Hsiao Hsin-cheng (蕭新晟) emigrated to the US with his family after he finished middle school in Taiwan, but as he settled in New York, the 34-year-old software engineer came to regret the lack of Taiwanese history taught when he was in school.
That longing has only been reinforced in the US, where Taiwanese expatriates recounted a history totally foreign to him.
He said the Republic of China (ROC) did not exist in the version he heard, leading him and others to ask: “What exactly is Taiwan?”
That curiosity prompted Hsiao and two other US-based Taiwanese last year to embark on a root-searching journey by initiating an ambitious open-source project called “Taiwan National Treasure” at a G0V hackathon event in New York.
Along with friends Lin Yu-cheng (林育正) and Abraham Chuang (莊士杰), Hsiao urged fellow Taiwanese around the world to “dig out” historical materials related to Taiwan in archives in the US and other nations that have had close contact with Taiwan.
The initial target was the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), with its more than 60 million files from many US government agencies that are declassified after being kept out of the public eye for 30 years.
The documents related to Taiwan in the archives span several periods of history, from the Japanese colonial period, World War II and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) retreat to Taiwan, to the ROC’s removal from the UN and the severing of diplomatic ties with the US.
However, none of the valuable files were digitized. Hsiao sought to create an online platform to change that.
He invited those interested in learning about Taiwanese history to help dig out paper files and photographs and upload them to the platform.
In March, the initiative earned a G0V civic tech grant of NT$500,000, which helped the project leaders create a Web site at www.nationaltreasure.tw to make sharing and compiling data more accessible.
The site opened on Sept. 10.
“The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle featuring the past of Taiwan are scattered around all corners of the world. We need to seek them out before digitizing them and translating them into open data and historical stories available for everyone,” a statement on the Web site’s home page says. “The process of putting the pieces together will enable Taiwanese people to know their own history and truth.”
Hsiao designed an app for mobile devices that allows volunteer “treasure hunters” to easily upload their finds online.
The English content is then automatically translated into Chinese and volunteers manually correct mistakes.
To date, more than 16,000 files from NARA related to Taiwan have been stored in the Taiwan National Treasure databank with the help of volunteers, Hsiao said.
“In the beginning, they were mostly retirees; now there are many passionate young people on board,” with some even willing to take time off from work to join the hunt, because NARA is only open on weekdays, he said.
Before volunteers enter the archive, they are assigned sequential numbers that allow them to locate files more efficiently.
It also means that the volunteers cannot pick subjects on their own.
“We hold the mindset of a librarian, which is having an interest in the data itself, rather than seeing it as being used for research or any specific purpose,” Hsiao said.
One person found a protest letter written by the faculty and students of National Chengchi University to then-US president Jimmy Carter in December 1978.
The five-page letter written in Chinese characters starts with a quote from Confucius: “If the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.”
The letter details their strong protest against Carter’s decision to sever US diplomatic links with the ROC.
Hsiao also recalled photographing a report written by the then-US deputy secretary of state about how shocked and helpless Taiwanese officials were during talks on severing diplomatic relations between the two nations.
The 22-page report said that Taiwan was engulfed in an atmosphere of sadness and anger, and that then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) sent an apology to US representatives, who were frightened by fierce protests in Taiwan.
Another document transcribes a 15-minute conversation between then-US president Richard Nixon and then-Taiwanese vice president Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦) at the White House in 1974.
It shows Yen telling Nixon: “We will do everything possible to coordinate our policy with yours.”
Yen also says that “there is possible oil near Taiwan. We are cooperating with US oil companies on this.”
For Lin, who also lives in New York, “not knowing the history of my own country is no different than having a country that no longer exists,” he said.
Lin began browsing NARA’s materials related to Taiwan in September last year, two years after learning of a huge stockpile of declassified data about his homeland there and at the UN Archives in New York City.
In skimming the files, Lin learned a lot about Taiwan’s history, such as its ports and military facilities that were described in detail in US research reports from the World War II.
The reports helped Washington make plans to invade Japan from Taiwan during the war, Lin said.
Those historical records “are history that belongs to Taiwanese. There should be more of them who know [the history],” he said.
The project has won the praise of National Taiwan University assistant professor of history Lo Shih-chieh (羅士傑).
“There can be no historical science without historical materials,” he said. “Although NARA collections are US administration records that represent Washington’s stance, different sources can help [historians] trace the sequence of events.”
However, he suggested that volunteers use keywords or themes to search the archives, rather than going document-by-document as they are doing now, saying that it would allow for more meaningful finds.
Lo said that he has also asked for help from academia and hopes to form an advisory team.
“Documents cannot talk. Letting professionals in will give more meaning to the records,” Lo said.
The national treasure team has expanded their dream of treasure hunting from US soil to other nations like Britain, Russia, Japan and Australia.
“If you feel like you are Taiwanese, join us to bring Taiwanese historical materials back to Taiwan,” Lin said.
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