For your 2-28 reading:
Just to add some historical info based on some documentaries and books I have seen.
CKS mentioned he wanted control of Taiwan in Yalta, the allies only agreed with him to keep him fighting the Japanese. They knew he was only interested in the power and money. They had to keep him fighting or else CKS would have surrendered/negotiated a cease fire with the Japanese. America could not fight a war on two fronts and their primary concern was Europe. Interesting not is that the San Francisco Peace Treaty that ended WWII and established the UN stated that the people of Taiwan should have a a vote to decide their fate. It never happened.
Chen Yi was put in charge of Taiwan because he demonstrated the ability to suck out the resources of a place to benefit the KMT. He demonstrate that ability in Shanghai or some other place in China where he was governor before he was assigned to Taiwan. CKS needed the resources of Taiwan to continue his losing war against Mao. Most of the food produced in Taiwan was sent to China for his soldiers. The control of the industries was granted to monopolies controlled by mainlanders. High ranking positons were given to mainlanders. Tension between the mainlanders and Taiwanese were building since 1945.
228 actually started of on 02-27-47 where the Alcohol and Tobacco Monopoly enforcement officers caught an old lady selling illegal cigarettes in what is now The Peace Park. The cigarettes were illegal because the taxes were not paid on them. They beat the old lady and the people around the park were angry at the officers and decided to beat them. From this incident, things escalated to a point that the Taiwanese took control of many local city governments and Chen Yi was losing control. There was a committee formed by the leaders of the local townships that met to discuss how the KMT can help improve conditions in Taiwan. Chen Yi agreed to turn over the findings with signatures to CKS. Chen Yi asked for and received troops from CKS while the Taiwanese leaders were meeting. When the troops arrived, Chen yi turned over the petition and ordered the troops to execute the people on the list. Martial law was declared at that time and was not lifted until 1987. The troops went around with machine guns on trucks and killing people. The troops rounded up people and drilled holes into their legs and hands, strung wires into the holes that was made. Then the troops tied the wires onto a boulder and threw the boulder into the sea, drowning the people one by one.
David,
The murder you mentioned in Daly City, I think it was in Union City, California. The culprits were members of the Bamboo Gang.
The dragon book you mentioned is probably Fires of the Dragon, Politics, Murder, and the Kuomintang, by David Kaplan. The cohen name you mentioned was probably Marc. J. Cohen who I met when he was working for the Asia Resource Center and Center for Taiwan International Relations in Washington DC.
If anyone is interested in Taiwanese history, hereâs and url with a list of books.
http://www.taiwandc.org/hst-ref.htm
Interesting footnote about the book Formosa Betrayed, for a while, the KMT had the rights to the book and it was not published. All you can find in the libraries in the US were the copies from when it was first printed. In the 90âs, some Taiwanese people obtained the rights to it and started to publish it again.
Iâve never heard of Ronald Regan as putting pressure on the KMT. I know that many Taiwanese American organizations were suggesting to their congress persons that they pressure the KMT to change their ways. Thatâs how the blacklist of Taiwanese nationals was lifted.
Mark
The money is quickly on the way out,> by the way, replaced by the bad> print jobs (look at the globe, it is reversed!)Ah yes, that was fun. http://www.geocities.com/jidanni/1000xinxintaibi.htm
Dan, what is your job in Taiwan? They surely canât be working you very hard!
Itâs that time of year again, so Iâm dusting off this thread.
All of you who havenât read Formosa Betrayed yet, nowâs the time to learn more about why 2-28 is such a big deal here:
www.romanization.com/books/formosabetrayed/
an interesting read was by a us naval officer Robert Miles, it was published by caves i believe, the name escapes me, it was âamericaâs swamp navy in chinaâ or something similar i believe. itâs a little known story of a naval officer who organized a guerilla force for the stated purpose of weather prediction (the weather in china soon likely to affect us fleet operations in the pacific.) he had a high opinion of the chiang regime and the infamous Tai Li as well, who he spent a lot of time with. not saying his views were correct but it is a straightforward account by a man who seems to be telling it like he saw it, and quite a story in any case. he got a lot of âflakâ from the army who viewed him as intruding on their turf and did not share his opinion of chiang, eventually he sufffered a nervous breakdown, a fact which he does not gloss over in the book. he had a high opinion of stillwell too. donât know if itâs still in print but if it is caves will have it.
The book was âA Different Kind of Warâ written by Adm. Milton Miles and his group was S.A.C.O. The Sino-American Cooperative Organization.
[quote=âcranky laowaiâ]Itâs that time of year again, so Iâm dusting off this thread.
All of you who havenât read Formosa Betrayed yet, nowâs the time to learn more about why 2-28 is such a big deal here:
www.romanization.com/books/formosabetrayed/[/quote]
I guess that text must have been scanned and âOCRedâ Cranky. Some bizarre typos like the numeral 1 being substituted for letter âl.â Maybe if you have some free time you could run a spellcheck on the file and remove some of the weirdnes. Thanks for putting it online anyway, itâs a must-read, as is Peng Ming-min.
thanks, blueface, thatâs right.
That wouldnât surprise me much, given how much work I had to do on those files. 
I checked a few chapters at random and couldnât find any instances of the 1/L mistake you mentioned. If you happen to remember where you spotted these or other problems, please let me know.
(Bump)
Those of you who donât want to devote themselves now to reading the whole of Formosa Betrayed might prefer to start with a few chapters:
Chapter 11. On the Eve of Disaster
Chapter 12. The February Incident, 1947
Chapter 14. The March Massacre
From Chapter 14:
[quote]Suddenly the night silence was shattered. The rattle of gunfire could be heard not far away on the boulevard leading into the city from the north. Soon thereafter -a matter of minutes - Nationalist Army trucks rolled slowly along the road before our house, and from them a hail of machine-gun fire was directed at random into the darkness, ripping through windows and walls and ricocheting in the black alleyways.
The crack of rifle-fire and the chatter of machine guns could be heard throughout the night, across the town. The troops had come in from Keelung.
This was to be the Governmentâs answer to proposals for reform. Dawn on that Sunday opened a week of naked terror for the Formosan people.
During a lull in the action on our boulevard, we made our way to the Mackaye Mission Hospital close by, to join there the Director of the USIS, his wife and baby, and other foreigners who realized that the large walled mission compound might offer some security from random gunfire in the streets.
From an upper window we watched Nationalist soldiers in action in the alleys across the way. We saw Formosans bayoneted in the street without provocation. A man was robbed before our eyes - and then cut down and run through. Another ran into the street in pursuit of soldiers dragging a girl away from his house and we saw him, too, cut down.
This sickening spectacle was only the smallest sample of the slaughter then taking place throughout the city, only what could be seen from one window on the upper floor of one rather isolated house. The city was full of troops. [/quote]
Thank you Cranky. No matter how many times I read that book, I never fail to be disgusted and sickened by the filth that took Taiwan.
Dropping pamphlets from planes. Maybe someone should drop several thousand Chinese copies of Formosa Betrayed over the island.
BTW. Do you have anything on Soongâs part in the White Terror? I know thatâs considerably later but Iâd like to find out a bit more about the blood on the future vice presidentâs hands.
I did a bit of a search, but couldnât find any references to Henry Liuâs book. Who is the publisher?
I know he forbid Taiwanese to speak the Taiwanese language at any schools when he was in power. Most of the islandâs
population are Taiwanese, so you know we were not allowed to speak and learn our native language. How would you feel that you could not be allowed to speak English? ohh⌠I just watched a TV news recording his speech to the press conference, he asked foreign media to report the fact the govenment does the right thing, bascially he was just trying to support the government and fight for those people sacrificed for the possibility of democracy in Taiwan.!!
For more info.Hidden history surfaces
Itâs that time of year again.
With 2-28 approaching, anyone who hasnât already read Formosa Betrayed should start now so as to learn why a day has been set aside in remembrance of the terrible events of 1947.
[quote=âcranky laowaiâ]
Those of you who donât want to devote themselves now to reading the whole of Formosa Betrayed might prefer to start with a few chapters:
Chapter 11. On the Eve of Disaster
Chapter 12. The February Incident, 1947
Chapter 14. The March Massacre
From Chapter 14:
[quote]Suddenly the night silence was shattered. The rattle of gunfire could be heard not far away on the boulevard leading into the city from the north. Soon thereafter -a matter of minutes - Nationalist Army trucks rolled slowly along the road before our house, and from them a hail of machine-gun fire was directed at random into the darkness, ripping through windows and walls and ricocheting in the black alleyways.
The crack of rifle-fire and the chatter of machine guns could be heard throughout the night, across the town. The troops had come in from Keelung.
This was to be the Governmentâs answer to proposals for reform. Dawn on that Sunday opened a week of naked terror for the Formosan people.
During a lull in the action on our boulevard, we made our way to the Mackaye Mission Hospital close by, to join there the Director of the USIS, his wife and baby, and other foreigners who realized that the large walled mission compound might offer some security from random gunfire in the streets.
From an upper window we watched Nationalist soldiers in action in the alleys across the way. We saw Formosans bayoneted in the street without provocation. A man was robbed before our eyes - and then cut down and run through. Another ran into the street in pursuit of soldiers dragging a girl away from his house and we saw him, too, cut down.
This sickening spectacle was only the smallest sample of the slaughter then taking place throughout the city, only what could be seen from one window on the upper floor of one rather isolated house. The city was full of troops. [/quote][/quote]
Agreed, this book is a must read. A few diplomats form the West should read it as well. As should those who constanlty gripe about the DPP. Regardless of how international factors have impacted on Taiwan, we should all be aware of just why the DPP hold independence as a priority.
holidays are always good converation starters in class. in the past I always wuss out come 228. since i am a short timer this go round i have nothing to lose.
my sixth grade students are completely ignorant on what happened.
they could not even come to an agreement on who killed who. when asked, most opined âthe japanese killed taiwanese.â also blamed were americans, min jing dang (dpp) and waishengren (foreigners?).
when i said âkuo ming tang killed taiwaneseâ it was like some one set off a bomb. even the most normally relaxed/passive kids were aflame âben dan lao wai. women shir taiwan ren! ni buzhidao taiwan! bai chir!â the expletives rained down hard and fast. they refused to even consider that the KMT was the bad guy.
has anyone else had a similar revelation?
As the saying goes âthose who drink from KMT milkâŚâ
Plenty of innocent âChineseâ were persocuted and killed by âTaiwaneseâ too. That seems to get forgotten about. Mrs Fluffyâs family hid people in their house a la Anne Frank to escape the angry mobs, I guess they didnât (or couldnât) get much protection from the KMT either.
I think the term âplentyâ is a bit of an overstatement - the number of 'Chinese" civilian deaths was relatively small. As for persecuted? I would hardly compare being assaulted with a program of government authorized mass murder.