TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Today commemorates the 228 Massacre of 1947 and its horrific aftermath.
News reports about various memorial activities being held fill the newspapers and short, potted histories of the events will be added to the internet and shared around. Those short, potted histories almost always leave out an important detail.
It does not matter whether the author is pan-blue or pan-green, both sides do not really like to talk about it, but its legacy colors politics and foreign affairs to this day. Much (though not necessarily all) of the brutality imposed on the Taiwanese by the newly arrived Chinese troops in the late 1940s was due to their hatred of the Japanese, and with this in mind, reading the horrific accounts of atrocities committed gives it more context.
Those soldiers had only been fighting the Japanese just over a year earlier in a brutal war that had started in 1937 and only ended in 1945. While in China, the Imperial Japanese Army committed some of the worst atrocities in history.
During the Rape of Nanjing, the Japanese engaged in an orgy of rape and massacre, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. Horrific and barbaric experiments were conducted on tens of thousands on living people.
The hatred and loathing most of those Chinese soldiers had for the Japanese must have run very deep indeed, and many no doubt wanted revenge. Then they were sent to Formosa, then still legally a colony of the Empire of Japan.
Postwar Formosa
After 50 years as a Japanese colony, Taiwan had changed significantly since it was part of the Manchurian Qing Empire. The Japanese had developed Taiwan, and it was far more modern and well-run than China by that point.
It had modern infrastructure, stately Japanese-style buildings and grand train stations and government buildings, including the current presidential office building. Signage was often in Japanese, shops sold Japanese products.
Most of the people spoke Japanese and some dressed in Japanese-style clothing. They slept on tatami mats in homes full of Japanese goods.
Aside from a small number who went to fight for China, the vast majority of Taiwanese soldiers in World War II fought on the Japanese side. That’s a fact the incoming Chinese soldiers were all too well aware of, and many former Taiwanese soldiers were targeted as a result.
It did not help that aside from soldiers hailing from China’s Fujian Province and some Hakkas, there was a major language barrier. Even the Fujianese soldiers were probably put off by Taiwanese speakers, as many Japanese words and phrases had entered into the language (and remain today).
Colonial suffering in Formosa
The Taiwanese initially welcomed the Chinese. They had suffered under the Japanese.
All that modern infrastructure was not for the Taiwanese, it was for the economic benefit of Japan and the hundreds of thousands of Japanese residents. Exceptions, such as much improved sanitation for Taiwanese, were in the end about controlling disease to keep the Japanese safe.
Taiwanese were second-class citizens, with the best jobs and education opportunities largely reserved for the Japanese. When Taiwanese could get good jobs, their pay was significantly lower and for the most part Taiwanese were simply a source of cheap labor.
In all the books I’ve read on the subject from the period by Taiwanese authors, all describe chafing and suffering under Japanese oppression. It’s only later that some Taiwanese, such as former President Lee Tung-hui (李登輝, then called Iwasato Takenori), had positive things to say about the Japanese era — but that is because of what came next.
The incoming Republic of China (ROC) officials set about looting Taiwan both to pay for the civil war raging in China and to fulfil their own deeply corrupt desires. Inflation spiralled out of control, basic items like rice became unaffordable and crime skyrocketed, often committed by the incoming troops.
The previously oppressive but orderly life under the Japanese had now become dystopian and dangerous oppression under the ROC. By February of 1947, graffiti was all over Taipei reading “dogs go, pigs come,” with the Japanese being the outgoing “dogs” and the ROC the incoming “pigs.”
It only took just over a year for the Taiwanese to rise up in revolt in what we now refer to as 228. Rebels took over swathes of the country, but Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) ordered in reinforcements to conduct a brutal and ruthlessly successful crackdown.
DPP rose-tinted glasses
This has all left an important stamp on both Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) current thinking on Japan, and some selective amnesia in both the blue and green camps. Today the DPP is strongly pro-Japan, the KMT less so.
Unlike their counterparts in the other former colony of Japan, Korea, pan-green supporters view their Japanese colonial era with something that at times is outright nostalgic. They remember the increased development, better education and better incomes under the Japanese, but almost never mention the oppression and being treated as second-class subjects.
That they were fighting on the Japanese side of the war is glossed over, and the subject of the sex slaves (“comfort women”) the Imperial Japanese Army used as instruments of rape is not brought up. They prefer to emphasize the positive aspects of the era, like the grand architecture and cultural influences that are still evident today. The Koreans, on the other hand, remember all the downsides, and it remains a major roadblock in relations between the two countries today.
The main difference between Koreans and Taiwanese is that, for most Taiwanese, what came after the Japanese was so much worse in terms of governance (the Koreans did face civil war, though). Most Taiwanese have also received very little education on the Japanese era in school, and know very little about it.
Pan-green supporters point to the Japanese influence as one of the reasons that Taiwanese are distinct from Chinese. They are right, as anyone who has spent any time in China knows.
But they also do not want to push that too far, and I suspect that is why they do not want to talk about the revenge factor by Chinese troops. They want to underscore that Taiwanese are unique and should be independent, and around 228 there was a lot of discussion within the Allies as to whether it would revert to Japan, stay under the ROC, or become independent.
KMT suspicions and irritants
The KMT has retained a suspicion of Japan that lingers to this day, especially those from 49er families that fled the Chinese Civil War. They remember what Japan did in China.
However, by the 1950s, the KMT-controlled ROC had to try and get along with Japan as part of the Cold War front against Communism. That was partly out of self-interest, partly at the behest of the United States.
However, the KMT-era history books glorified China’s fight in the war and the eventual victory over Japan. They established the day that Taiwan was handed over to the ROC, October 25, as Retrocession Day, which remained a holiday until the year 2000.
The party commemorates victories and key dates from the war of resistance to Japan to this day. Former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) ordered a four-month-long “70th Anniversary of Victory Over Japan” celebration in 2015 that cost NT$72.45 million, something that would be unimaginable under a DPP government.
That was an intentional irritant to the relationship with Japan by the KMT, but there are others. With some justification, the KMT periodically brings up the shameful behavior by the Japanese government toward the remaining sex slaves, but the DPP shies away from the issue, in spite of the women in question being Taiwanese.
Another is the issue of the Senkaku Islands, which are called Diaoyutai in Taiwan and Diaoyu in China. All three countries claim the islands, but they are administered by Japan.
The KMT periodically also tries to raise nationalist fervour over the islands. DPP leaders, like President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) respond with formulaic statements like “the Diaoyutais are of course ROC territory,” but it’s obvious to everyone that she hopes the issue would just go away.
Incidentally, former President Ma wrote his thesis at Harvard on ROC claims to the islands. The KMT introduces these irritants to Japan relations, but never pushes it too far, they are aware that the relationship with Japan is necessary and looked on favorably by the U.S.
For the KMT, they leave the Japanese element out of the 228 discussion because it does not look good that their soldiers were at least partly so brutal due to revenge. It also undermines their narrative that Taiwanese are Chinese, because clearly they were not being treated as such by the ROC in 228 and the aftermath.
