to make written or personal reports on a regular basis.
"I was released from one prison into a bigger one," he said.
While much attention is paid to the "228 Incident" itself, Yang said it is equally important to remember the atrocities that took place during the White Terror era.
Now a volunteer at a private association dedicated to investigating the early years of the White Terror era, Yang said his biggest hope is to uncover the truth.
The association estimates that in the 1950s alone, 4,000 people were killed, 150,000 were jailed and 120,000 went missing. There are no official tallies.
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