Formosa Betrayed

by George H. Kerr

Moderate and conservative elements — the Settlement Committee members — were willing to accept the governor’s word and to proceed with negotiations.

Younger, more skeptical men agreed to support the committee in its efforts, but reserved the right to prepare resistance to any military action that might be taken against the Formosan people.

On reaching this last point of agreement, General Ko vowed to “commit suicide” if his personal guarantee were broken. Nothing was said of troops coming in from abroad.

General Ko, an unusually small man, smartly uniformed, had established a reputation for ruthless action, cruelty, and diamond-hard contempt for “the People.”

At this point General Ko began gradually to emerge as the symbol of the National Army and central government, and in retrospect we see the design.

The Formosans were to be made to appear as rebels against the authority of the National government rather than in protest against the maladministration of Chen Yi.

Had the Formosans at this point really wanted to overthrow Chen Yi and drive the mainland Chinese from the island, it could have been quickly done, leaving the National government with a second war — a maritime war — on its hands. This Chen Yi and General Ko well knew.

By March 5 the Formosans were in control throughout the island except within Chen Yi’s office area at Taipei, and within the garrison compounds and camps.

All mainland Chinese were absent from their jobs, the island-wide system was being maintained solely by Formosan personnel, and the public was asked to cooperate in every way to enable them to keep the power services in full operation, for they were vital to public security.

For one week they had the upper hand, but they chose to conduct themselves with a scrupulous regard for “correct” procedures, hoping throughout that the United States or the United Nations would show interest, that the American Ambassador in China would persuade Chiang to recall Chen Yi and send in a new man to undertake a thorough reform in the administration.

Ships bearing Nationalist Army units left the mainland that night, heading eastward to bring in Chiang Kai-shek’s solution to the Formosan problem.

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 statement set the general framework in which both the local and national governments developed later public explanations of the February 28 Incident and its aftermath.

“A few wicked gangsters had terrorized the island in the first week of March and had rebelled against the Chinese government; Chinese Nationalist troops had come in to protect the righteous people, and were now soothing and protecting all honest and upright Formosans.”

The roadways, the river banks and the harbor shores were strewn with bodies at that moment, and the Nationalist troops were spreading out through the countryside, to...

For the government had decided upon a policy of pure terrorism. Anyone trying to hide or to run was doomed.

The government promptly undertook an intensive search for members of the Settlement Committee, and for all editors, lawyers, doctors or businessmen who had taken an active part in preparing the reform program. Some were killed with great brutality. Unlike the few local Communists, Formosan leaders had had little or no experience in the arts of escape and concealment.

The majority, however, were captured promptly.

If a student could not be found at once, either a member of his family was seized or a fellow student was taken to serve as hostage or as a substitute in death.

First to be destroyed were all established critics of the government.

Then in their turn came Settlement Committee members and their principal aides, all youths who had taken part in the interim policing of Taipei, middle school students, middle school teachers, lawyers, economic leaders and members of influential families, and at last, anyone who in the preceding eighteen months had given offense to a mainland Chinese, causing him to “lose face.”

On March 16 it was reported that anyone who spoke English reasonably well, or who had had close foreign connections, w...

One prominent person, visibly moved, told me that he had witnessed the notorious “Rape of Nanking” by the Japanese in 1937, but that this surpassed it, for the Nanking rape was a product of war, a wild outburst of wartime passion, whereas this was coldly calculated revenge, perpetrated by the Nationalist government upon its own people.

The Nationalist government would like to have the world forget the March Massacres.

Basically, too, the leaders in Chen Yi’s generation of military men were — and are — fundamentally anti-intellectual. The ignorant warlord mistrusts the “clever” intellectual.

We saw students tied together, being driven to the execution grounds, usually along the river banks and ditches about Taipei, or at the waterfront in Keelung. One foreigner counted more than thirty young bodies — in student uniforms — lying along the roadside east of Taipei; they had had their noses and ears slit or hacked off, and many had been castrated. Two students were beheaded near my front gate. Bodies lay unclaimed on the roadside embankment near the Mission compound.

If searchers, with student lists in hand, could not find a wanted boy at home, some member of his family — a father, grandfather or brot...

The atrocities perpetrated at Kaohsiung were (if possible) even more revolting than the mass executions and torture used at Taipei to rid the government of its most outspoken critics.

For this General Peng Meng-chi is held responsible.

Any Formosan who had caused any newcomer severe loss of face in the preceding eighteen months was now fair game, if the offended mainland Chinese could persuade a soldier or gendarme or a policeman to take action. Any government officer who held a grudge could be revenged.

The public prosecutor — a Formosan — who had directed proceedings against mainland police officers guilty of murder in Taichung in 1946, was now seized at Taipei by the convicts themselves, who had been released after March 8. The prosecutor was killed. The Formosan judge who had sat in this case was dragged from the Court offices and was reported to have been killed. The prominent doctor who had criticized the Tainan City mayor in a dramatic confrontation was slaughtered.

At Kaohsiung there were incidents in which the victims’ families were forced to witness cruel executions in the public streets.

Here was the betrayal in its most simple terms; the Formosans looked to us for help, we armed and financed the Nationalists, and the Nationalists were making sure, if they could, that there would be no more appeals to the United States and “democracy.”

So long as Chiang Kai-shek, his family, or his Party and Army govern Formosa, this “betrayal” will not be forgotten nor forgiven.

Criticism of the Party administration is “treachery” and treason justifies the most harsh punishment.

And then there is the problem of “face” and of revenge for loss of it.

Chiang could not bear to be “laughed at by the Japanese,” and he knew the capacity of his own armed forces for revenge.

The government has never relaxed its vengeful search; any “undesirable” can be picked up in 1965, charged with participation in the 1947 rebellion, and sent off to the notorious prison camp on Green Island (Lu Tao).

He had seen exactly what they wanted him to see. The Embassy at Nanking was certainly not much wiser in the event, but perhaps it did not matter.

Control of information was of course a key to the management of this crisis.

It was apparent to many foreigners that the mainland civilians were as afraid of their own undisciplined troops as they were of the rioting Formosans.

To offset this and to “restore confidence,” two misbehaving Nationalist soldiers were executed publicly, a gesture to demonstrate the “sincerity” of Party and government.

But on Monday, March 24, seventy Formosans were executed at Chia-yi. It had become evident that Governor Chen was being given time in which to have h...

In this present instance, China’s foreign interests were involved; foreigners had witnessed the affair, and China’s legal position in the island was by no means as firm as the government pretended it to be.

Distortion of news sent from Taipei during and after the February Incident has been noted; a New Zealand member of the UNRRA group observed how smoothly handled this was — a credit to the school of journalism which had produced the Information Service Director, if not exactly a great credit to the gullibility of the American public.

As she wrote: “Each night [during the massacre] we listened to broadcasts from China and to one in particular from San Francisco, where the riots were mentioned and dismissed by China as terrorist and Japanese-inspired uprisings against lawful authority and the benign rule of China.”

“I don’t regard myself as a Chinese, even though China was our Mother Country. I am a Formosan.”

The propaganda which poured forth immediately after the March affair was exceedingly bitter and oddly enough some of it was printed in English.

In conversation I found the Ambassador full of sympathy for the Formosans, but also full of continuing trust in his friend Chiang Kai-shek.

But here was the old, old missionary dream again — if we could just convert the Emperor, all of China would be saved.