There is nothing in the US presidential libraries that support this hypothesis.
Given that the PRC has gotten HK and Macau back. What leads you to believe that the current reality or your hypothetical Taiwan US territory is nothing but a stop-gap measure until the PRC has the ability to retake the territory with impunity.
They waited 100 years for 2 islands. You think another 50 or another 100 years will reduce their desire for Taiwan?
The first sentence is a clear fabrication. The United States was not the principal occupying power under General Order No. 1. The United States is mentioned precisely as often as the Republic of China within the context of that document: once.
General MacArthur was indeed Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Foces in the Far East. He might’ve also been the head Cub Scout in Beaverton, Oregon, but that doesn’t imply the Boy Scouts are holding Taiwan’s sovereignty in trust either. Every single relevant document lists MacArthur’s title as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, leaving no doubt as to the role he was playing in the occupation.
The occupation shall have the character of an operation in behalf of the principal allied powers acting in the interests of the United Nations at war with Japan.
Period.
If you ever doubt mr_boogie’s knowledge of Taiwanese history, don’t forget that he believes the United States had military bases in Taiwan.
But the US 7th Fleet left Taiwan long ago. Does that mean the US occupation is over?
I think that some of the analysis is coming at this from the wrong angle thinking that the U.S. gave a tinker’s dam for protecting the Taiwanese people or supporting independence activists around the world, muchless supporting former enthusiastic Japanese colonial-era collaborators with any vague notions they might have had about creating their own separate ethnically Chinese nation.
The United States was supporting CKS, not supporting Taiwan or the Taiwanese people – CKS had value in that he had something like 2 million troops and a bunch of U.S. military hardware that could be used to help keep the communist Chinese on edge. CKS had, at least for a while, a pipe dream that he might be able to go back, and if the communists had not been so rapid and thorough in their consolidation of power perhaps there might have been an opportunity to go back and “kick in the rotten door” for him. And when retrocession happened in 1945, the Taiwanese lined the streets proclaiming their great eagerness to be included back within the Chinese fold – perhaps tragically thinking that after 50 years of “tough but fair” Japanese administration they were going to get better from the KMT’s rotten crew in those days. (Perhaps the Taiwanese were lucky that they were occupied so benevolently by the Japanese – they certainly fared better than the Koreans or the really poor bastards in Manchukuo.) Aside from the U.S. presidents’ support, CKS’s wife had been able to get the Congress in her pocket with years of her charming them – and if the account re: Wendell Willikie is to be believed, selectively banging some.
But look around the rest of the world at the time – we had just traded off Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere, had done what we could to stamp out the Vietnamese independence dreams (Ho Chi Minh approached the U.S., proposing a constitution based on that of the U.S., but we preferred the French to have another crack), and so on. There was nothing “special” that would have warranted the U.S. suddenly jumping in to be the foreign masters or protectors of a tiny island on the other end of the earth EXCEPT for the presence of old-ally CKS and his very valuable 2-million-man army.