Part 2 — An Arrow Shot Into the Sun

A countryside boy

I was born in 1941, or the 16th year of the Shiowa era in the Japanese calendar, in Dingden, a small village of Tachia Township near the western coast in Central Taiwan. There were about one hundred families in this village. Most of them were poor farmers. They did not own the farmland and had to pay high rent to the landlords.

At that time Taiwan was part of Japan. My father gave me a Japanese name “Teruo” which meant a brilliant hero. He always called me Teruo until he passed away in 1997.

About one month after I was born, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War exploded. When the Japanese Emperor Shiowa announced surrender to the Allied Forces on radio at noon, August 15, 1945, I was not yet four years old. But I can still remember several things during the war.

The front yard court of our house, which was used for drying rice grains during the crop season, had an air-raid shelter. I remember a number of times I heard the siren sound and followed the adults getting into the shelter. Although it was damp and had water inside, I did not feel uncomfortable. I did not hear any bombing or shooting inside the shelter.

There was only one time when I felt terrified. My grandfather from my mother’s side had cultivated some wild land at the base of Ta-an River. One day he took me with him when he went to work in the field. While I was playing alone, I suddenly heard the air-raid siren. My grandfather rushed to hold me under his arms and hid in a ditch under a row of bamboo. I heard the shooting sound of machine guns and the loud explosion of bombs. When the air-raid siren subsided, I saw huge smoke clouds rising to the sky in the direction of Tachia. Many houses had been hit and were on fire.

Except for this frightening experience, I did not have any dark memory of the war. There were no casualties in our village. After I grew up, I learned about casualties in big cities and military bases under the bombing of U.S. airplanes. However, compared to the severe bombing of Saipan and Philippine islands, Taiwan received very little damage during the war.

To explain why Taiwan was not damaged so much during the Pacific War, it is necessary to trace the history of Taiwan further back. In the 1894 Sino-Japan War, the Manchurian Empire was defeated. In April 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, in which China perpetually ceded its sovereignty over Taiwan to Japan. The Manchurian Empire had regarded Taiwan as just “a tiny island outside its territory.” Taiwan was handed from one colonial regime to another in 1895.

When Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, the Japanese government put heavy manpower and an enormous amount of money to build Taiwan. There were railroads and highways over the whole island, modern sanitary and medical facilities, a first rate irrigation network, and a perfect modern education system. All of these developments in Taiwan were as good as those in Japan. Moreover, Taiwan was a very important base for the Japanese military force to advance to Southeastern Asia. Thus the Japanese had built Taiwan as a huge carrier.

During the fighting in many islands in the South Pacific, American forces encountered stubborn resistance by the Japanese army. The casualties were extremely heavy and the progress was very slow. On the other hand, Japan had already set up strong defense forces in Taiwan in order to stop the advance of Allied Forces further north to the Japanese main inland.

If Taiwan were to be the next allied target after the Philippines, then in view of the strong Japanese defenses it would take months if not years to conquer Taiwan with even greater casualties. Realizing this problem, the Allied Forces Highest Commander General Douglas McArthur decided to jump over Taiwan and proceed directly to Okinawa. Because of this strategic decision, Taiwan was spared of bloody battles. Most of what the Japanese had built in Taiwan was left intact to the end of the war.

Shortly before the war ended, whenever children in our village heard of the roaring noise from the sky, we would rush outside to watch the American airplanes. We waved our hands to them and shouted with feet jumping up and down. The airplanes dropped beautiful colored papers in red, yellow, blue, white, green, black, silver, violet, …, and some were in rolls. The floating view of these colored papers in the sky was so beautiful. We were very excited and happy to pick up these papers and used them to make toys.

Watching the passing American airplanes was a sweet memory of my childhood. At that time, I was almost four years old.

Goddess Matsu

My mother was a very beautiful woman. She was a little bit taller than my father. But it was not because of her beauty that my grandfather decided to accept her as his daughter-in-law. In those days, a marriage was decided by the bride-groom’s father. A match-maker had already proposed her name to my grandfather. One day he paid a secret visit to see my mother. She was working very hard in the farm field with trousers one leg up and another leg down. When the match-maker complained to him about the secret visit, he said to her,

“Thank you for introducing her to us. I have decided to accept her as my daughter-in-law. She will be able to help us work in the field.”

I got very sick with high fever when I was about one year old. My family was so poor that my mother could only try all sorts of herb medicine to cure me. But they did not help and my sickness became worse and worse. When my mother saw me dying, she rushed to a doctor in the town of Tachia. The doctor shook his head,

“There is no way to save this baby.”

At that moment she ran to the Matsu Temple, just a few blocks from doctor’s office. She put me on the altar and said to Goddess Matsu,

“I give this baby to you. Please take him as your son.”

Then she made her pledge and prayed. She took an incense-pouch from the altar and put it around my neck. Miraculously I survived. Since then I have always felt that Goddess Matsu is protecting me.

Matsu Temple is the religious center of the town of Tachia and the nearby villages. Every year on March 23rd of the lunar calendar there is a huge festival to celebrate Goddess Matsu’s birthday. In fact, there are many other Matsu temples in Taiwan. Goddess Matsu is regarded as a protector of the people in Taiwan.

Taiwan is geographically separated from China by the Taiwan Strait, where whirlpools and submerged currents are everywhere and strong wind is unpredictable. In the old days it was extremely difficult and dangerous to navigate a ship to cross over this strait. During the 17th century, refugees and wanted outlaws escaped from the southeast coast of China and took great risks to cross the Taiwan Strait. Most of the small boats turned over and people died on the ocean. Those few lucky ones who eventually reached Taiwan said that they saw a goddess coming to rescue them. To thank her, they gave her a very intimate name “Matsu-Po” and built temples to worship her. This is the reason why there are so many Matsu temples in Taiwan.

From the moment I was given to Matsu as her son, I must have the incense-pouch around my neck all the time in order to get Matsu’s protection. When I swam or washed my body (there were no such things as taking a bath or shower in the countryside), I must carefully remove the incense-pouch from my neck beforehand and put it back right afterward. Moreover my mother warned me not to walk beneath the bamboo poles where clothes were hung to dry. That would be a great disrespect to Matsu, she said. Whenever I had to pass such bamboo poles I must carefully walked around.

I had the incense-pouch around my neck until the year when I was thirteen and graduated from the elementary school. My mother took me to the Matsu Temple to fulfill her gratitude promise. She thanked Matsu for protecting me in the past years, then she removed the incense-pouch from my neck and put it back onto the altar.

After I grew up and studied outside my hometown, I no longer visited Matsu Temple so often as before. But whenever I went home during the lunar new year or summer vacation, I would visit the Matsu Temple to thank Matsu and to walk around the temple for a while.

In 1966 a few days before I left Taiwan for the United States, I and my mother went to Matsu Temple to pay a farewell respect to Matsu and to pray for my future well-being. On that day, my mother had my youngest sister in her arm. She was only about two years old and I was going abroad to pursue my graduate study at Cornell University.

An aboriginal garden

There had been aborigines residing in Taiwan long before the arrival of Han refugees and outlaws from Southeast coast of China. According to the archaeological evidence, the aborigines lived on Taiwan about 3000 BC during the Neolithic Ages and Alluvial Epoch. They were Proto-Malays belonging to the South Paleo-Mongoloid racial group. These aborigines were the forerunners in the dawning era of Taiwan.

The aborigines spread all over the Taiwan island. There were nine tribes in the coastal areas, mainly in the west coast, and eleven tribes in the high mountain regions and some eastern coastal areas. Those nine tribes in the coastal areas were called the “Peipo” or plain aborigines. Through contact and marriages with the Han immigrants, the plain aborigines gradually adopted the living customs and languages (holo and hakka) of the Hans people. Their descendants are almost indistinguishable from the Han people except for some characteristics which I will mention later in this section. The Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Building is named after the Ketagalan tribe, one of the plain aborigines who used to live in the area.

Those eleven tribes in the high mountain regions and some eastern coastal areas are called the mountain aborigines. They did not have so much direct contact with the Han immigrants in the past and are still live in more or less the same regions nowadays. Their languages and customs are preserved. Ami tribe, the largest one among the mountain aborigines, has Ami Fall Festival every year which attracts a lot of tourists.

The aborigines possess very rich cultural heritage. Their music, visual arts, poetry, and mythology contain naive beauty and deep philosophical meanings. Many of their mythological stories tell of the perseverance of the aboriginal people. In the story “Two suns,” it says that a long time ago the sky was not so high and there were two suns. It was very hot and people had to work all the time. Then came a warrior who thought of shooting down one of the suns. He tried and tried and finally one day his huge arrow hit one sun. Since then people could rest during the night.

During the 16th century, the quiet Taiwanese island started to get the attention of the western super powers. In 1557, a Portuguese trade ship passed by Taiwan. When the sailors saw the beautiful view of forests and mountains in the island, they joyfully shouted,

“Ilha Formosa!”

In fact, whenever Portuguese sailors saw a beautiful island from their ship, they would shouted “Ilha Formosa!” which means beautiful island. But nowadays people usually understand Formosa as Taiwan.

From this time on, the foreign powers entered Taiwan and established colonial regimes. Until Japan occupied Taiwan in 1895, there had been three periods of foreign regimes,

1. 1624-1661: Dutch Imperial period
2. 1661-1683: Koxinga regime period
3. 1683-1895: Manchu period

Although the Manchu occupied Taiwan for 212 years, Taiwan was not its official territory for 204 years. It was in 1887 that Taiwan became a province of Manchu. Thus Taiwan officially belonged to Manchu only for 8 years. An interesting incident is enough to explain the reality of Manchu’s ruling (or rather non-ruling) of Taiwan. In 1869 LeGendre, an American consulate to Manchu, signed a treaty on “Rescuing sea wrecks” with a chief of aborigines in Taiwan, instead of with the Manchu government. This treaty was approved by the United States Congress. It was certainly an official international treaty and did not involve the Manchu government.

During the first 200 years of occupation, the Manchu government strictly prohibited Han people to immigrate to Taiwan. But the Prohibition Law could not stop refugees and outlaws risking their lives to get to Taiwan. Those lucky people who could survive the dangerous Taiwan Strait to reach Taiwan were almost all single men. They could only marry plain (“Peipo”) aboriginal women. Most of the Taiwanese are their descendants. This fact leads to a well-known Taiwanese phrase,

“Taiwanese have Tang-shan grandpas, but no Tang-shan grandmas.”

Tang-shan was what Taiwanese called mainland China in those days. The grandfathers were Han men from China, while grandmothers were local plain (“Peipo”) aboriginal women. Because of this interracial marriage, Taiwanese and Chinese have very different DNA structures.

In central Taiwan the railroad splits into mountain line and coast line. Tachia is the largest station in the coast line. My home village Dingden is to the north of Tachia in the west side of the railroad. Opposite in the other side is the Iron Board Mountain, the highest point in Tachia Township. There is a huge open area, called Aboriginal Garden, in the hillside between the mountain and the railroad. In my childhood I often played with my friends in this place. We would catch some insects and put them in fights or compete sliding downhill. Sometimes we made toys from large bamboos in this area and watched trains passing by. We often climbed up to the top of Iron Board Mountain to see the ocean in the Taiwan Strait. The top of the southern part of the mountain is completely flat like a cutting board, which was the reason the mountain got its name.

At that time I thought all aborigines lived in the high mountain areas, while those living in the plain areas were all Han people. While in Taiwan I never heard of the name “Peipo,” the plain aborigines. Only after I came to the United States could I find books and magazines about history and culture of the Taiwanese people. I was very eager to learn, in particular, about the existence of the plain aborigines. Under Chiang’s regime, any book on history and culture of Taiwan written from the Taiwanese viewpoint was strictly prohibited. The history textbooks at school contain only a few pages about Taiwan, which were just for political propaganda. Chiang’s regime allowed books on Taiwan written from the Chinese viewpoint. These books distorted the truth and even intentionally insulted the Taiwanese. It was not unfair to say that the Chinese writers wanted to destroy Taiwanese integrity and confidence.

My mother’s name was “huan-po,” which meant aboriginal woman. When I was a boy I thought my grandfather from mom’s side gave her the name because she was beautiful (aboriginal women have beautiful faces) and strong. More accurately, he gave her this name to hope that she would grow beautiful and strong for hard work.

As I reflect on it now, I believe that my grandma from mom’s side was a plain aborigine. My mother’s siblings and children all have double upper eyelids and pointed noses just like the aborigines. My four sisters are very beautiful and my five brothers are quite handsome. One brother has a nickname “A-tok-a” (Taiwanese meaning pointed nose, sometimes referring to foreigners because of their pointed noses) and the nickname of my youngest brother is “Ian-tau-a” (Taiwanese meaning a handsome man).

Most Taiwanese have double upper eyelids and a pointed nose because of the blood mixing with the aborigines. Typically, the Hans people have single upper eyelids and a flat nose. Another distinct characteristic of this blood mixing is a tiny piece of split toenail growing sidewards in each foot. I have to cut them every two or three weeks to avoid feeling uncomfortable and getting hurt.

Sweet potato

When I was a small boy, I often had to help my mother keep the fire for her to cook the meals. Sometimes, while cooking, she would tell me stories about my childhood. Looking at the fire blaze in the stove, I felt losing myself and listened quietly to mother’s voice “Long long ago, . . .”

She said, when I was about two years old, I was caught on spot stealing loofah from loofah trellis by a neighbor woman. She dragged me to my mother and accused me of the stealing. My mother thought in her mind, “Goodness gracious! My boy is so small, how could he climb up the loofah trellis to pick up the loofahs?” But my mother could not defend me. She could not even give an explanation because my hands were still holding two loofahs. So my mother beat me really hard in order to calm down the anger of the neighbor woman. While my mother was telling me all this, she wept and wept.

I do have some memory about this incident. I was playing with several elder boys under the loofah trellis. They climbed up the trellis to pick up loofahs and asked me to collect them on the ground. Suddenly, all elder boys disappeared in a hurry and I was left alone without knowing what to do with the loofahs in my hands. That is all I can remember. As for the dragging by the neighbor woman and the beating by my mother, I have no recollection at all.

My family was very poor. Our rice container was often empty. We could eat plain white rice only a few times in a month. What my mother cooked most often were sweet potatoes together with the vines. We ate the sweet potatoes, while the pigs we raised ate the vines. The sweet potato leaves cooked with oil and salt tasted rather delicious. I grew up by eating mostly sweet potatoes, which in fact saved my life.

Sweet potato is very special and has a deep meaning to the Taiwanese. Taiwan is a small island with area only 14,000 square miles. It is about the same size as Kyushu of Japan or the Netherlands, a little bit smaller than Denmark, and a little bit larger than the combination of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Except for the Chia-nan Plain in the southwestern Taiwan, the whole island consists of high mountains and forests without much plough land. The shape of Taiwan is just like a sweet potato. For this reason the Taiwanese often call themselves “sweet potato.” On the contrary, the Taiwanese call people in the Chiang Kai-shek group “taro,” a plant imported to Taiwan from outside.

The fact that Taiwanese call themselves “sweet potato” has a much deeper meaning. There is Taiwanese proverb,

“The sweet potato is not afraid of getting rotten under the ground, just hoping that new leaves and vines will sprout and spread.”

Before I learned about this proverb, I had already observed in the farm field that when a sweet potato was buried under the ground, it would get rotten. But before it was completely rotten, new leaves would sprout and then vines grew and spread out. This proverb is interpreted as saying that Taiwanese are not afraid to sacrifice, just hoping that their spirit would be passed on from generation to generation.

This Taiwanese proverb has its historical background. The history of Taiwan consists of a sequence of riots and rebellions against outside regimes. Countless Taiwanese sacrificed their lives, but their spirit of struggling and will to be free of outside regimes always passed on to the next generation. During the Dutch Imperial period (1624-1661) the largest uprising (1652) was led by Kuo Huai-i to fight against the Dutch for heavy taxation and brutal oppression.

During the 212 years of the Manchu period (1683-1895) there were so many rebellions that they can be only described by a Taiwanese saying, “One riot every three years and one uprising every five years.” Here are some of the large scale uprisings,

• 1721: Chu I-kuei Uprising
• 1732: Wu Fu-sheng Uprising
• 1786: Lin Suang-wun Uprising
• 1822: Lin Yung-chun Uprising
• 1824: Hsu Sang Uprising
• 1826: Huang Tou-nai Uprising
• 1832: Chang Beng Uprising
• 1854: Lai Chun and Huang Wei Uprising
• 1862: Dai Wan-sheng Uprising
• 1888: Shih Jiou-duan Uprising

Taiwanese resistance against the ruling of Japan (1895-1945) started at the arrival of the Japanese army and lasted for 25 years without interruption. They used primitive weapons to fight against the then modern military forces and died bravely in many uprisings including the following,

• 1896: Tie-kuo-shan Uprising
• 1897: Feng-shan Uprising
• 1907: Pei-pu Uprising
• 1912: Tu-ku Uprising
• 1912-25: Lin-chi-pu Uprising
• 1913: Miao-li Uprising
• 1914: Liu-chia Uprising
• 1915: Shi-lai-yen Uprising

Realizing that armed resistance was absolutely futile, the Taiwanese political leaders adjusted their strategy to cooperate with the Japanese ruler and appealed for the autonomy of Taiwan. However, on October 27, 1930 the mountain aborigines rebelled against the Japanese in the well-known Wuh-sheh Uprising. Many people were cruelly killed by the Japanese.

Chiang’s regime came to Taiwan in 1945. In just a little bit over one year, on February 28, 1947 the Taiwanese rebelled against Chiang’s regime. This rebellion is known as the 228 Uprising which I will write about in the next section. Since then and until Lee Teng-hui became the president of Taiwan, Taiwanese resistance and independence movement in public and underground had never stopped inside Taiwan and abroad.

On April 24, 1970 Peter Huang attempted to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo. When he was subdued and stepped on the ground by a policeman, he shouted with all his strength, “Let me stand up like a man.” This simple sentence said it all about the Taiwanese struggle for their fate.

I knew Peter personally. He was studying social science at Cornell at that time. He was very quiet and scholastic. In the social gatherings of the Cornell Taiwanese Student Association, he often sang the song “The wife of a pig match-maker”. I can still remember his bright yet sorrowful voice,

“Husbands of other women wear splendid suits,
My husband is a pig match-maker,
Everybody calls me the wife of a pig match-maker, . . . . . .”

In the old days, a pig match-maker provided stud service for pigs. He was usually a bachelor and lived with his male pig like a brother. His profession was looked down upon and despised by the society. When hearing Peter’s singing, I could feel that he wanted to express through the song the sorrow of the Taiwanese for being deserted by the international communities and without any international status.

228 Uprising

When I was about five years old, all the children were ordered to go to bed early even when it was not quite dark yet. After midnight I often heard the shouting “Catch thieves here, arrest thieves there!” Sometimes the shouting was mixed with terrifying screams, which hit my eardrum even though I had covered myself with heavy blankets. I could hear the noises of running and chasing. The approaching footsteps sounded like just outside our house. I held my breath and did not dare move a bit. This horrible incident seemed to last for several months.

After I grew up, I began to learn that my terrifying experience happened around the period of the “228 Uprising.”

Japan surrendered to Allied Forces on August 15, 1945. The highest commander of Allied Forces asked Chiang Kai-shek to temporarily occupy Taiwan until the United Nations had a resolution which would determine the future of Taiwan. However, Chiang’s officers held a ceremony in Taipei on October 25, 1945 to celebrate what they called “the Recovery of Taiwan.” This is the day Chiang’s regime declared the ruling of Taiwan. But to the Taiwanese this day was the beginning of their nightmares, which are still haunting them to this day.

Actually Chiang’s special agents, covered by the U.S. military personnel, arrived in Taiwan as early as September 1, 1945. Their secret mission was to collection information to make a blacklist of Taiwanese elite and the wealthy gentry. In the following days Chiang’s regime used this blacklist to extort, purge, and murder Taiwanese leaders.

The Japanese in Taiwan, upon hearing the news that their emperor had announced surrender, bore their deep sorrow to clean up their residence. They only packed up simple personal belongings and quietly waited for their turn to be sent back to Japan. Japanese military supplies and equipment, industrial facilities, and commercial properties were all left almost intact.

Chiang’s military and police forces arrived in Taiwan in mid-September, 1945. During the anarchic period from August 15 to mid-September, there was no looting nor riots. The Taiwanese were still law-abiding people even though the Japanese were leaving. Besides, the Taiwanese indulged in the happiness of ending the war and being free from Japanese colonial rule.

In fact, Taiwan had become a very civilized society under the Japanese modernization effort. Western capitalism already took an initial development stage. The concept of democracy was promoted and the governing by laws was a common practice. In essence, at the end of World War II Taiwan was already very modernized in every respect and the Taiwanese enjoyed high living standard. On the contrary, China was still a feudal society and ruled by a handful of warlords. The Chinese had no real understanding of democracy and did not respect the laws at all. Taiwan and China were far beyond comparison.

Upon their arrival in Taiwan, the Chiang group Chinese considered themselves as a conqueror and oppressed the Taiwanese, depriving them of any equal rights. They regarded Taiwan as their booty and plundered the public and private properties indiscriminately. The Chinese officials took apart the good running machinery in factories, just to sell it as scrap iron to China in order to make money for their personal pockets. The military officers spread salt over the wings of undamaged Japanese airplanes, just to quickly corrode the airplane body in order to junk the airplanes, and then they could sell aluminium for private profits. The Chinese marauded the confiscated Japanese corporations, stores, houses, lands, etc. They converted these properties to become their personal belongings.

At that time most Taiwanese people could speak only Taiwanese and Japanese. Chinese mandarin was a foreign language to them. The Chinese said that these Taiwanese did not know how to speak Chinese and branded them as “You Taiwanese have been under the Japanese slavery education. You need to be re-educated by our Chinese culture.” Then they used this statement as an excuse to fire the Taiwanese employees and replace them with their own relatives and friends. They blackmailed the Taiwanese and asked for “red-bags” (meaning bribery money in Chinese). Taiwanese had no concept of red-bag and refused to be blackmailed. To make things worse, Chinese pillaged private properties everywhere and raped Taiwanese women in broad daylight. The Chinese soldiers even practice gun shooting by firing at Taiwanese in street and in countryside.

And so, the beautiful Taiwan, without much damage during the war, was totally devastated by the Chinese in less than a year. A lawful society under the Japanese ruling suddenly became a hell of Chinese bandits under Chiang Kai-shek’s occupation.

To make the situation even worse, there was a rice shortage. Taiwan was well-known for rice production. During the war, the Japanese had stocked a huge amount of rice for the military supplies to prepare for the defense of Taiwan against the Allied Force. When the Chinese officials came to Taiwan, they immediately confiscated the rice stocks and shipped them to China to fatten their own pockets. After the rice shortage, the high-rocketing inflation followed and people dying on street occurred day by day.

Under this circumstance, there was a widespread satire “Five skies and five grounds” which reflected the Taiwanese feeling,

1. When American airplanes bombed,
   they broke the sky and shook the ground;
2. When the Japanese surrendered,
   we joyfully jumped up to the sky and down to the ground;
3. Then come the corruptive Chinese officials,
   they indulge in the sky and party on the ground;
4. The brutal Chinese policemen are everywhere,
   the sky is so dark and the ground has no light;
5. Now the inflation is sky-rocketing,
   we can only yell to the sky and cry to the ground.

The Taiwanese resentment against Chinese occupation increased rapidly. People began to circulate the saying, “Gone the dogs, come the pigs.” The Taiwanese people regarded the Japanese as dogs, since the Japanese were loyal and diligent like dogs. They regarded the Chinese as pigs, since the Chiang group Chinese could only eat and were lazy like pigs. On the other hand, the Taiwanese regarded themselves as buffalos. Buffalos were driven to work very hard quietly in the farm everyday through their entire lives, and at the end slain only to be consumed by the city people. The life of buffalos describes perfectly well the sad fate of Taiwanese.

Taiwanese resentment brought only heavier oppression from the Chinese officials, soldiers, and policemen. Finally, the “228 Uprising” exploded on February 28, 1947. It was ignited by an incident in which several Chinese policemen took away the cigarettes and money from a poor widow woman who they claimed was selling illegal cigarettes. When the nearby people protested, the policemen ran away, shot and killed a bystander. This incident quickly became a full-scale uprising in Taipei and, within a day or so, spread over the whole island.

In central Taiwan the “227 Corps,” composed mainly of high school students and led by former Taiwanese Japanese soldiers, defeated the Chinese forces and took control of the Taichung City Hall and military barracks. In south-central Taiwan the civilian force defeated the Chinese army and took control of the Chia-Yi Airport. But in southern Taiwan a Chiang Kai-shek general Peng Beng-chi tricked the rebellion force and massacred Taiwanese on March 6 at the Kaohsiung train station. On March 8 well-equipped armies sent by Chiang Kai-shek from China arrived at the northern port Chilung and immediately started massacring the Taiwanese indiscriminately until March 17 when the uprising was finally suppressed.

Right after the uprising was suppressed, Chiang Kai-shek’s officials and secret agents began well-planned plots to arrest and murder the Taiwanese. According to conservative estimates, at least 20,000 Taiwanese were killed during the uprising and shortly afterward. Some sources estimated the figure at 50,000, nearly 1% of the then total population 7 millions. In the 1953 official statistical data of Chiang’s regime, more than 100,000 Taiwanese were listed as missing. It is believed that most of them were arrested and killed without any record by secret agents because of suspicious involvement with the 228 Uprising.

And so, almost all the then Taiwanese elite was wiped out by Chiang’s regime. Moreover, the massacre of 228 Uprising and the Martial Law imposed in 1948 had put Taiwanese to live under the white terror for over 38 years. Through many rebellions and uprisings, Chiang’s regime finally lifted Martial Law in 1987.

In my hometown Tachia, there was a famous person Chen Shin who had studied economics at Keio University in Japan and Columbia University in the United States. He was taken away by secret agents at midnight wearing only pajamas. Since then his family never heard of anything about him and could not find his corpse. In junior high school I had a schoolmate who had an excellent academic record. But he seldom smiled, always had a sad feeling and confined to himself. No one would dare talk to him because students believed that his father was “missing” during the 228 Uprising.

During my school years, whenever my neighbors praised my academic achievements to my mother, she would reply with no sign of happiness, “It is not really a good thing to be an outstanding student.” She had heard of many outstanding Taiwanese being taken away and murdered by Chiang’s regime. I knew that she was worried that if I continued to perform well in school, I might become a target victim of Chiang’s regime.