F O R M O S A C A L L I N G
An Eyewitness Account of
the February 28th
, 1947 Incident
by
Allan J. Shackleton, B.E., A.M.I.E.E.
formerly Industrial Rehabilitation Officer
in Formosa for the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration
(c) 1998 by the Taiwan Publishing Co. and
by Taiwan Communiqué
31182 Monte Vista Ave, #18
Upland, CA 98786
http://www.taiwandc.org
All Rights Reserved
First Edition May 1998
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In memory of my father, Alan Shackleton
and of the people of Formosa who suffered fifty years ago.
Allan James Shackleton
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge valuable assistance from the following:
Mr Stanley Liao of the New Zealand Taiwanese Association,
Auckland, New Zealand, who tracked me down in 1997 as the
possessor of my father’s faded manuscript and encouraged me to have
it published.
Gerrit and Mei-chin van der Wees, of the Washington DC-based
“Taiwan Communiqué”, and Dr. J.S. Lin, of the Taiwan Publishing
Co, Inc., Upland, CA., USA, all of whom gave much valuable
assistance with the publishing process.
My son, Peter.
Colin J. Shackleton.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allan James Shackleton was born on 21 March 1897 in Waimate, a
small provincial town in South Canterbury, New Zealand.
Shortly after his 20th
birthday, he enlisted as a soldier in the
New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and then endured the horrors of
World War I (1914-1918). For 24 months he fought in the battles of
the Somme, Mons, Gommecourt Wood and the Hindenburg Line. He
was one of only two in his original unit of several hundred men to
survive. His survival and several narrow escapes from death,
strengthened his religious faith and convinced him of the futility of
war.
Following the war, he attended Canterbury University,
Christchurch, New Zealand, and graduated with the degree of Bachelor
of Engineering (Electrical). He was awarded a postgraduate
apprenticeship at Metropolitan Vickers, which at that time was a large
and thriving heavy electrical engineering company in Manchester,
England.
A few years later, the prospect of unemployment at
Metropolitan Vickers during the Great Depression of the early 1930s
compelled him to return with his family to New Zealand in search of
better employment opportunities. Shortly before the Second World
War, he was appointed head of the engineering department at the local
high school in Gisborne. During the Second World War, he was
unwillingly conscripted into the local “Home Guard” but, owing to his
age, was ineligible for a further period of active duty overseas.
In 1946, he successfully applied for the position of Industrial
Rehabilitation Officer with the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (China Mission). Initially, he worked in
Shanghai but at the onset of the communist uprising in China was
posted to Formosa (Taiwan).
After his arrival in Taiwan, the Formosans rebelled against
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s military regime. On 28 February
1947, he again found himself in a war zone. During December, 1947,
at the end of his term of duty he left Taiwan to return to his family in
Gisborne.
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He retired from a career of teaching at the age of 70. In his later
years he spent much time writing “The Passing Years”, an incomplete
autobiography which describes his experiences during the First World
War in some detail.
He died in New Plymouth, New Zealand, at the age of 87 and is
survived by his wife and two sons.
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INTRODUCTION
My father, Allan James Shackleton, wrote “Formosa Calling” in
1948, immediately after his return to New Zealand. He was strongly
motivated by “interests of peace, justice and humanity” and the need
for the conditions in Formosa to be more widely known.
For fifty years “Formosa Calling” has lain unpublished among
our family’s memorabilia. Brief extracts were however included in
George H Kerr’s book “Formosa Betrayed” which was first published
in Great Britain in 1966.
As a result of these references, and as part of their fiftieth
commemoration of what had become known as the “February 28th
incident”, the New Zealand branch of the Taiwanese Association traced
our family’s whereabouts, and convinced us that we should publish his
manuscript.
My father was an extremely moral man in the old-fashioned and
Christian mold. Presbyterian by upbringing and later a Quaker with
strong pacifist convictions, his surprise and abhorrence of what he
considered to be immoral activities in Taiwan in 1947 can be clearly
seen throughout the text. The corruption of the Nationalist regime, the
abject poverty to which they reduced the Taiwanese population, and the
violent behaviour of the Nationalist soldiers and the bloodbath they
created are clearly outside the moral limits he set for himself and
others. Being a Westerner of the old school, he had a different
perception of how a society should conduct itself even in times of
upheaval. He himself fought in a war that was so “civilised” (if that
may be said of armed conflict) that the two sides agreed to stop for
Christmas and had to be goaded by their officers into starting again!
Given this background, his disgust and sadness for what he saw in
Taiwan in 1947 is understandable.
On his way home from Formosa on the 15th
of December, 1947,
he made a shortwave broadcast from Sydney, Australia, in which he
gave an account of conditions in Taiwan under Wei Tao-ming’s
“reform government”. George H Kerr wrote, “the broadcast was a
strong indictment and was heard on Formosa where it provoked a
furious reaction. Stanway Cheng’s propagandists took the line that the
British and American Imperialists had the same ambitions which had
fired the Nazis and the Japanese, but were more clever about it;
viii
America and Britain brought UNNRA supplies as deceptive gifts and
offered ‘aid to China’ as a decoy while plotting to annex, exploit and
‘enslave’ Formosa”.1
“Formosa Calling” is not an official report of events in Taiwan
in 1947. Nor was it written by a professional writer, or with the help of
a professional editor or shadow-writer, as such accounts are often
written today. Instead, this work was written by a professional
engineer, teacher, and one-time soldier.
My father made several attempts to publish “Formosa Calling”
after its completion in 1948 but was unsuccessful. Rather than accept
that the market for his work was limited, he became convinced that no
publisher would publish anything so critical of our “Chinese
Nationalist allies”.
He himself acknowledges that is difficult to classify “Formosa
Calling” into any one category. At once it is a personal account, a
description of the comparative conditions under the Japanese and
Nationalist Chinese, and a political commentary. In its role as a
personal account, we see many of my father’s personal interests
evidencing themselves. For example, there is much discussion of
railways, factories and bridges, schools and universities, and a chapter
on Christianity in Taiwan, all of which were dear to his heart.
As a comparison of the Japanese and Nationalist Chinese
government of Taiwan, a clear preference on my father’s part for the
Japanese is evident. Incongruous though this may seem, given the
Allies’ recent war with them and the Japanese atrocities that were
ultimately revealed, his focus for the comparison was twofold - the
industrial and agricultural development which Japan gave to the
country, and the relative levels of human rights under each regime.
Though the Japanese regime was strict, it is clear that he considered
that Japanese rule was fair and acceptable by comparison with the sheer
violence and corruption which he saw in Taiwan in 1947.
From his position as a UN officer in the field in Taiwan, he was
more concerned with the welfare of the Taiwanese people than he was
with the global strategic situation, and hence some of his political
assessments must be seen against the background of the situation in
which he found himself. For example, his prediction that Soviet
communism would envelop Chinese communism has been proved false
1 George H. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, originally published by Eyre & Spottiswoode,
London, 1965, p. 348.
ix
by history. Nevertheless, my father has written an honest account of
the atrocities which took place in Taiwan in 1947, and his interpretation
of their causes and implications for world history.
Colin James Shackleton.
Wellington, New Zealand.
15 January, 1998.
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PREFACE
In recent years there have been so many books published on
China and the Chinese that there is a danger of the reading public being
surfeited with them. Therefore any writer must have good reasons for
attempting to publish a new work on this subject.
And I believe I have good reasons.
In the first place this book is not really about China but about
Formosa, which Island was occupied by Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese
Nationalists following Japan’s defeat by the Allied Powers in 1945.
As an “occupying Power” after World War II the Chinese have
behaved in such a manner as to raise a large number of important
questions. If these questions are not correctly solved there is a danger
of Formosa becoming a very unhealthy spot for the peace of the Pacific
at least.
The facts which lead me to this conclusion are not generally
known to the world, to some extent because efforts are being made to
hide them. As Industrial Rehabilitation Officer in Formosa for the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, I was
constantly being made aware of the dangerous condition of Formosa dangerous
both locally and internationally - and since my return from
China numerous hearers have confirmed my belief that in the interests
of peace, justice and humanity these conditions in Formosa should be
much more widely known. My experiences in World War I in France
and Germany led me to the conclusion that, in spite of propaganda to
the contrary, war would not bring peace to the world, and in UNRRA I
saw what I thought was an opportunity to make my own small
contribution to that end. It is also with the idea of still working for
peace that I am emboldened to write this book.
Except for the greater part of the first chapter, the material for
this book is either the result of my own personal experiences or the
reports of people whose truthfulness was undoubted. Some reports I
have checked personally. There is, however, a danger that my
numerous Formosan friends will suffer on account of what I have
written and therefore, where I consider that danger exists, I have
avoided the use of names. But I do possess the correct names and
dates. There is a danger, too, that those whose minds work in terms of
xii
labels will incorrectly tab me “Chinaphobe”. I have made numerous
Chinese friends and have acquaintances for whom I have a high regard
as persons. It is the systems in which the Chinese work that are so
objectionable and there are many Chinese who have just as strong an
abhorrence of their systems as I have. They themselves realise that
their nation will not be great till those systems are changed either
wholly or in part.
But now, having written the book, I am not sure whether it is
not a travel book masquerading as a political one. In any case I hope
there is enough of both to interest a wide circle of readers who, I hope
still more, will agree with my conclusions.
Allan James Shackleton
Gisborne, New Zealand, 1948
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The writer Alan Shackleton in uniform in Formosa, 1947.
Shackleton outside a local hotel during his travels through
Formosa.
xiv
With Dr. Hao, engineer in charge of the Butanol factory in Kagi
(Chiayi), Formosa, with the Lunghwa Pagoda in Shanghai in
the background.
This picture was taken at Haito. From left to right: Mr. Tsai (a
Formosan), a Formosan UNRRA nurse, Helen Reimer (a
Canadian UNRRA nurse), and Shackleton. The photo was
taken by Muriel Graham, also a Canadian UNRRA nurse.
1
CHAPTER I
FORMOSA - THE BEAUTIFUL ISLE.
At various times many nations, including Chinese, Dutch,
Spanish, Portuguese, English, American, French and Japanese, have all
been interested in Formosa.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the Dutch ruled it for
thirty-eight years and their settlements, “Zeelandia” at Anping and
“Providentia” at Tainan, are monuments to their occupation. The
Spaniards established settlements at Tamsui and Keelung. The
contribution of the Portuguese was in giving the Island the name by
which it is most commonly known, “Formosa”. They called it “Ilha
Formosa”, the beautiful isle. However, it is also well-known by its
Chinese name of “Taiwan”. In 1683 the Island came under the rule of
the newly-established Manchu dynasty, and was administered off and
on under the provincial government of Fukien. Meanwhile a steady
stream of Chinese immigrants from Fukien and Kwantung Provinces
pushed the aborigines into the mountain fastnesses.
Very little history seems to be recorded about Formosa in the
eighteenth century but in the nineteenth we find Western nations and
the Japanese jockeying for privileges in the Island which seemed to
have rich possibilities. In the eighteen-seventies Japan landed an
expeditionary force on the pretext that the aborigines, who were wild
head-hunters had killed some shipwrecked Japanese sailors. The force
was after withdrawn on account of British and American objections. In
1881 the French blockaded the Island for a few months. Japan's chance
came again in her quarrel with China over Korea and the Island was
formally ceded to Japan in 1895 in the Peace Treaty ending the SinoJapanese
war. Nevertheless, the local inhabitants refused to recognise
the cession and proclaimed a Republic of Taiwan. They held out for
six months before the Japanese could take possession and it was not till
shortly before World War II that the aboriginal head-hunters were
finally subjugated.
The success of the head-hunters in holding out was largely due
to the high and exceedingly steep and craggy mountain backbone that
runs down the length of the Island, several peaks being about 13,000
feet high. The Island is about 250 miles long from north to south and
2
about 90 miles wide, covering an area of about 14,000 square miles and
supporting a population of 6,500,000. The mountain range lies more to
the east coast leaving the west a more or less gently sloping plain to the
sea; a condition which enables irrigation for rice-growing to be carried
out very easily. The rivers are wild and turbulent and especially in the
typhoon season often do much damage.
The Island is surprisingly fertile and has a heavy rainfall.
Keelung, the chief port, in the north, is said to be one of the wettest
ports in the world. The Island also possesses many natural resources
such as coal, limestone, lumber, silica, clays, sulphur, salt, asbestos and
oil-fields producing both crude oil and natural gas. The Japanese in
their fifty years of occupation built a very tight and closely-interlocked
industry. For instance, a fertiliser industry was built up (the phosphate
rock having to be imported), which greatly increased the crop yields
and enabled two rice crops to be obtained a year. It also increased the
production of sugar cane, which was the basis of a very large sugar
industry producing 17,000,000 tons annually. But the following
auxiliary manufactures also make their contribution to the manufacture
of fertiliser as well as to other industries: Sulphuric acid (from
sulphur), nitrogen (from the air), and calcium carbide (from coal and
limestone using cheap electricity). Nevertheless the Japanese allowed
the Formosans to take part in private industry and thus a wealthy and
highly cultured class grew up.
To assist industry an excellent communication system was of
course established including railways (double track for large distances)
and concrete roads. Three harbours, (mainly artificial) were built at
Keelung in the north, Takao in the south and Karenko in the east. A
harbour was also under construction on the west coast, but has been
abandoned since the end of the war. A canal five miles long had also
been dug connecting the important centre of Tainan with the sea.
Worthy of note is the mountain railway to Mt. Alisan for the lumber
industry, a railway which clings to the sides of precipices, spans
chasms and literally spirals and zig-zags to climb a total of 9,000 feet
on its fifty-mile run.
The electrical supply was abundant and cheap, being obtained
mainly from water-power which did not require very great civil
engineering works. It was distributed over the Island at 140 kilovolts.
There was also an abundant supply of coal for the steam stations.
The Portuguese had rightly named the Island “Beautiful Isle” as
it abounded in scenic beauty. A train journey from Taipei, the capital,
3
to Takao, a distance of over two hundred miles, was a continuous
delight where rural scenes with the red houses dotting the green velvet
of the rice fields, alternated with the wild grandeur of the rugged
mountains and fast-flowing rivers. The Island also contained numerous
hot springs which the Japanese had developed to the full as beautiful
holiday and recreation resorts. The chief of these were at Cho San and
Hokuto, north of Taipei. Even the run on the wide concrete road
twenty miles long connecting Taipei with Keelung was one of distinct
beauty and charm. As the Island was practically divided in two by the
Tropic of Cancer, it had in the main a warm, balmy climate, which
owing to its insular character did not have extremes of temperature.
The towns were beautifully laid out and well planned. The
more important buildings were built of concrete and/or brick, with the
upper stories overhanging the foot-path or side-walk to give protection
to the pedestrian from the sun. The Chinese authorities had allowed
these to be blocked by stalls, bicycle racks and cars.
The residences were built Japanese style in particular areas in
each town. They had outer sliding window-walls which were
frequently divided from the sliding walls of the rooms by passageways.
This arrangement of walls allowed the interior of the house to be
made wide-open to the outside and the rooms were very cool in
summer. In winter they proved to be rather draughty, cold and damp,
but as this kind of weather was only of short duration, this disadvantage
was outweighed by the long period of warm and hot weather. Charcoal
braziers sat in the middle of the rooms in winter for warmth. The
people followed the Japanese custom of removing one's shoes at the
entrance porch to the house and putting on slippers. The floors of the
rooms were covered in “tatami”, a reed mat laid over other reeds to
give a slight cushioning effect, and the whole being mounted on a
wooden frame. The “tatami” were made up in standard sections, one
metre by two metres, and the size of the room was determined by the
number of “tatami” that could be made to fit in. Continuing the
Japanese custom, the rooms became bedrooms by bringing in a thin
mattress, the covering for the sleeper being a kind of quilt or American
“comforter”. Mosquito nets were also used, the daytime furniture
consisting merely of a low table and cushions having been moved to
one side.
The Japanese had done much to clear the Island of disease and
had trained the Formosans in habits of cleanliness and health. So much
so that when the Chinese took over the Formosans were horrified at the
way the streets were allowed to become so dirty. Similarly by means
4
of harsh laws the Japanese had trained the Formosans to become very
honest, a habit that seems eventually to have become part of their
character.
The Island had suffered much from bombing during the later
stages of the war, and as it shared with Manchuria the distinction of
being now one of China's most productive and industrialised
possessions, U.N.R.R.A. - C.N.R.R.A. offices were set up to assist in
the relief and rehabilitation. The United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration operated under a basic agreement with
the Chinese Government which set up the organisation known as the
Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, or CNRRA
for short.
Under this agreement all UNRRA goods became the property of
CNRRA when they came off the ships' slings in Chinese ports,
UNRRA retaining the right to see that the goods reached the destination
for which they were intended. The allocation of goods was the joint
decision of UNRRA-CNRRA committees. In general, each UNRRA
official had his Chinese counterpart in CNRRA. Thus both UNRRA
and CNRRA had an Industrial Rehabilitation Officer, an Agricultural
Rehabilitation Officer, a Medical Officer, etc.. When it came to details,
UNRRA and CNRRA seemed to have different objects in view, and
although personal relationships were always outwardly very friendly,
official relationships sometimes suffered considerable strain.
The Japanese then, had made a rich prize for the Chinese, and
the following chapters relate how this prize is faring now that China's
age-old customs are being applied to this industrial prodigy of modern
Japan.
5
CHAPTER II
THE ARRIVAL OF THE MAINLANDERS
The Formosans considered themselves of Chinese stock and
were anxious, after the Japanese surrender of 1945, to become one with
their Motherland once more. They held Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek
in high esteem as head of China and believed that the Three
People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen would give them peace, prosperity
and happiness. Under fifty years of Japanese rule they had acquired a
good standard of living and, as the law had been strictly enforced, they
had lived in comparative security provided they kept within the welldefined
bounds of the law. They anticipated that with the arrival of the
mainlanders there would be no reason why their economic and social
conditions should not further improve. Therefore, the mainlanders
were welcomed with flags and rejoicing - but not for long. The
soldiers, immediately they had established their billets, began
systematic robbery and rape. In Hokotu, for instance, girls were
chloroformed on the streets, carried to the soldiers' billets and after the
soldiers had finished with them, were shipped to the mainland. One
girl, cleverer than the rest, secured the confidence of her captor who
gave her sufficient freedom to enable her to escape over a wall. She
fled to her father who in turn appealed to the civil police, now Chinese.
They feared the military police and refused to have anything to do with
the matter.
The Formosans soon found that property was not safe when
soldiers were about and that they had no redress at law for any robbery
committed by the military. The military police, however, themselves
went for bigger game. The officials, of course, claimed Japanese
property for the Government, but some of the military police were
over-zealous in this respect. When a certain owner of a factory was
absent from the district, the military police asked for his son who, on
reporting to the police station, was immediately put into jail. The
police claimed that the factory had supplied equipment and material to
the Japanese and that its store of products was the property of the
Japanese and hence now belonged to the Chinese Government. They
also said that they would release the son on a payment of 30,000 yen
and the matter would be dropped. When the owner returned three days
later he inquired of the military police what wrongs his son had
committed. On hearing the charge, the father denied helping the
6
Japanese except to the extent that he was compelled to manufacture for
them. He said that he would obtain a lawyer and take the case to the
highest court. When the military police found that he knew the process
of the law and that they might be involved in a scandal, they begged
him not to bring the case into the public eye. As the mother had
already paid the 30,000 yen for the release of the son, the military
police returned the money and the case was considered closed.
Several instances were reported of soldiers arriving with trucks
and official-looking documents claiming the stocks of industrialists as
Japanese property but willing to overlook the matter for a
consideration. On investigation it was found the documents did not
bear the stamp of authority and the soldiers were acting on their own
initiative. So bad did the situation become that the Formosans began to
say, “The dogs go and the pigs come”.
In general, however, the Formosans did not suffer under this
kind of treatment without protest. For example, the Chinese Mayor of
Takao City sold all the rice and cement taken over from the Japanese
and put the money in his own pocket. The local newspapers published
this to such good effect as a “squeeze” scandal that the Mayor
immediately went to Shanghai and the Government issued a statement
that it would form a commission to examine the case. But for all that,
the efforts of the Formosans to maintain upright dealings among the
officials were of no avail because after a month the Government
published an announcement that the Commission found him not guilty.
No one in Takao could find out anything about the Commission or
what evidence they took to come to their decision, for those people in
Takao who could have given evidence did not appear before the
Commission. But their troubles were only beginning, for a few months
later the ex-Mayor was sent back to Formosa as one of the Chiefs-ofStaff
of the Chinese Army in Formosa.
In industry, where Chinese officials were put in charge, the
Formosans, whom the Japanese had trained to be honest in their
dealings, found themselves in very difficult positions even when they
had Chinese underlings. In a certain factory a Formosan found that his
Chinese subordinate had been running a very profitable racket in
shipping from the factory supplies ostensibly for various customers but
actually only delivering a portion of these supplies to the customers, the
balance being sold on his own behalf on the black market. Before
finally handing his subordinate over to the police, the Formosan made a
thorough investigation, during which time various methods ranging
from the offer of “squeeze” to threats of murder were adopted to
7
persuade him to drop the matter. When his investigations were
complete, having a thoroughly clear case, he called in the police only to
find that he also was being arrested because he had “allowed” his
subordinate to do such things. Furthermore, the culprit gave the police
prosecutor 300,000 yen as a commission for putting him (the culprit) in
prison. This had the result that the culprit was put in a pleasant room
with a good view and almost luxurious conditions. The Formosan was
put in a sort of dungeon with robbers and thieves. It was infested with
bugs, lice and mosquitoes and was very dirty and dark and stank.
There were thirteen persons in the room which was twelve feet square
and sleeping could only be carried out on that half of the floor which
was boarded. The other half was filthy stones. Pressure was put on the
Formosan to drop the case but he maintained his attitude. As the value
of the supplies that the Chinese culprit had appropriated was
10,000,000 yen - equivalent at that time to about 100,000 U.S. dollars
or PDS STG 31,000 - he bribed freely and the Chinese officials at the
Courts were solidly against the Formosan. The officials told the
Formosan that he would be kept in jail without a trial for two months at
the end of which the public prosecutor would ask for an adjournment
on account of lack of evidence. He would then be kept in prison for
another two months, after which the trial must take place. During all
that time it was hoped that the public interest in the case would have
disappeared and the public prosecutor would state that no evidence had
been put forward and therefore the culprit would go free. This was the
usual method of procedure when the “squeeze” supplied by the
defendant was sufficient. However, this plan of campaign was
interrupted by the rebellion and the Formosan, along with all other
prisoners including the culprit, was set free by the rebels. The culprit
fled to the mainland. His whereabouts were later never known. The
Formosan, however, as he had never been technically freed by the
police, was wondering nine months later whether he was still liable to
be re-arrested.
As long as things remain as they are, it is likely that the
Formosan will never be free from that danger. Opinions differ as to the
exact number of police organisations working independently on the
Island. Many of the Government Departments have their own police,
some of which operate secretly and some openly, but all are armed. I
had knowledge of four; viz., military, civil, court police and customs
police, but it appears that each of these can have several sub-divisions,
all working independently but having no definite line of division
between the various responsibilities. All are able to arrest the ordinary
citizen - and the Formosans soon found that if they wished to keep out
of jail they had to keep on paying “squeeze” to several of the various
8
kinds, because as fast as one kind of police was satisfied another kind
would come and made accusations. There was, of course, no necessity
for the police to prove their accusations and in the initial stages the
behaviour of the police was not so heinous as after the rebellion. At
times, different groups of police fell foul of one another, evidently not
an uncommon occurrence for Chinese police, as much publicity was
given in the Shanghai newspapers to a particularly terrible event at the
Golden Gate Theatre in Shanghai where the military police shot a
number of civil police in a riot caused by the two kinds of police
among themselves.
Another instance of the “protection” the Formosans received
from the police may be quoted. This concerned nurses in a hospital in
the South where a robbery of the nurses' quarters was committed by
someone obviously having inside knowledge. The police were called
in and apparently found out who the criminal was but they refused to
arrest him until they obtained “squeeze”. As the nurses could not pay it
out of their pittance of a salary, the arrest was never made and the
property never recovered.
Even with the best will in the world, the Formosans found
themselves in difficulties. A rice merchant was visited by an official
asking him to fill in a form stating how much rice he had in stock. He
correctly stated “650 bags”. No instructions were given him to refrain
from selling, and as all the newspapers published instructions not to
hoard, he sold all his rice within a week. A policeman afterwards came
and asked him to turn over his rice. When he replied that he had sold it
in line with the newspaper instructions, the policeman took him away
and put him in jail. However, a friend knowing a police inspector
explained the case to him and asked for the release of the rice
merchant. He was allowed out “on bail” but to my knowledge no trial
ever took place.
The Japanese civilians, including technicians, were shipped
from Formosa to Japan as quickly as possible. They were allowed to
take a hundred kilograms of clothing and personal belongings and a
small amount of money. The rest of their property remained on the
Island and came under the control of the Japanese Property Disposal
Commission. In many places it was a common sight to see mere shells
of Japanese houses standing, having been stripped of all things movable
and fixed, including water pipes, lavatory fixtures, water meters,
windows, door knobs and everything that had a saleable value,
including in many cases, flooring and ceiling. This was particularly the
case when soldiers were billeted in a building. At one time there was a
9
steady flow of this type of article to the mainland and, as permits for
exports were almost impossible for Formosans to obtain at that time, it
appears therefore that this was being done by the mainlanders.
Once a certain Formosan doctor, and an important citizen,
rented a house from the Japanese Property Control Commission and
moved in after paying his rent. Two officers of the Chinese Occupation
95th Army came and ordered him to get out, threatening him with
revolvers. They demanded the house for themselves. Later they
brought two girls to stay with them in the house and a brother of one of
the girls asked the doctor to help him get his sister back as he said the
officer had taken her to the house and raped her. When his request was
made to the officer, he threatened to shoot them. The Army stayed one
year during which time the girl had a baby. After the Army had gone
they found that the house was completely empty and everything
moveable, or that could be removed, was sold. There were no
furniture, no windows, doors, light fittings, plumbing, etc. No one
knew what had happened to the girl and the doctor was compelled to
repair the house out of his own pocket.
Nevertheless the Formosans steadily continued to assert their
legal rights and often at great risk. They said that the Japanese regime
had been hard and strict, but the law was clearly defined and providing
they kept within it they could go about their business in peace, security
and comfort: and the Formosans found the Japanese honest in their
dealings. But when the Chinese came from the mainland, a Formosan
once remarked, there was no law but the Law of “Squeeze”. It was the
only means whereby one could be sure of remaining outside the prison,
and even then was only successful as long as the means for successive
“squeezes” was available. In their business dealings the Formosans
found themselves subjected to all sorts of petty regulations which often
were publicly ignored; but the regulations existed and an enterprising
policeman could find it very lucrative to remind offenders that they
were breaking these regulations. As an example of this may be quoted
the fact that it was illegal to wear the Japanese style of shoe. As they
were in common use and convenient it was hardly likely that these
would be immediately discarded by the public. There were other trivial
regulations such as that it was illegal to dance in the restaurants. This
had something to do with an austerity campaign, but evils, such as
those of the geisha houses, apparently flourished undisturbed. It was
illegal, too, to buy or sell or play records of Japanese war songs. This
childish behaviour on the part of the Chinese brought nothing but
contempt from the Formosans and irritated and annoyed them very
much. On the eve of the rebellion, the mainland Chinese who were
10
escaping into hiding were taunted by powerful gramophones blaring
Japanese war songs out into the neighbourhood, but no policemen
came.
These, then, are instances of one kind of dastardly and
contemptible treatment that the Formosans received and which was
ultimately, along with other causes, to give rise to the rebellion.
11
CHAPTER III
THE EAST COAST
The wild and rugged parts of Formosa had in many places
severely tried the engineering skill of the Japanese in the building of
their roads and railways. But even where they were successfully
constructed, storms and typhoons made repairs and maintenance
frequently necessary to keep them open. Nowhere was the unequal
struggle between man and natural forces as much in evidence as on the
East Coast.
The main railway system comes around the northern part of the
Island from the west to run southward down the east Coast. In that
distance it frequently runs through very difficult country to emerge on a
small fertile plain and then to struggle on through more difficulties.
But always the railway seems to escape the menaces of the towering
mountain range which forms the backbone of the Island. Always, that
is, till it gets to Suao, thirty miles down the coast. There a branch of
the mountain range turns across the path the railway should take and
ends in precipitous cliffs which reach to a height of 6,000 feet and run
vertically into the sea. They have been described as “the highest and
most magnificent cliffs in the world”. It is obviously impossible to
push a railway through such terrifying hills and gorges. Should the
economic rewards justify, it probably could be done, but the resources
of the country further south are not great.
Even Suao itself is a small, nondescript village that crouches
away from the threats which lie in the mountains. It does possess a port
but it is away from the town and the railway has already given up the
struggle before it comes to deal with the cuttings and tunnel which
would be required to reach the small harbour. Instead, the railway
serves a cluster of houses and a cement works. Even the cement works,
when I saw it, was a disheartening sight. There was the machinery all
in place but lying fully exposed to the sky with only a skeleton
framework where the building should have been. It looked as though
the normal process of building had been reversed and the machinery
had been installed first with the building constructed round it
afterwards. Actually a typhoon had come along and carried away all
the roof and wall coverings.
12
Suao itself was not a prepossessing sight. Some of the shops
were constructed of brick but the majority were of the flimsy wooden
construction peculiar to many Japanese residences. The problem of
where to stay for the night we thought we had solved when we obtained
the advice to “stay at the Central Hotel”. After we had left the station
and crossed the open square with its rough rocky surface, our enquiries
took us down one narrow side-street after another till we were far away
from anything that could be called “central”. We went into a building
claiming to be the Central Hotel and containing a collection of stalls
called “rooms”. These were served by a common passage whose outer
wall formed the outer wall of the hotel. We had an end stall in which
the floor was aslant and the boards, which served as a wall to divide us
from the next “room”, had never been nailed up with any intention of
giving privacy. As if the appearance was not depressing enough, the
smells from the lavatory mingled with the smells from the tatami on the
floor to add to our discomfort. Swarms of flies came with the food that
was brought for our evening meal so we decided to eat bananas and
boiled rice, the latter dish being brought in covered bowls. Our request
for bananas had been countered by a request from the proprietor for
money to give to the girl to buy them. We had found by experience
that, provided the skins were not broken, bananas made a safe and
satisfying meal.
When the mattresses and mosquito nets were brought in for
sleeping, there was barely enough room for our luggage and, relying on
the hope that our noses would soon not notice the smells from the
tatami and the mattresses, we lay down to sleep; but the noise of
footsteps on creaky floor boards, the banging of doors and sounds
associated with the use of a lavatory, prevented our getting any sleep
till all the inmates of the hotel had retired.
We had to be up early next morning because although the
extremely difficult terrain had prevented the Japanese from continuing
the railway down the Coast, still they had successfully built a single
track road through the mountains to the Karenko Plain twenty-five
miles further south and we were going to Karenko over that road.
There was also an alternative connection with Karenko by sea. A fiftyton
boat plied between Suao and Karenko, at times which seemed to be
determined by the time it took to obtain a full cargo. In the typhoon
season, of course, typhoons made the sailings even more irregular.
Arriving at the bus depot, we found a fleet of almost new buses lined
up ready to start. Right on the stroke of eight-thirty, they moved off in
turn to keep separated by about 100 yard intervals. For a short distance
the road was fairly flat but soon the buses began to climb and the road
13
appreciably narrowed to the width of one bus. It had only been raining
a few hours before, and the thought of greasy narrow roads in this
difficult mountainous country was not pleasant. But we found that
where the road was greasy there were always two wide bands of
concrete for the wheels to run on, and there was practically no danger
of skidding. After a short run of about half an hour, we began to climb
the mountains proper on the steep sides of which dark lines, which
indicated the road above, showed us where we would soon be
travelling. Nevertheless, there was no sudden change in the grade but
just a steady ascent which seemed well within the capabilities of the
buses. Eventually, turning a corner, it looked as if the road was coming
out to the edge of a very high precipice and that we would fall headlong
into the sea a thousand feet below. Closer examination showed a sharp
turn to the right and soon we were running along a ledge carved out of
the face of the precipice with the rock overhanging above. Due to the
difficulties of construction, the road was as narrow as it was safe to be.
It sometimes became a series of small tunnels. My companion
reminded me that the “Japanese ideas of safety were more dangerous
than ours”. Still, I took comfort from a low concrete wall that generally
bordered the outer edge: but only until I saw on a corner that the wall
was broken. This, I suspected, was due to the bus not being able to
negotiate the sharp corner and the wall not being sufficiently strong to
prevent the bus hurtling into the sea way below.
Here and there down the coast, several large and fast flowing
rivers poured into the sea and so tortuous descents were made to
suspension bridges to cross them and the steady climb began again.
Going through a cutting, we found it partially blocked with a slide of
rock so the energetic got out of the buses and helped to clear it. Several
of the rocks were so large that young trees which had come down in the
slide had to be used as levers with four or five men on them to clear the
rocks away. In spite of all that could be done, the buses all gave a
violent lurch in passing over the slide. But there was worse to come.
While running along another ledge carved out of a precipice, we came
to a stop and found the ledge had completely disappeared with a
portion of the precipice which had fallen into the sea. A new road was
being dug out of the face but at present only formed a narrow foot track
along which we staggered with our luggage to a fleet of buses waiting
on the other side. The passengers from this fleet had already safely
negotiated the foot-track and were sitting waiting for our buses. With a
superior air, so I thought, they watched our trembling efforts at crossing
along the foot-track. Still, nobody slipped over the side so it could not
have been as bad as it looked.
14
About mid-day we stopped for lunch at an aborigines' village in
a narrow river valley with the mountains towering high overhead. This
village proved to be a banana village; that is, the food and cooking
were so primitive and the flies so plentiful that it was safer to eat
bananas.
After a run of another hour, the Karenko Plain came into view.
I had been in this part of the world before and had very interesting and
pleasant memories of it. In spite of the wildness of the natural element
of this part, the Japanese had attempted to develop it, both
agriculturally and industrially.
Electric power was obtained from harnessing the rivers which
came down from the mountains. There was a plentiful supply of water,
and the river-beds sloped steeply to the sea so that there seemed to be
almost an unlimited supply of electrical energy available at a very
cheap price. As cheap electricity was essential for the production of
aluminium and alloy steels, they built factories for this purpose at
Karenko. Unfortunately, the raw material was not available on the
Island so it had to be shipped from overseas. This, then, meant the
construction of harbour and transport facilities sufficiently large to cope
with their ambitious schemes, and an artificial harbour was constructed
to berth simultaneously three 3,000 ton ships.
They also developed irrigation schemes for growing rice, sugar
cane and pineapple. Three large factories were built on the coast for
manufacturing sugar. While the sugar companies had their own light
railway for handling the cane, another light railway of 2'-6” gauge had
been built by the Japanese Provincial Government for general purposes.
Realising the isolation of the East Coast, I asked a factory
manager how he managed regarding his supply of coal. “Oh”, he said,
“we do not use coal at all”, and I, realising the abundance of electricity,
envisaged a factory in which all machinery was electrically driven and
the processing steam obtained from electric boilers.
So I replied, “Oh, what do you do”?
To my astonishment he said, “we use the driftwood which the
rivers bring down in flood-time in winter”.
With considerable foresight the Japanese had designed the
boilers to use this wood which apparently would be available for the
whole life of the boilers.
15
But the Japanese evidently had underestimated the ravages
which could be caused by the typhoons and the winter storms. On my
previous visit to Karenko I had seen much evidence of destruction. In
two recent floods during the typhoon, sufficient shingle had been
brought down a river-bed to raise the bed above the water outlet from
an electric power station so that, instead of the water running out of the
station at this point, it was running into it and, had the valves not been
shut, the station would have been flooded. This cost the Japanese
16,000 kilowatts of electricity.
Even more spectacular was the condition of two other stations
in another river valley - Sesui No. 2 Station, installed capacity 5,000
kilowatts, and Domon, installed capacity 8,000 kilowatts, both of
which were also out of commission due to the phenomenal rise in the
river-bed, on the banks of which they were originally installed. When
we visited this valley, Sesui No 2 was almost completely buried, only a
portion of its top story being above the surrounding shingle waste, the
bed having risen during the flood to a height of approximately fortyfive
feet. This also overwhelmed the Domon power station whose tail
waters fed another power station, Hatsumi. As, however, the Domon
power station was destroyed, there was no water to operate Hatsumi
station, with the consequent loss of another 2,000 kilowatts. This large
loss, a total of 31,000 kilowatts in generating capacity, was offset by
the complete destruction of the aluminium works by bombing, and
although at the time there was some doubt as to the future of the
aluminium works, it was finally decided to abandon it and use what
material was available for the repair of the aluminium works in Takao.
Undeterred by the alarming threats of this wild country, the
Japanese had attempted to develop all the East Coast including the
fertile river valley which, leading from the Karenko Plain, ran
southward parallel to the sea coast. The valley was bordered on the one
side by the mountain backbone of the Island and on the other by a low
range of hills running parallel to the coast. Into this valley, turbulent
and angry rivers poured out from the mountains frenziedly seeking
outlets to the sea which were denied them by the mountains. It was
through this type of country that road and light railway
communications were pushed on to the south.
The Japanese evidently had anticipated trouble in getting their
railways across the wild, rushing rivers which emerged from their
gorges in the mountains at the head of shingle fans. A very slight
change of direction at the head of the fans could bring the rivers out
miles away from their original courses when they arrived at the foot of
16
the fans. The Japanese, of course, attempted to control the vagaries of
the rivers by means of dikes, groins and various construction works but
with only moderate success, and the rivers were turning parts of the
valley into shingle deserts several miles wide. The bridging of such
rivers was an extremely difficult task and the railway engineers very
wisely kept their crossings near the head of the shingle fans.
Consequently, the railway was something in the nature of a switchback
with the small engine puffing and wheezing up a fairly steep grade to
the head of a fan, crossing a bridge, and racing madly down the other
side. In one or two places the shingle fans had risen so high since the
construction of the railway that high walls had to be constructed to
keep the shingle and flood waters from overwhelming the railway. We
found it interesting to speculate how much higher these walls should be
built before it would be more economical to put a roof on and have the
railway running in a tunnel.
The roads and the sugar factory railways had of necessity to run
in the valley and were in a much more difficult position, being at all
times liable to disruption by the floods. Similarly, the irrigation
schemes were always likely to be damaged by the heavy rainfall.
This valley, about sixty miles long, was particularly striking.
Beautiful wooded mountains and green fertile plains alternated with
rocky slopes and grey shingle deserts. Perhaps I was influenced also by
a particular railway journey I took through this country in a special railcar
which was beflagged with the Chinese National Flag and the Union
Jack on the front and decorated with bunting. On arrival at Karenko I
was greeted by district representatives - the Mayor and chief public
officials of the town including the power company engineers. The
station was decorated with bunting and greenery and there were several
banners with inscriptions in English, “MR. SHACKLEYTON HERE
YOU WELCOME”. Visits to power stations were equally welcomed
with banners having the inscription, “MR. SHACKLEYTON WE
FAITHFULLY WELCOME YOU”.
But what impressed me more than anything was the situation
which the Chinese Provincial Government had forced upon the district.
I was asked to reserve a particular afternoon for a discussion of the
district's problems with officials and engineers and my reception room
at the hotel was filled with various people sitting cross-legged on the
tatami, all anxious for the future of the district. It appeared that in
September 1945 there had been 1,200 millimetres of rainfall in fortyeight
hours. This excessive rainfall had produced widespread damage,
as the water control works established by the Japanese had been unable
17
to withstand the force of the flood waters. The power stations suffered
not only from the effects of the rise in the permanent level of the riverbeds,
but also in their dams and races which governed the water supply.
Bridges, both railway and traffic, were washed away, much arable land
disappeared in the flood waters to be replaced by large wastes of
shingle, and irrigation schemes were very severely damaged. This was
probably the worst period of destruction that the East Coast had and the
problem of repair and restoration was an extremely difficult one. The
Japanese engineers and technicians had already left although their plans
were still available and it was intended to use those again. The same
plans had been in use for about thirty years and although each year
brought its damage still the same design was adhered to. The designs
were therefore old-fashioned and conditions had proved that they
would never be satisfactory and that they should be changed.
Unfortunately there was not the engineering skill available now among
the local engineers. But more serious still was the enormous quantity
of material which was required. One dike alone, of a number, was
estimated to require 25,600 one-hundred-and-ten-pound bags of cement
while three other constructions required a total of 26,000 bags. This, in
other words, represented about 2,500 tons of cement, and cement was
very difficult to obtain.
But the greatest difficulty was that of finance. In the Japanese
time the Provincial Government made grants which covered eighty
percent of the expenses to be incurred, while the local authorities had to
find the other twenty percent. The Japanese Government recognised
that it was impossible for the local authorities to meet the expenses
even when the damage was not extensive. But now, when the district
was faced with the repair of damage which greatly exceeded all
previous records, the Chinese Provincial Government gave them
nothing. There was to be no subsidy, and the local authorities had to
rely on resources which were practically depleted owing to the
demands which had arisen from the destruction of factories, dwellings,
roads, etc., due to the bombing, and the position was critical. It was
recognised that now even comparatively minor floods would cause
destruction out of all proportion to their size.
The matter was discussed later with the various Government
organisations concerned, including the Railway Department, the
Department of Industries and Mining, and the Agricultural and Forestry
Department. All agreed that something should be done, but in pressing
the matter still later as to when something was to be done, I found that
the question of abandoning the East Coast was being considered. I
have not sufficient evidence to say that this policy is being put into
18
effect, but from the last visit I paid I have a very clear recollection of a
beautiful concrete road bridge about 100 feet long with grass growing
on it, completely disused; the only reason for its disuse being that the
approach was washed away. In the meantime, the local inhabitants had
recourse to the primitive conditions of constructing some sort of a track
across the river-bed for use in times when the water was low, but it was
obvious that communications must be frequently interrupted.
The East Coast, then, was also suffering from the economic
decline which was taking place all over the country.
19
CHAPTER IV
CHINESE ATTEMPTS AT REHABILITATION
When the Chinese came to take over the country they were
faced with extremely serious difficulties. Industries had been bombed
with the greatest efficiency. Many towns and cities had large sections
in ruins while other parts were comparatively untouched. Roads,
broken by bomb craters and covered with rubble, were frequently
impassable. Many large buildings of any consequence had been
destroyed and these included hospitals. The railways had been severely
damaged and almost all station buildings damaged to a greater or lesser
extent, some even to complete destruction. Railway rolling stock had
long been a target for aerial attack and what was left was in urgent need
of repairs and maintenance. In the interregnum, also, considerable
looting had occurred. It was obvious, therefore, that much
reconstruction would have to be done and be done quickly.
The destruction of the factories brought unemployment,
unemployment to which the Chinese added by bringing over their own
relatives and friends and by deporting 100,000 Formosans from
overseas.
China was in the throes of a civil war and her economy was
suffering accordingly. She therefore had no money to spare for
rehabilitation and restoration - in fact she took so much money out of
the Island that it looked as though she did not know the meaning of
rehabilitation - and money that should have gone into restoring the
industrial and economic life of the Island was taken to bolster the
tottering economic system on the mainland. Furthermore, the Chinese
let their hatred of everything Japanese go beyond the bounds of
common sense and hastened to ship the Japanese population to Japan
with all speed. This rebounded and caused them very great difficulties
in industry.
All major positions in industry and, for that matter, in the
organisation and control of the Island had been in the hands of the
Japanese and, while business executives and governing officials were
easy enough to obtain from corresponding classes on the mainland,
nevertheless when it came to technicians and specialists there was not
20
an adequate supply from China. The engineers who arrived were
young and keen but they lacked the training and experience which was
necessary for the economic rehabilitation of industry and for its
efficient running. Had the Japanese technicians been assured of a
reasonable return and reasonable living conditions on the Island they
would have preferred to carry on. Then they could have trained the
new Chinese technicians in their respective duties and in due course the
Chinese technicians could have assumed full responsibilities.
As it was, embittered by the treatment they were receiving, the
Japanese destroyed valuable records and apparatus and added still
further to the confusion created by the bombing. The Chinese
technicians then were faced with the very difficult proposition of
having to re-make, and sometimes re-design, machinery of which they
had very little experience.
In a chemical factory, for instance, it was very difficult for the
chemical engineer to design and set up precision mechanical
equipment. The fundamental weakness in the Chinese industrial
training was that the majority of them had very little practical aptitude.
They were apparently good text-book engineers. I met a number of
exceptions to this and it may only have been a coincidence that they all
had been trained in England. In particular, the engineer in charge of the
railways made an excellent job under very difficult circumstances and
he spoke English with an Oxford accent.
Another great difficulty was that no trade was allowed with
Japan. As by far the greater part of the machinery and equipment was
manufactured in Japan it was impossible to obtain repair parts from the
manufacturers and almost equally impossible to get any other
manufacturer to make repair parts. The railways may be quoted as an
example. New tyres, boiler tubes, Westinghouse brake parts all were
urgently required and considerable equipment was out of commission
as these supplies were unobtainable. In spite of this, many difficulties
were overcome by makeshifts and substitution. For instance, I have
seen taken from boilers, tubes which consisted of short pieces not
exceeding 18” in length all welded together.
Telegraph and telephone communications were also difficult
problems. In Taipei the telephone system was entirely automatic and
the cables were run underground. The cables in every manhole were
broken and consequently ruined by the ingress of moisture.
The Japanese-controlled industries were organised by the
21
Chinese to produce, as far as possible, Government monopolies. The
Island was administered by General Chen Yi who came with a record
of ruin and bloodshed as Governor of the Fukien Province from 1934-
41. Apart from his close association with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek,
his general qualification as administrator of the Island apparently
was his long-standing connection with certain influential Japanese
Army circles which had lasted right through the war. He in turn
appointed commissioners who formed his Cabinet and comprised the
Commissioners of Mining and Industry, of Finance, of Civil Affairs, of
Communications, of Railways, and of Agriculture and Forestry.
The Commissioner of Mining and Industry controlled the
following industries: petroleum, aluminium and gold and copper, sugar,
ship-building, electric power, electrical equipment manufacture,
caustic, cement, paper, fertiliser, coal (but only the larger coal mines),
iron works, iron and steel, oils and fats, textiles, brick and tile, glass,
chemical products (rubber, essences, etc.), printing, building
construction, and the supply of industrial equipment and materials. In
the last twelve industries a considerable amount of private capital had
been invested by the Formosans under the Japanese regime. This, of
course, continued to function, if it could, under the new set-up. The
Commissioner of Communications included in his confines the
automobile, Harbour Bureau, transportation and, later, after the
rebellion, combined with the Commissioner of Railways who
controlled the combined organisation, and the Railway Commission
thus added the principal Government railways and certain private lines
and pushcar networks to the Commission of Communications. The
Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry had in his organisation
companies dealing with agricultural products, livestock, tea, pineapple,
fisheries and timber. Each Commissioner produced regulations which
had the effect of increasing the Government monopoly if it was not
already complete in a particular kind of organisation, thus throwing
more and more Formosan-owned organisations out of operation. There
were licenses for almost every business operation and although fees
might not be required in every case, still “unfortunate delays” could be
avoided by making payments to officials concerned. Furthermore, no
permits were issued to private industry for raw materials, nor could any
financial assistance be obtained from banks. All imports and exports
had to be carried out through the Trade Bureau or the Monopoly
Bureau. The Trade Bureau controlled such important goods as
industrial materials, cotton, sugar, fertiliser, cars and coal. The
Monopoly Bureau controlled such products as salt, tobacco, wine,
alcohol, matches and camphor. This policy of stifling private industry
greatly retarded the rehabilitation of the Island. Private industries are
22
much more flexible than large organisations and usually more
economic; for instance, a number of privately-owned engineering
factories manufactured machine tools, a product which was not only
greatly in demand in Formosa but almost all over the world, yet many
of the machines remained unfinished, not because the raw materials
were in short supply on the world market, but because the raw materials
were all going to Government factories.
A similar condition of things existed regarding the cement
industry. Until about August 1947, no cement was allocated to private
industry. No doubt the Government had great claims on it but the fact
remains that cement, which was manufactured on the Island by a
Government monopoly and whose importation was strictly controlled,
still found its way on to the black market at a price about three times
the normal selling price. Yet at times huge allocations were being
made to Government works; for instance, the total output for one and a
half months of the largest cement factory in the Island was granted to
the Harbour Bureau. The total amount of cement involved was 22,000
tons and the greatest amount ever allocated in Japanese time had been
to the Navy for new harbour works and totalled four to five thousand
tons a month, and the Japanese had always divided the cement equally
between private and Government needs.
Owing to the dislocation of industry, the unemployment
problem was a serious one. It was, of course, highly desirable that
from this point of view private firms should be kept in operation as
much as possible. Actually the unemployment problem was one of the
factors which led to the rebellion. Estimates of the reduction in
employment in private industry were difficult to make but it was not
uncommon to find the numbers of work-people reduced to about ten
percent. One company which originally operated several factories
employing about a thousand men was in 1947 struggling along with
one factory employing only thirty-five men - and this was a machinetool
shop.
But in spite of the difficulties much use was made of the large
amount of scrap material available on the Island, including sunken
vessels, all kinds of scrap-iron, steel and aluminium. The plates from
the sunken vessels were sheared into strips, heated and rolled into iron
bar and wire. Scrap iron and steel were used for castings after being
melted in small electrical furnaces of the electrode type. It was
estimated that there were about one hundred small work-shops working
in aluminium and using about three hundred tons of aluminium a week,
the aluminium being largely obtained from scrap and re-melted.
23
The Government was always eager for money and its
monopolies enabled it to charge very high prices which often
disadvantaged other industries it controlled. The Japanese developed
their electrical supply system to be one of the cheapest in the world. In
the Chinese regime the prices became excessively high. As many of
the major industries depended on cheap power it was found necessary
to revise the prices to enable certain consumers to carry on.
Charges for shipping, a Government monopoly, were
excessively high. At one time it cost three times as much to carry coal
from Keelung to Takao by sea as it cost to carry it by rail, a reversal of
the normal conditions where it is usually much cheaper to ship by sea
than by rail. The Taiwan Cement Company shipped a trial shipment of
1,000 tons of cement to Shanghai, where American cement was selling
at 100,000 dollars Chinese National Currency per ton, whereas the
freight alone of the Formosan cement cost 69,000 dollars C.N.C., on
top of which, of course, there were handling charges and insurance.
The China Merchant Shipping Company, the Government Monopoly
Company, originally quoted 32 dollars U.S. per ton for shipping
phosphatic rock from the China mainland to Formosa for the
manufacture of fertiliser. When it was found that this would kill the
scheme for manufacturing fertiliser in Formosa the price, after
negotiation, was reduced to 4 dollars U.S. per ton.
The aluminium and cement industries were being rehabilitated
on the advice of American experts, but in the cement industry UNRRA
supplied equipment to the value of 1,400,000 dollars U.S. and the
rehabilitation was being carried out rapidly and expeditiously by the
experts concerned.
The lumber industry suffered the same disadvantage as the other
industries. For instance, Director Hwang Wei Yen of the Formosan
Forestry Bureau was imprisoned for obtaining “squeeze” from the
controlled price of timber. There were two prices in operation, one
being the controlled price and the other the market price. The market
price was nearly double the controlled price. Merchants paid Hwang
from 500 to 1,000 yen per koh (ten cubic feet) to be allowed to sell at
the market price instead of the controlled price. The total amount of
“squeeze” received by the Director before being caught was 80,000,000
yen.
As an instance of the Government strangling all the private
lumber firms may be quoted UNRRA'S experience. It was found
difficult in the initial stages to contact the private lumber industry and
24
so an advertisement as put in all the important Formosan newspapers
indicating that timber felling and saw-milling equipment might be
available if the need was justified. Application was to be made to
CNRRA. It was found that practically no applications were being
received from this source and as the rebellion shortly afterwards took
place it prevented any further inquiries along these lines. Six months
later important contacts were made with a considerable number of
private firms taking part in various branches of the lumber industry.
These firms soon expressed their need for all kinds of equipment, and
when asked why they had not applied in response to the advertisement
in the newspapers, replied that they had made inquiries from CNRRA
who had told them that there was very little equipment available and as
the Government demands were so great it was not worth their while
applying. Being under the impression that CNRRA had the sole
control of the allocations they had dropped the matter. It may be of
interest to add that before UNRRA closed down it was able to provide a
very useful contribution to the private lumber industry.
While the Government has endeavoured to follow the system
established by the Japanese of controlling the felling of timber in the
forest areas, there is marked evidence that there is indiscriminate felling
in the hills which are more easily accessible. It is a common sight to
see coolies staggering down the hillsides under a load of freshly-cut
timber carried on the ends of a bar suspended across their shoulders.
Where once the Japanese had planted trees, apparently with the idea of
soil conservation and reduction of the rush of water down the hill-sides
(thus diminishing the strain on their irrigation systems), now large bare
patches of upturned soil were appearing in precipitous places and
attempts were being made at farming them. It is obvious that with the
heavy rainfall it would only take a season or two to wash the soil from
the sides. This is a serious matter for the rice fields below, as there is
danger of their being washed away and being put out of production. In
other words, if this process of indiscriminate deforestation goes on,
there is a danger of the highly productive ricelands being turned into
waste areas. UNRRA agricultural experts were much concerned with
this phase and drew the attention of the Forestry Bureau to it.
The position of the agricultural industry when then mainlanders
took over was also, in many respects, chaotic. The chief agricultural
activity is rice, of which two crops are produced a year. The
consequent demands on the soil require the extensive use of fertiliser.
The Japanese, well aware of this, had established a number of fertiliser
manufacturing plants and another was still in the process of
construction when the war finished. However, on the cessation of the
25
war, no artificial fertiliser was available and there was, as a result, a
reduction in the quantity of rice harvested. UNRRA stepped into the
breach as soon as possible and the large amount of fertiliser brought
into the Island produced highly satisfactory results - satisfactory, that
is, from the point of view of the increase in rice production.
But the Japanese had exerted a certain amount of control over
the industry and required certain crops to be grown even although they
were not, from the farmers' point of view, profitable. Sugar-cane,
ramie and jute are notable examples of this. The growing of sugar-cane
is not so profitable as the growing of rice and much the same type of
land is suitable for both. Consequently, the Japanese required a certain
amount of cane to be grown and for this cane a price was offered which
covered the cost of production and gave very little profit. The idea
was, of course, to keep the cost of sugar as low as possible, one reason
being that the huge pineapple canning industry would be less economic
and would not be able to hold such a favourable place on the world's
markets if the price of sugar was too high. Therefore, when the
Japanese control was removed, less cane was grown, and as it takes
eighteen months for the crop to grow, there was very little cane
available for those factories which had been restored. Only now are the
crops of cane becoming available in anything like adequate quantities
to meet the present factory requirements. At present, most of the cane
production seems to be done by the factories themselves and
independent farmers are concentrating more on rice. The shortage of
fertiliser has also had its effect on the growth of the cane.
The seeds for ramie were imported from the north of Japan and,
as the growing of ramie was uneconomic to the farmer, the Japanese
used compulsion to obtain the necessary crops. Furthermore, only the
raw fibre was prepared in Formosa and the finishing processes were
done in Japan. The ramie crop grew very well in between the two rice
crops and the Formosan climate seemed to be very suitable for its
growth. Nevertheless, as there were no seeds available due to the
cessation of trading with Japan, and as the farmer thought that the
ramie reduced the next rice crop very little was being grown. Similar
remarks apply to jute which was also grown under compulsion.
In the Japanese time there were about 180,000 acres planted in
jute, whereas in September 1946 there were only 8,400 acres of jute
available. Jute can be produced in two grades, one for making sacks
and the other for rope. In this respect, then, both ramie and jute were
suitable for making sacks but there was already a great shortage of
ramie for sacks and to produce jute satisfactory for sacks it had to be
26
cut and treated almost immediately. If it is cut and left to lie in the
fields it becomes what is called “baby jute” and is good only for rope.
To obtain jute for sacks it was necessary to buy from the farmers
immediately after it was available, but unfortunately the jute factories
had no money and could not buy it and therefore the jute was liable to
lie in the fields and become only “baby jute”. Furthermore, all cutting
had to be done before seeding and crops left standing for the special
purpose of obtaining seeds were unfit for use in manufacture. Farmers
therefore required money for the seed production, and as that was not
available, no seeds were being harvested for future crops.
Consequently, there was a severe shortage of sacks for sugar and rice.
The pineapple industry also suffered owing to the high price of
rice and the high price of sugar (it was again more profitable to grow
rice than pineapple). In fact, the pineapple industry largely stagnated.
The extensive markets that Formosan pineapple once had were largely
lost and Shanghai was now the main market, but even Shanghai
inflation was reducing purchasing power and consequently the demand
from that quarter also was failing. The chief problem, however, was
the supply and cost of tin-plate for making the cans which, when it was
available, comprised sixty percent of the factory cost and sugar ten
percent. However, the factories were bombed and a third of the
buildings were destroyed. As with many other industries, the
machinery had been dismantled and dispersed to other localities and
suffered very little damage; and after being restored was ready for
further production. Now, due to the shortage of pineapples, one factory
which completed its season at the end of August 1946, produced 20,000
cases of canned pineapple, an amount which could have been done in
two days before the bombing.
The Japanese made great efforts to become independent as far
as possible from outside fuel supplies and developed the manufacture
of alcohol both from molasses and from the sweet potato. An alcohol
factory was often found adjacent to a sugar factory. In Kagi, however,
a large factory controlled by the China Petroleum Company, a branch
organisation of the Government National Resources Commission, also
produced under the Japanese butanol, acetone and ordinary alcohol.
Butanol was used for making 100 octane aviation petrol. Naturally it
came in for very special attention from American bombing and was
ninety percent destroyed, fire adding to the destruction.
In this, the whole town of Kagi also suffered and was very
seriously damaged. In full production the factory employed 3,200
people but the number employed after the change-over was gradually
27
reduced to about 130. The unemployment in this town was therefore
serious and as much of the surrounding country was devoted to
growing the sweet potato for the factory, the farmers had difficult times
also. The fact was that the factory was the biggest in the Far East and
one-fifth of the population of Kagi depended on it. The authorities took
up a very cautious position regarding this factory and, as they had no
money, were not carrying out effectively even the normal repairs
necessary to keep what remained of the plant from deteriorating. There
was also an enormous amount of clearing up to be done, and much of
the scrap could have been made available with profit for the use of the
Island's industries. This “wait and see” policy rankled with the
townspeople of Kagi, who also suffered because the other major
industry of the town, that of lumber, was suffering from shortage of
equipment. The people endeavoured to restore their destroyed houses
but the majority of them were only able to live in a house made from
salvaged material. Whole families lived in the kinds of constructions
which a dairyman would not consider satisfactory for a cow. The
authorities were apparently indifferent to the distress of the
townspeople.
Formosa had a good coal industry in the time of the Japanese,
but as with the rest of the industries, the equipment was worn and was
suffering from the conditions arising from the wear and tear due to war.
It was, however, only very slightly damaged by bombing, but the
bombing had some indirect effects in that it disorganised the electrical
power supply to such an extent that the main pumps could not be
worked and the mines were flooded. In the interests of increased
production during the war, open-cast working of some of the coal
outcrops was also commenced. It was found shortly afterwards that
water was seeping through these new workings into the old workings
and flooding to such an extent that the pumps could not cope with the
increased amount of water and the old workings were also flooded.
These mines were likely to remain out of production until other
equipment could be obtained and the water pumped out.
As already indicated, the Government took control of the larger
coal mines, and the privately-owned coal mines struggled on as best
they could with poor equipment and increasing regulations and
strangling officialdom. CNRRA again ran true to form in endeavouring
to have UNRRA equipment channelled to Government mines at the
expense of the private mines. This, of course, was not done openly.
This time they endeavoured to make the price of the equipment as high
as possible so that it would be beyond the financial resources of the
private mines. The purchase of the equipment for Government mines
28
amounted to nothing more than a book transaction between two
Government Departments and UNRRA spent a considerable portion of
its time in endeavouring to keep prices reasonable. However, there
were better schemes than those afoot for liquidating private ownership,
of which the withholding of permits to obtain much needed repair and
new equipment was only a minor one. At one time it was necessary for
the coal to be put on the market through Government organisations and
a Coal Control Commission was set up whose duty it was to allocate
coal to various consumers. In spite of a general shortage of coal, this
Commission did not function very long. The current reason given by
the cynical was that “there was no money in it” although others were
careful to point out that if offered marvellous opportunities for
obtaining money by irregular channels. The price at which the mineowner
had to sell to the Government organisation was fixed very low
and this made it difficult for the less economic mines to carry on.
Particularly was this the case where new tools or new equipment had to
be obtained, as the new prices were greatly in advance of the old.
The smartest scheme, however, was the control of the coal
export trade. For this the mine-owner had to sell his coal to a
Government organisation for ultimate sale on the Shanghai market.
The price at which the coal was sold to the Government barely covered
operating expenses, but the mine-owner was consoled with the promise
of receiving fifty percent of the profits - and he realised that the profits
made from coal sold on the Shanghai market were very great indeed.
However, he was not told that the Formosan Government organisation
intended to sell to a Central Government organisation and that it was
this latter organisation which was to make the highly profitable sale on
the Shanghai market. There was practically no profit arising from the
sale of coal by the Formosan Government organisation to the Central
Government organisation, and therefore the private mine-owner found
that there were no profits in the transaction as far as he was concerned,
and his total return therefore, including the illusory profits, barely
covered production costs.
Gold and copper were also found, but the quantities were not
large. In 1943 the Japanese ordered one mine to reduce its working to
one half, and in March 1945 they stopped the whole operation on
account of war shortages. 1,200 tons of railway materials, explosives
and electrical equipment were taken away for military use from April to
July 1945, and other mines had similar treatment. One mine in 1943
employed about 10,000 people but now employed about 1,000. Several
thousand of the unemployed now go in and work the mine through its
various disused shafts on their own account and protect their workings
29
with rifles and machine-guns; and at the time I received the information
the police were powerless to prevent it. As the country was very
mountainous, the inhabitants in this area were almost entirely
dependent on the gold-mining industry. Poverty, therefore, was
extreme, and it was not unusual to hear of parents first killing their
families and then committing suicide. In other words, conditions there
were desperate and were just more highly combustible fuel for the fires
of rebellion which broke out early in 1947.
30
31
CHAPTER V
FINANCE AND GENERAL ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
In my first tour of the Island I came to the conclusion
that by far the greatest difficulties of rehabilitation were those of
finance. Time and again I was told that no money was available, and in
such a highly productive Island as Formosa two questions arose. One
was as to what had happened to the tangible assets of the various
companies, particularly in the way of stocks, both of raw materials and
finished products; and the other question concerned the proceeds from
agricultural production, particularly of rice, which was undoubtedly a
good source of external revenue, when it was remembered that the
Island satisfied all its needs from one crop and the second crop
produced in the year could be used for export. The answer in both
cases was that every dollar that could be found was poured into the
economic vacuum of the mainland. For example, of all old stock of
sugar seven-eighths had to be handed over to the Executive Yuan and
one-eighth remained with the companies.
The Government railways were operating practically without
reserves as most of them had been handed over to the Provincial
Government. On April 1st, 1946, the Provincial Government issued an
order that there would be no more funds available for restoration of
works for any organisation that was in production. This, of course,
meant that any further work of repairing would have to be done out of
the profits which probably could not be obtained till the repairs had
been carried out and there was thus a kind of vicious circle. Some
factories found themselves in the position of not having even sufficient
funds to build protection from the weather for their valuable machinery.
The Government had granted loans for various purposes but when
application was made to the bank for the loan, the account was found to
be empty. Sometimes the case was not so extreme and a company had
proceeded on a work, having already obtained a certain proportion of
the money that was allocated to it. As the work progressed, further
applications revealed the fact that there was no more money available,
with consequent holdup and deterioration of what had already been
accomplished.
One source of revenue was from the large salt beds which
32
existed in several places on the Island, particularly at Anping. Shipload
after shipload of this salt was sent to Japan but it was only one-way
trading. In accordance with the general trade policy nothing was
received direct from Japan in repayment for the salt. Similar
transactions took place with rice and coal, but in these cases the
recipient was the China mainland and the Formosans sarcastically
remarked that the only importations they received for this wealth which
was being taken out of their Island, were the useless friends and
relatives of those mainland Chinese already in power in Formosa.
These friends and relatives were largely devoid of qualifications for the
positions they held and were therefore a drag on the enterprises with
which they were associated. They slowed the processes and did not
earn their salaries, and if any profit was to be made it would have to
include the payments they received. They were usually on the alert for
“squeeze” and looked upon the Island as a place to “get rich quick”.
They frequently occupied posts jointly with Formosans who, even if
they received the same salary, did not receive the same allowances and
perquisites (“perks”) as the mainlanders. For instance, the mainlanders
frequently received a free house and extra overseas allowance and rice
at prices below those on the current market. Later the privilege of
buying the rice cheaper than current prices was extended to all
Government employees.
The Government tied the Formosans yen to the C.N.C. dollar
and with the mainland in the grip of inflation, Formosa followed
accordingly. Had the Formosan currency been independent of the
mainland, and had Formosa received credit for the goods she exported,
there is no doubt that there would have been no inflation. She had large
exports of coal, rice and salt and comparatively nothing was being
imported, so she had large external credits and under ruling conditions
was practically self-supporting. The more educated Formosans
recognized this and strongly resented the added burden that the
mainlanders were imposing on them. There was, of course, the direct
export of money to the mainland by officials from the mainland at
preferential exchange rates. As an instance of what could be done
should be quoted the fact that the secretary to the Governor of the
Pescadores, after he had been in the Pescadores two weeks, sent home
to China 150,000 yen as “savings”. Resulting from inflation, savings
dwindled away and many Formosans found themselves becoming
bankrupt. At the same time, the numerous hindrances and restrictions
to trade restricted the livelihood of many so that they were not able to
overtake the rise in prices.
The phenomenon of inflation, being new to many of the small
33
traders and industrialists, led them to think that because of increasing
profits their businesses were going ahead and, at one meeting I
addressed, an industrialist, in discussing the question with me
afterwards, admitted that he had not before realised that the only safe
standard with which to gauge his business position was whether he was
maintaining his capacity for production. In other words, the price he
obtained for the finished article must not only include an adequate
profit but also include the cost of replacing the raw material and
whatever was used in producing that article.
With inflation there also came a shortage of rice. It was
believed that rice was being bought up by officials and secretly
exported to the mainland where much higher prices could be obtained.
This was a very lucrative proposition. It was claimed by the officials
that the high price of rice was due to hoarding on the part of the rice
merchants and they stated that, if the rice merchants sold their rice on
the market, the price would be reduced. The Formosans saw the point
of this and much rice came on to the market, but there was no
noticeable reduction in price from the increase in the quantity of rice
available. The Formosans believed that the Government officials had
again tricked them and that there was just more rice made available for
exportation to Shanghai. Furthermore, responsible officials continually
criticised the “wicked rice merchants” and tried to make them the
scapegoat for the increasing distress of the people. The following is an
extract from the issue dated 3rd February, of the “Ta Min Pao”, a paper
published in Taipei.
“The Chief-of-Staff of the Formosan Army, Mr. Koa, made a
speech to a meeting of merchants in Formosan Province called to
discuss food, and said, 'If there is any riot by the farmers against the
merchants who hoard rice away the Government will not protect the
merchants'“. This incitement to lawlessness had its effect at the end of
that month, but it was not the rice merchants that the rioting was
against, but the Government itself.
On the first day of the new note issue in October 1946, a
Chinese from the mainland attempted to open up a new account with
the Bank of Taiwan. He offered millions of dollars of new currency much
more, in fact, than had so far been issued. He tried to explain
himself out of the awkward situation by saying that he had seen in the
newspapers an announcement that such notes would be issued on that
day and he wanted to open an account with the notes which had been
given him some time before in Shanghai by a friend. Further
questioning showed that friend had also been a friend of a former
34
Premier. This was the only case of which I heard, but it was interesting
to speculate as to the number of new notes which could flood on the
market at the hands of private individuals without any corresponding
withdrawal of the old currency.
The malpractices were not only committed by the Government
officials individually but by various Government organisations.
Probably one of the biggest rackets was carried out on the question of
export and import payments. Exchange of currencies was carried out at
two rates, the official rate and the market rate. If for various reasons an
exporter obtained dollar credits in the United States, he immediately
had to hand that over to the Central Bank which would exchange it into
C.N.C. or yen at an official rate, always on the understanding, of
course, that when he wanted dollars for purchases in the States he could
obtain them from the Central Bank; but almost in every case when
application was made to the Bank for dollars the reply was received
that it had none and recourse then had to be made to the black market,
in which the price was three times that of the official rate. Actually,
therefore, this made it necessary to obtain credit in America for three
dollars in order to purchase one dollar's worth of goods there. As to
what happened to the dollars which were handed to the Central Bank,
the current opinion was that they were immediately bought up by the
Government officials themselves and sold on the black market. While I
have no evidence for this statement, the fact remains that there was
always a shortage of dollars in the banks while they were readily
enough available on the black market.
I have already mentioned the fact that no loans were available to
private industrialists from Government sources and, with the everincreasing
inflation, it was very difficult to obtain loans for private
industries. One industrialist, hard pushed for money, had to pay six sen
- or 0.06 yen - interest on 100 yen per day, which is practically twentytwo
percent per annum. It was interesting to find that there was a
surprising amount of wealth among the Formosan private industrialists
and some of them, recognizing the dangers of inflation, were anxious to
invest their money in tangible assets, particularly with the idea of
buying more factories which they considered had industrial
possibilities. In Kagi, for instance, there were Japanese factories lying
idle for approaching two years and Formosans wished to buy them.
This would have been an excellent idea for reducing the serious
unemployment in Kagi, but they were unable to do so. A cotton
weaving mill was sold by the Provincial Government to a company on
the mainland, to which all the machinery was removed. The Industrial
Labour Union protested in January 1947 against the removal but no
35
reply was received. It was estimated that this factory would have
created employment for about 150 to 200 people.
The Government Health Bureau in the same town took over a
factory formerly owned by private Japanese for making medical
injection material. It is no longer working and the workers lost their
jobs. Half of the machinery was sold on the market and the Health
Bureau gave no indication that the factory would ever be put into
operation again. It employed between 100 and 200 men, but as it used
a plant which was specially grown in the district by the farmers, it was
estimated that, including the farmers, there were 900 people whose
employment was affected.
The Formosans, who are more industrious and hardworking
than the mainlanders, could not understand why so little was being
done by the Government officials to restore the Island to normality and,
with distress increasing, the situation greatly irked them. Even the least
observant realised that the Chinese had received from the Japanese an
extremely rich prize, and so they were intent on getting as much of it as
possible over to the mainland. But apparently they did not realise that
this very process would greatly reduce their chances in the future of
acquiring further wealth from the Island. In fact, if they carried on in
this manner for a few years, they would reduce it to the general poverty
of the mainland.
36
37
CHAPTER VI
THE STORY OF THE PESCADORES
The Pescadores are a group of bleak, low, wind-swept islands
about forty miles west of Taiwan, and the seas between develop fast
and dangerous currents. Mako is the chief of the villages which dot the
Islands. Farming and fishing are the main pursuits. Farming is carried
on with difficulty, the chief crops being peanuts and sweet potatoes,
and all cultivation has to be protected from the salt spray which the
strong winds carry over the islands. In many cases the protection is
obtained from stone walls built from rocks, of which there is a plentiful
supply.
In pre-war years (i.e. pre World War II) the fishing industry was
a thriving one. For instance, in 1930 there were over 6,000 people
engaged in obtaining a total catch of 2,200 tons for the year. The fish
was shipped to the main island of Formosa and to Japan, for which
purpose the Japanese had established every modern facility, including a
large factory for the manufacture of ice in which to store the fish.
During the war, however, the Japanese commandeered many of
the fishing vessels and later many of those that were left were
destroyed by aerial attack. This had two effects on the people in the
Pescadores. It reduced almost to starvation point the available supply
of fish, a staple article of diet, and also created distress due to
unemployment.
Another cause of unemployment was the closing of the large
naval base which the Japanese established near Mako. This base was to
support the southward drive of Japan. However, probably due to
Japan's shipping shortage and difficulty of maintaining supplies during
the war, it was abandoned in favour of one north of Takao which had
recently been built. This threw three thousand more people out of
employment in the Pescadores and added much to their post-war
difficulties.
Apart from American Army personnel, only one Westerner was
known to have visited the Pescadores since the war. He was an
UNRRA Inspector from the United States, and while returning, barely
38
escaped drowning by shipwreck. CNRRA had already undertaken
some civil engineering work there and was sending further personnel
and supplies. This was considered a favourable opportunity for an
UNRRA officer to visit the Islands and I received instructions to
proceed from Keelung with my interpreter by the boat which was
taking supplies. We were also warned to take our own rations, owing
to the shortage of food, and we considered a case of the American
Army “10-in-1” rations would be sufficient. On arriving at the boat at
the appointed time early one morning, we found the semi-diesel
engines already running, but only just. After tinkering round for four
hours, the expert from the manufacturer's works decided that he would
not be able to get them into satisfactory running condition that day; so
we returned back to the office at Taipei with instructions to return at ten
o'clock the next day. But next day, although the engines were
improved, they were still in an unsatisfactory condition. However as
the weather was calm and was likely to continue so, it did not appear as
though there was much danger involved. So behold us at mid-day,
after an extraordinary amount of crackers had been set off to scare
away the evil spirits, proceeding down the harbour. After a run of
about four hundred yards we pulled into the dock-side and the Captain
went off to receive his clearance papers. Shortly afterwards he returned
with the story that the official who usually issued the papers was absent
and nobody knew where he was. After the Captain had made several
fruitless visits, hoping that the official had returned, I began to be
annoyed at what appeared to me to be a bit a bureaucratic nonsense. As
I was in uniform the Captain suggested through my interpreter that
perhaps if I accompanied him and “wore an official look” some good
might result. Acting on the cue given, it is only necessary to record
that twenty minutes afterwards, in spite of the fact that our watchful
eyes had not seen any other Customs official return, we had possession
of all the necessary papers together with the profuse regrets of the
officials concerned.
Nevertheless our troubles were not over for the Diesel expert,
who was nursing the engines, decided that they were not in a fit
condition to put out to sea and we returned to our original berthing
place. It was decided to make a complete overhaul of the engines and
the boat would be ready the following Monday.
Monday saw us on the boat again and again the boat was not
ready but would be ready “tomorrow”. Tuesday brought me important
work which had to be attended to immediately. But on the Wednesday
we found that the boat really had gone - and gone without us. We
learned later that it had only proceeded a few miles down the coast
39
when the engines again broke down and it was beached on a sand-bar at
the mouth of the Tansui River; and the next time that I went to bathe
on the beach at the mouth of the river I saw it drawn up high and dry
and undergoing repairs.
After learning that the boat had gone, my interpreter and I made
enquiries at Tainan and Takao for suitable boats, but the best that we
could do was to go aboard a boat leaving on Friday afternoon at four
o'clock. Although the boat was reputed to be 120 tons it was already
overloaded with passengers and cargo - nor was it clean. A place had
been reserved for us below decks, but on putting our heads over the
hatchway the stench that arose made us decide that anywhere on deck
would be better. The cleanest past of the deck was the stern, and there
we sat down with our luggage to survey our fellow passengers and their
conditions. Along both sides of the boat were piled bundles of sugar
cane which made it impossible for anybody to lean over the side,
usually a very frequent and desirable action where Chinese sea
voyagers are concerned. The passengers were so closely packed that
walking along the decks had to be done very slowly and with caution.
One relieving feature was that the engines were already running and
running very smoothly. In due time we proceeded along the harbour
and made no stops. In the outer harbour, which was dotted with the
masts of sunken vessels, we noticed an appreciable swell which boded
ill for our trip. There was in fact, quite a rough sea running and soon
the passengers began to show its effects. Fortunately, or unfortunately,
depending on one's viewpoint, it was dark, and after some hours when
sickness had become general, I began to think out a plan of campaign
which had the stern of the boat as its final objective. Suddenly the boat
gave a violent pitch and as planned I dived for the stern, only to find
that somebody else sometime previously had the same urge and the
same plan of campaign, but they had not quite reached the edge - with
foul consequences for me. However, another pitch brought my face
within six inches of the water and a moment later it seemed as though
the sea was thirty or forty feet below me and I remembered that if I
wanted to stay in the boat, I had to hang on. After that I have only
confused recollections of frequently being violently sick and ultimately
not having enough strength to move from my original position which I
had somehow now regained. Finally it now being broad day, I saw a
harbour head and the thought struck me that the Japanese seemed to
have a standard design and shaping for their harbours. It took my
confused brain several minutes before I realised that we were returning
to the harbour at Takao. Our condition can only be left to the
imagination, but we had to be helped off the boat, we were so weak,
and the rickshaw boys did not want to carry us as we were so filthy.
40
Ultimately we arrived at an hotel where the kind proprietor took pity on
us, allowed us to change in a back room, gave us a bath, sent our
clothes off to a laundry (24 hour service) and we spent those twentyfour
hours in bed recuperating.
We learned later that the strong currents, of which I have
already mentioned, were too severe and the Captain turned back to
Takao; but before entering the harbour the sea suddenly went much
calmer and he again turned round to attempt the crossing of the
dangerous currents. This time however, the boat sprung a leak and the
pumps had to be worked continuously to keep the level of the water in
the boat in check, and we raced back to Takao with all speed, having
been twenty hours on the trip.
And the Pescadores were as far off as ever. We received a visit
from some officials representing the Pescadores Government in Takao
and, more as a joke, told them that they would have to supply us with a
naval vessel which had good engines and wouldn't spring a leak, before
we would attempt the crossing again. In the meantime, I received a
telegram to return to Taipei, and as I acted upon it, it must have looked
to the officials that we had abandoned the Islands in their plight.
Nevertheless, on the following Thursday the Pescadores Government
telegraphed to me, “Naval vessel sailing Saturday morning. Can you
join it?” So again we set out for Takao and the Pescadores, but with an
augmented party comprising two C.N.R.R.A. engineers who had been
on our ill-fated ship which had been wrecked at the mouth of the
Tamsui River. They had been rescued by a Customs patrol boat.
We arrived at the approaches to the naval base at Takao and had
some trouble getting through the sentries. One of the C.N.R.R.A.
engineers spoke Mandarin and two other Chinese dialects and so we
were able to get past two Chinese sentries, although with some
difficulty. But on arriving at a third one who was guarding the dockside
where we saw the ship waiting for us, our engineer-interpreter had
a lot of trouble. In the end the sentry called another sentry and the
three went into a huddle trying to get their ideas across to each other,
our man all the time tracing Chinese characters on the palm of his hand.
Unfortunately for him, the sentries could not read. The incident was
eventually closed by an officer from the ship coming over on a bicycle
and apologizing profusely for the delay and the loss of face we had
endured by being subjected to any suggestion at all that we were not fit
and proper persons to go aboard the vessel. It was a 450 ton boat and
the Captain and officers were drawn up to receive us. After the
formalities were over, we soon realised that everything had been
41
considered down to the minute detail to give us an enjoyable trip. Even
the sea was almost like glass and the clear blue sky overhead made it a
pleasure trip. When we disembarked at Mako, we found that the
Governor, the Chief of Police, the Mayor and quite a number of other
functionaries were there to welcome us. After saying goodbye to the
Captain and taking leave of the ship, we were taken to our hotel and
immediately began to discuss the general situation, which it was soon
evident was very serious. So I immediately cabled Taipei for relief
supplies.
The story of our attempts to ship relief food to the Pescadores is
worth recording. Five hundred tons of rice were already available at
Keelung and a British boat was about to proceed empty from Keelung
to Amoy and could call at the Pescadores on the way. Arrangements
were therefore made with the agents to ship the much needed food and
deliver it to the Pescadores. However, the Chinese Central
Government Executive Yuan forbade the shipment to be made because
of Chinese maritime laws which prohibited the carriage of cargoes in
foreign vessels between Chinese ports. It took several months before
satisfactory supplies were able to be delivered to the Pescadores and
undoubtedly people died of starvation in the meantime but the
sovereignty of China was upheld.
The evening we arrived, the Governor entertained us at dinner,
followed by a visit to the pictures which were rank nationalistic
propaganda. There was so much dialogue that the audience at times
lost all interest and the speeches could hardly be heard above the noise
that the audience was making.
Next day, being Sunday, we all went in a sort of an official
party to church in the morning where my interpreter gave the address;
similarly I gave the address in the afternoon service. The church was
founded by the English Presbyterian Missionary Society and was very
closely interlocked in its activities with the Y.M.C.A.. Some buildings
had been bombed, and as the church room was the only one in fairly
good order, it was used for Sunday School and social activities. In the
evening the Mayor gave us an official dinner.
On Monday we visited fishing villages, but although we were
not shown the worst cases we noticed that in many instances the
physical condition of the people was very poor. On arriving back at
Mako we found posters displayed in many parts of the town among the
Chinese characters of which I recognized those of my own name. By
arrangement with us a meeting for youth was being held in the picture
42
theatre. “Mr. Shu Lee Tong of New Zealand, Mr. 'Wu' from Shanghai
and Mr. 'Yee' from America, will give a combined public address on
the youth organisations of their respective countries”. We had dinner
with the Director of the Y.M.C.A. and before we had got fairly started
word came that the theatre was already packed. We were
enthusiastically welcomed at the theatre and each of our speeches
received a very good hearing. It was apparently considered an
excellent meeting in every way.
The next morning we inspected a dyke which was being
constructed as a relief work and was designed to make what were
previously sea mud flats into farming land. The dyke was about half a
mile long and at the other end of it was a village which appeared to me
to be more interesting than the dyke. So after we had finished with the
dyke, at my request we went into the village although apparently
against the wishes of the officials accompanying us.
There we found starvation. I looked into a courtyard which was
alive with flies and had bits and pieces lying all around. Some
children, very thin and very ragged, were near the entrance and in the
house was a middle-aged couple preparing food, the time being about
10.30 A.M.. On enquiry we found that they combined breakfast and
lunch owing to the extreme shortage of food. They considered that
they were fortunate because they thought that they had enough food in
hand to give them two meals a day for about a week. What about when
the food was run out? They were hoping to get some more fish before
that. Unfortunately the diet would be only potatoes flavoured with fish
and they were all getting weak and found the ordinary routine too much
for them. When the children cried too much from hunger they gave
them another meal and went without themselves. The children could
not go to school as they were too weak and hungry and had no clothes
to go in. All their clothes were the scantiest of most ragged rags,
patched, repatched and repatched. The woman did most of the talking
for the man did not seem to have the strength. The woman's lips were
extremely pale and her words came in gasps as though every word was
an effort to form. Their case was typical of the village although some
had peanuts instead of fish. It was a very thoughtful party that turned
back home.
After lunch we visited the power station and the ice factory
where the proceedings were mainly of technical interest. The ice
factory was capable of making fifteen tons of ice a day but as the
fishing industry was practically non-existent, it was making only one
and a half tons a day.
43
We next visited another distressed village where the conditions
were similar to those we had already seen. Some of the people were
down to one meal a day on peanuts and potatoes. In this village of over
1,700 inhabitants, we were being followed by an ever-increasing
number of people, when suddenly out of the crowd stepped a man who
showed us a terribly mutilated right arm which, although healed, was
very much deformed. The village had been bombed and he apparently
had his arm hit with a splinter, causing a fracture of both bones and
they had never been set in a proper splint. We went to the end of the
village and returned down the same road again, now followed by a big
mob that did not seem to be too friendly. Striding towards us came a
middle-aged woman, care-worn, thin and frail, but there was no
mistaking the determination in her stride and the look on her face. She
addressed herself to my interpreter and when I asked him what it was
all about he could not stop her flow of words to tell me. I could see
that something was badly wrong for her eyes began to fill with tears
and a catch came in her voice. Finally she stopped because she could
go no further on account of her weeping. My interpreter then told me
that the village had been bombed by Americans and her husband, who
was not a soldier, had been killed and she was left with seven children
to bring up. She said, “That would be difficult enough in ordinary
times and now even women with husbands are finding it very difficult
to care for their families. I am worn out with trying to get food and my
children are all starving and I miss my husband very much to help me”.
The hard time that the woman was having was only too plainly
evident, but I was dismayed to think that it was even found necessary to
bomb apparently harmless and peaceful villages like this. There was
probably some justification for it, but what was hard was that this
woman and her family had to pay the price for it. But the episode was
not closed. When the woman finished, Babel was let loose. My
interpreter said that there were several other women commencing to tell
the same sort of tale and he thought we had better get out of the place
as soon as we could. So, after expressing our sympathy and promising
to do what we could to help, we went. That evening in the hotel I
realised something. Calling my interpreter by name I said, “Did that
woman in the village whose husband was killed by a bomb think I was
an American?”
“Yes”, he said.
“And”, I carried on, “that I was in some way responsible for her
troubles and sorrows”?
“Yes”, he said.
44
I decided to have the 10-in-1 rations, when they arrived, handed
over to the woman as a gesture of sympathy. And to round off the
story, several months later I received a grateful letter of thanks from
her, together with the leather carrying straps which were round the
case, and a receipt. I quote this as an example of the honesty which I
found in many parts of the Islands.
That evening we had dinner in the Church which was serving its
function as a social hall. It was given to us by the Y.W.C.A., the
Church and school friends of my interpreter. They all wanted to give
us a dinner, but as this was the last night they combined together. A
very pleasant feature of the dinner was that the wife of the Mayor had
specially cooked a western type of dinner. It consisted of fried eggs
and pork chop, sweet potatoes (but unlike the New Zealand kumeras),
cauliflower, white turnip that had no flavour, and white sauce. It was a
very welcome change and I appreciated it very much. We ended up
with a few speeches. There are no women guests, by the way, at
Chinese dinners and the hostess is only present to assist with the
serving and superintend matters. So after the dinner we adjourned to
the Manse to meet the parson's wife.
There the parson made a speech to the effect that Christians had found
life very difficult during the Japanese regime and even now, from a
different cause, they were becoming disheartened. But we, and what
we had said, had given them new outlook and inspiration. It took us a
long time to say goodbye because we were off in the early morning for
Takao and I doubted whether I would ever be in the Pescadores again.
In the short time that I was there I came to like them very much and I
think they liked us too.
Next morning the Governor called personally to take us to the
boat, which was the same naval vessel which we came over in and
which had been waiting until we were ready to go back. When we
arrived at the quay there were several hundred people waiting there to
see us off and we spent fully five minutes shaking hands and saying
goodbye. Thinking of the events of the night before while we were still
making our farewells, I found myself considerably affected by the
friendliness and good wishes of the people.
Now that UNRRA has closed down, and knowing how little
chance the people of the Pescadores have of obtaining relief from the
Government, I wonder how they are faring.
45
CHAPTER VII
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE REBELLION
All the mismanagement, misbehaviour, callousness,
indifference, of the mainlanders which has so far been recounted, was
actually leading up to the rebellion and therefore each of the preceding
paragraphs dealing with this could, of course, just as well find a place
in this chapter; but it was the culmination of very many things which
drove the Formosans into rebellion. They saw their Island being
robbed, their rich becoming poor and their poor suffering from hunger
which was in places starvation, while at the same time they saw the
mainlanders riding round in luxurious new cars and lacking for nothing.
That would have been enough, but with it all the mainlanders adopted
an arrogant and superior attitude which the Formosans knew was
entirely unjustified. They saw the mainlanders grappling with a
situation which they could not understand, endeavouring to deal with a
people who in the fifty years' isolation from China had greatly
improved mentally, socially, economically and spiritually.
The mainlanders made the mistake of attempting to graft
customs of an old civilization on a modern industrial Island. It was
like mixing oil and water, and to carry the metaphor on, they laughed
and ridiculed the Chinese for stirring in the hope that the two would
mix. Their contempt for the Chinese only made the Chinese adopt a
more arrogant attitude in self protection and so the circle went on.
They saw that the Chinese were, in the main, concerned with getting
rich, that there was no question of public service, and even the
Formosans were aghast when, for instance, the health authorities were
apparently indifferent to the cholera outbreak, and isolation and
quarantine were ineffective and casual. Incidentally, UNRRA officials
had a difficult time having the quarantine regulations imposed and in
keeping them imposed. The Formosans saw that there was practically
no attempt at rehabilitating the cities and towns. There apparently was
no Government scheme for rehabilitating bombed-out families, who
had to live in hovels constructed as best they could. Rather did the
Chinese maintain a tax on new houses that the Japanese, in wartime,
had imposed apparently to restrict further building. People, after they
had managed to obtain cement and material for building, at last, in the
black market found, in the first two years after the end of the war, when
46
the house was completed and they thought that their difficulties were
over, that they were presented with a demand for tax for four hundred
yen because they had built a new house.
Travelling down many of the streets in many of the towns was a
distressing sight. The broken bricks and rubble were becoming
overgrown with weeds and the concrete skeletons of the buildings
overshadowed the draughty hovels that had replaced the once-imposing
and comfortable buildings. In some districts the public-minded
Formosans formed relief committees and endeavoured to help the less
fortunate but, themselves suffering from the financial maladies that the
Chinese had inflicted on them, they were not able to deal with the
situation in anything like the adequate manner that it demanded. In one
relief centre I saw fourteen families living in hovels (about ten persons
per family) and the size of each hovel was about twelve feet square.
Half of that had a built-up floor for sleeping, Japanese fashion, while
the other was a dirt floor. There was dirt, squalor, sores and misery.
The children were listless and had many sores. On one boy's hand, for
instance, there were more sore patches than there were healthy patches
and flies continually settled on his sores. The misery beggars
description.
On making inquiries as to why they had not obtained relief from
UNRRA, I received the answer that applications had been made to the
Chinese Mayor through whom all applications had to pass. He,
however, probably due to questions of “face”, had not forwarded the
application, and so the people had to continue to suffer in their misery.
Unemployment, of course, steadily got worse and the
unemployed looked in vain for the factories in which they had worked,
particularly the private ones, to start again. Unemployment meant,
ultimately, starvation, but they put up a good fight and it was not an
uncommon sight to see masses of rubble cleared away and the
neighbouring householders developing their own patches of vegetable
gardens. Even the green strips on the sides of the tarsealed roads were
sometimes brought into cultivation to grow vegetables. I always
considered it a tribute to their honesty that, while starvation was so
common, one man could plan to grow his vegetables in such a public
position without fear of losing them. Unemployment was further
increased through the Chinese system of Nepotism whereby relatives,
and in the case of Formosa, friends, were given positions in spite of the
fact that they had practically no qualifications for those positions. This
took place wherever Government officials were employed. Particularly
in education was this very apparent. Sometimes the newspapers
47
published news of the dismissal of Formosan principals of schools and
named the new principal, but did not give reasons for the change. In
the Takao Girls High School, in the beginning of February, when a new
Chinese principal had fired four Formosan assistants and put four of his
own friends in their places, the Parents' Association of the school
requested the principal to stop that policy. This, of course, was the
usual Chinese policy where a change of those in authority produced a
corresponding change in the personnel of the underlings, who therefore
worked more for their own security than for the satisfactory execution
of their duties and naturally attempted to “make hay while the sun
shone”.
An interesting attempt to dismiss a principal arose at the Kagi
Agricultural Vocational School. The principal had the reputation of
doing his best to carry out his duties at the school and particularly to
carry out the administration to conform to the new Chinese
requirements. The Chinese inspectors of schools held permanent
positions on the staff and some Chinese inspectors were sent to the
Kagi Agricultural Vocational School, but used false names to obtain
employment at another school, and so received two salaries at the same
time. The principal of the Kagi School found this out and fired the
inspectors. A new inspector sent to the school tried all possible ways to
find fault with the principal, and at last thought that he had
incriminating evidence that he had been looking for. This concerned
the payment of teachers. All teachers who had taught more than one
year received bonuses, and of the twenty-four teachers employed at
Kagi twelve received bonuses. The inspector then reported that the
principal drew payment for twenty-four teachers but paid only twelve
because only twelve got the bonus. The principal was fired, apparently
for that reason. The Kagi Town Council members, who were
Formosans, protested and later an order came that the principal would
be promoted to the Agricultural College at Taichu. It was anticipated
that, being removed from Kagi, the principal would lose the support
there, having been born and brought up in Kagi, and it would be,
therefore, less difficult to obtain his complete dismissal in Taichu.
The Formosans were well aware of the advantages of a good
education, and under the Japanese system the cost of education, both
regarding school fees and school books, was so cheap that it was
available to almost every child. The Chinese arrived and immediately
insisted that Mandarin be spoken in the schools and in all Government
offices; and an interesting incident arose when, on coming by road to a
railway station, I found what I thought was chanting in progress. On
looking closer, I found all the Formosan employees assembled in one
48
room being taught Mandarin. This, I found later, was a common
occurrence anywhere where Formosans were employed. As a result of
this attempt to drive out the Japanese language, the ordinary class
subjects were largely discontinued and Mandarin became the allimportant
subject. Of course, all Japanese textbooks were scrapped and
Mandarin textbooks were put in their place. Nevertheless, for the
Formosans there were no Mandarin books which would deal with
algebra, geometry or trade subjects. A Chinese “Professor” who came
from the mainland to a school commenced to take a class in
mathematics by asking elementary questions about the number of legs
that various numbers of chairs had altogether. After suffering this for
some time, one bright boy in the class proffered the information that the
last lesson they had received was on the theory of quadratic equations.
The “Professor”, finding that this was algebra, had to admit that he did
not know algebra and retired: and, at the time my informant told me,
mathematics was still not being taught at the school. Similarly, the
only qualification that a certain teacher of English had was that he had
spent six months in Hong Kong, and he and I found English practically
impossible as a medium of conversation.
All this indicates that the standard of education had slumped
and the Formosans latterly became suspicious that it was an attempt to
reduce them to an illiterate race. They recognized the loss of “face”
suffered by the Chinese in finding that the standard of intelligence and
literacy were very much higher than on the mainland. Whether their
suspicions in this particular regard were well founded or not I do not
know, but one official once asked why four expresses a day should be
allowed to run between Taipei and Takao when there was only one a
day between Shanghai and Nanking.
As I went round the Island, I noticed the tension rising, and
report of strikes due to the Formosans being replaced by mainland
Chinese became fairly common. On October 10th in the Takao factory
of the Taiwan Steel Manufacturing Company, all the workers,
comprising 960 men, went on strike as a result of trouble with the
police. The workers objected to Chinese being put over them and
capable Formosans being replaced. When the police were called in
they came with drawn revolvers but they were attacked and disarmed,
the Formosans expressing the hope that the matter could be settled
amicably and with Justice. Further police were called in and the
workers walked out. Agreement was reached after two or three weeks.
In the Taiwan Alkali Company's plant at Takao on October 28th 1946,
2,000 men struck for reasons similar to those in the steel manufacturing
company, and demanded equal treatment with the Chinese. They
49
returned when the management acceded to their requests. Similar
action took place in the cement factory in Takao. In the Taiwan
Development Company much higher officials were evidently involved.
This Company was organized by the Japanese to develop agriculture,
commerce and engineering and under the Chinese regime, in
September 1946, a thousand employees struck against the
reorganisation of the Company with Chinese heads and high officials.
As a result, Governor Chen Yi decreed that the organisation could not
be changed and that the Formosan officials should be retained.
The Formosans realised that the aftermath of war brought its
own difficulties, but they were incensed not only at the indifference of
the Government to their troubles, but also at their greed and tyranny, all
of which had multiplied their difficulties immeasurably. I have pointed
out that the regulations were frequently trivial, but they all had the
effect of increasing the possibilities of obtaining money, either for the
Government or the officials personally, or both. The increasing
restrictions on trade were leading to bankruptcies and ruin, particularly
of the small trader with very little financial backing - ruin which was
the first stage to starvation in view of the shortage and high price of
rice. The small shopkeeper and tradesman usually had no plot of land
whereby they could augment their food by growing vegetables.
So, therefore, with increasing unemployment and idle mobs
becoming hungrier, it was obvious, even to the most obtuse, that the
Island was heading for trouble. If the Government was aware of what
was going on, it did not produce any change in its policy. The climax
came on February 28th 1947 when, owing to a new regulation
forbidding the sale of foreign cigarettes, police were attempting to
enforce its application on street sellers.
Owing to the difficulties of the times, pedlars and kerb-side
sellers of cigarettes were a feature of the streets. They comprised
people of all ages, from small boys and girls to old men and women.
Some had stands which stood on the edge of the street and some,
particularly the youngsters, had small trays containing about 50 packets
of cigarettes, supported by string round their necks. They darted in and
out of restaurants, offices or anywhere they saw what they considered
was a prospective customer Their condition was often pitiable, and
although they were a nuisance, very few seemed to have the heart to
drive them away. For instance, one would take up his stand outside an
office door on the slight chance that someone would come out and buy
a packet. Their sales could not have been large and it must have been
an extremely poor living, but still it helped. The foreign brands of
50
cigarettes were by far the most popular and very small sales took place
of the many Chinese brands. Therefore, the order to cease the sale of
foreign brands meant ruin to the street-sellers but, as with all
regulations of this kind no notice was taken of it, and probably if the
police had not been so officious, the evil day of rebellion merely would
have been delayed.
It appears that a policeman of the Monopoly Bureau had
forbidden a particular woman to sell foreign cigarettes and she had
replied that that was the only means she had to support her family. If
he wanted to stop it why did he not stop the “higher-ups”. The
policeman knocked her down. The infuriated bystanders immediately
attacked the policeman, who managed to free himself and fled. Other
policemen, instead of coming to his aid, fled also and one of them, in a
fit of fear, turned round and fired into the mob which was pursuing
them, killing one person. The mob then marched on to the Monopoly
Bureau and burned it down while the Chinese employees fled - and the
rebellion was on!
51
CHAPTER VIII
CAUGHT IN THE REBELLION
On Saturday, March 1st, in Takao I had occasion to return to
Taipei, and on making inquiries at the station found that the officials
had obtained a report of a railway strike in Taipei and there was no
through-train to Taipei. There were also rumours, which later were
found to be more or less true, of street fighting in Taipei and of students
being killed. In view of this, my interpreter and I considered that it
would be as well to remain for the time being at Takao. The following
day the station officials informed us that the rioting had now spread to
Shinchiku and there were, of course, still no trains. During the day the
Chinese friend with whom I had once worked in CNRRA came and
warned me that there was going to be trouble and that I should “go
away”. When I asked him where I should go, he could give me no
definite answer, but he kept on insisting that is was very unsafe for me
to be in Takao and that I should seek refuge elsewhere. His reasoning
did not appeal to me because I had been in Takao for periods probably
totalling about a month and was very well known by sight to the
populace, and my business in attempting to rehabilitate industry there
was also pretty widely known. Therefore, I considered that I would be
as safe in that town as a anywhere. I was, of course, better known in
Taipei, but Taipei was at that moment an extremely “hot spot”. When I
asked my Chinese friend where he was going as I would like to go with
him, he said he was going to a place where I could not go. He was
profuse in his apologies for not being able to take me, but he said those
were his orders. My interpreter and I stayed on at the Tonyan Hotel, a
large three-story concrete building that was largely run Chinese style.
We were wakened on Monday morning by the sound of
marching and saw thirty Chinese soldiers with fixed bayonets and a
machine-gun of the Vickers type going past. All morning there was a
tense air in the streets and people were standing about in groups. We
were practically the only ones at the restaurant where we had lunch. As
the Tonyan Hotel was mainly patronized by Chinese, we thought it was
likely to be attacked by the Formosans and would therefore be a centre
of trouble. However, we decided to remain for the time being at least.
We had our dinner in a large restaurant which they told us had had only
two other customers that day. It was dark and we could hear the groups
marching about in the streets. There were sounds of a gramophone
blaring out the illegal Japanese songs, the idea being to lure the police.
52
My interpreter became anxious and wanted to get out, but realising that
there was no immediate danger and that we were as safe as anywhere,
we stayed on. We did not realise at the time that by this action we had
saved the life of a police inspector. He had taken refuge in the
restaurant and the crowd were going to attack but were waiting till the
Westerner had left the building. Our delay, therefore, had given the
proprietor time to get the inspector out the back way to make his
escape.
Shortly after our arrival back at the hotel we heard the mob
surging down the street and, on looking out, we found there was a large
fire about 100 yards down the street in front of the police station. The
police having fled, the records had been taken by the Formosans and
burned in the middle of the street. Things were looking serious so we
decided to pack and be ready for any emergency. There was no sign of
the police or military and the only Chinese to be seen were in the hotel.
With the guests and staff, we stood at the entrance. A man came
running past shouting “Your hotel is going to be burned tomorrow as
you keep Chinese”. I was in a very difficult position because I could
not understand what was being said and I did not know whether the
running crowds were fleeing from danger or rushing to the attack.
Everybody else round about me who could speak English was usually
too excited to attend to me. Suddenly several bullets hit the step in
front of the entrance and I considered that it would be safer in our room
with the concrete walls. As it looked as though the night was going to
be fairly exciting, I decided to get to sleep while there was still a
chance.
I must have dozed off and was awakened by the sound of
tramping feet in the building. I said to myself, as I said many times
later, “This is it”, so I went to the head of the stairway to meet the mob,
accompanied by my interpreter, and we sat on the railing as casually as
possible. They bore no arms, I was very pleased to see, except that the
leader had a wicked-looking length of sawn timber. When he saw me
he stopped, saluted and bowed, and so did all the rest as they came up
the stairs. He said, “O.K.?” and I replied “O.K.”. They spoke to my
interpreter and he replied. They went on. They looked in several
rooms and finally returned downstairs and left the building, again
saluting me. I did not know till later that the reason I was treated with
such respect was that a rumour had got about that the American Consul
was staying at the hotel and the one thing they did not want to do was
to give any offence to the American nation. I was told afterwards that
they were looking for Chinese guests, and on being told that there were
none in the hotel had made a cursory examination of some of the rooms
53
and then had departed satisfied. The Chinese guests apparently had
gone to the same place as my ex-CNRRA friend. We took the
precaution of sleeping with our clothes and boots on, but the rest of the
night was for us uneventful.
The next morning my interpreter went out after breakfast to find
out what was happening. There was the occasional sound of a shot in
the distance and he was of the opinion that we should keep to the hotel.
I had an entirely different ideas. I thought that it was as well that the
people should know all about us so that there would be no
misunderstanding in an emergency. So we went along to the police
station and were immediately greeted by the officials there, including
the new Formosan policeman who was, after all, occupying the position
he had held in Japanese times. All shops were now shut and we had
great difficulty in obtaining lunch, but managed to persuade a
restaurant to give us some “chicken rice” a dish which, I understand, is
easily prepared.
On returning to the hotel we were the object of considerable
interest from the groups of men that were standing about, but I was
unable to decide whether their attitude was hostile or friendly. We felt
tired after the previous night's events and decided to go to bed. But no
sooner had I got into bed than a message came asking if I would help
the Mayor, now a Formosan, in his negotiations for a “cease fire” order.
I said that I was willing to consider suggestions that they might make
and asked for an official request direct from the Mayor. The messenger
had hardly gone when I received a card from my Chinese friend with
the message, “Mr. Chocoton, please release me from the jail with my
two friends just now. We are in danger. Please help our trouble just
now”. I went to the jail, and through my interpreter told the Formosans
that this man had once worked for CNRRA and that I had come to
China to help Formosa, and their Chinese prisoner had once helped me
to do so, following with a description of his work. The Formosans said
they would keep the three of them safe in jail and look after them.
They said that all the Chinese had retired to the Naval Base, and apart
from the base this jail was the safest place for the Chinese. My Chinese
friend said he had left the base to attend to some business in his office
and had been caught. He wanted to go to our hotel, but it was obvious
that his presence would tend to make the hotel an object of attack and
so we refused to take him. I had taken the precaution to fill our jeep
with petrol and for the purposes of “face” was using it for every
movement, even to travel the 100 yards between the police station and
the hotel. On coming out of the jail I found that the jeep was
surrounded by a large mob at the back of which were some young
54
people in a truck. My interpreter said to me, “You had better make a
speech”, and the attitude of the mob left us in no doubt as to what the
subject should be. I told them who we were and why we were in
Takao, maintaining that in this trouble we took a strictly neutral
attitude, and also that in pursuance of this neutral attitude I had
accepted an invitation from the Mayor to endeavour to bring about a
“cease fire” condition in the town. My speech met with a very mixed
reception, some clapping and groups ominously silent. However, we
got in the jeep and drove away to the People's Headquarters which were
the local municipal Government Offices. Almost in front were the
Chinese Military Headquarters on the opposite side of a three-lane
road. We drove up in full view of a machine-gun post mounted on top
of the flat roof of the Military Headquarters and of the soldiers at
various vantage points of the building on guard. We went into the
People's Headquarters by a back entrance. I was taken to the
Committee, of which a lawyer friend of mine seemed to be the head.
There was no sign of any guards whatever and everyone was talking at
once, including my interpreter who, after about three minutes' talk, said
to me, “Alright, let's go”.
“Wait a minute. What is it all about? Where are we going and
what for and who are going?”
“Oh”, he said, “you are to head a deputation to the Military to
ask for a “cease fire” to be carried out. This order was already been
agreed upon, but the Military are out of touch with their units.”
I thought I could run the responsible officials round in the jeep
and so said, “Alright”, but I have never seen a more worried group of
men and there seemed difficulty in getting two responsible men to
come with me. I was then told that on two previous occasions when
attempts had been made, one man had been wounded and another
killed, so the project was not very rushed. However, I took comfort in
the thought that evidently contacts previously had been made and
negotiations were on the way. Out of the front door we went into the
open with our hands up, myself soon in the lead looking straight at the
business end of a machine-gun and half a dozen rifles. The distance
between the two buildings was about 200 yards but, of course, it
seemed much greater. Halfway across I stopped and shouted, “O.K.?”.
After a while someone on the roof waved us on and the rifles and
machine-gun disappeared from view. Several preliminaries had to be
gone through before we met the officer-in-charge, who looked just as
worried and distressed as the people in the building on the other side of
the road. The interpreting here was difficult. I spoke to my interpreter
55
in English, who spoke to another officer in Japanese, who spoke to the
Chinese officer in Mandarin. After I had explained my idea in coming,
including the offer of the use of the jeep to contact outlying units, I was
cut out of the discussion, which seemed to be rather animated but was
finally broken up with a sharp rattle of gun-fire. To a man they all
flattened themselves on the floor and, although there was no sign of the
bullets coming our way at all, I decided that if it was not good enough
for them it was not good enough for me, and I did the same. While
there I inquired of my interpreter what was wrong and he replied that
we were being attacked. However, after lying there for about thirty
seconds and all being quiet, I got up and began to reconnoitre, but on
my own. I went into the main part of the building where the soldiers
were on guard and they, too, were taking cover and no-one was on the
look-out. Again there was a burst of fire which this time seemed to
come from the roof. So I went to the door to see what they were firing
at. On the side of the road two hundred yards away was a woman
trying to get up and her left leg was red with blood. As there was no
sight of any attackers, I started off to go to her but a Formosan youth,
oblivious to his danger, came out from a building, gathered the woman
in his arms, and started to return. Then he changed his mind, probably
after seeing me, and I met him and helped him to carry her into the
Military Headquarters. There was no first-aid whatsoever. The girl
had a bullet wound high in her left thigh and her thigh-bone was
broken. She was not losing much blood and it seemed to be clotting
satisfactorily. There being no dressings I decided to leave it. Everyone
was standing round helplessly and left her moaning, as she was quite
conscious. There were, of course, no bandages or splints so I got the
soldiers to tear up into strips some of their towels that were drying.
The woman was still carrying her personal belongings in a scarf and
also an umbrella. Using her umbrella and a piece of wood for splints, I
bandaged her up and, with a blackboard for a stretcher, had her carried
across to the People's Headquarters where there was a doctor.
This incident had entirely disrupted the negotiations and neither
side seemed willing to start them again. It appeared that nothing I
could say through my interpreter was of much use, so we returned to
the People's Headquarters, where I found that the doctor had ordered
her to be carried to a hospital which was about a half mile down the
road.
When we returned to our hotel we found several friends waiting
for us. They were unanimous in their advice that we should leave the
hotel, and so we accepted the invitation of one of them to stay as his
guests in his house. But there we found that it was completely
56
overlooked by Chinese military sentries posted with a machine-gun on
the top of a hill. However, we stayed there the night and the next day
went to an hotel which, being on the outskirts of the town, was
considered safe. This hotel was run Japanese style.
That night there was desultory firing in various parts of the
town, and the following day there was nothing of note except the report
that the military had retired from the headquarters we had visited and
had taken refuge in the fortress built for the protection of the harbour.
In the evening, however, while we were sitting cross-legged at a
Japanese table, a machine-gun commenced to fire directly underneath
our window and the lights went out. In springing to my feet I sprained
my ankle, and was thus confined to bed. Throughout the next day we
heard various rumours but it appeared as though the students were in
control of the town, and they came to the hotel to commandeer rice.
They also tried to commandeer our jeep but were dissuaded. The
wireless broadcasted reports of the aims of the rebellion, and it
appeared as though the whole Island was in the control of the rebels.
However, shortly after lunch there were bursts of machine-gun fire
which gradually came nearer and nearer to the hotel, so we took refuge
in an inner room covered by as many mattresses as we could find.
It was obvious that there was an organised attack by the Chinese
military to clear the town, for up till this time all the arms we had seen
in the possession of the rebels had been about six rifles belonging to a
truck-load of about twenty men. We considered ourselves fortunate
when the firing gradually went past the hotel and ultimately sounded in
the distance. From the hotel we could see that the Chinese Flag was
flying both from their previous Military Headquarters and the People's
Headquarters and machine-gun crews were taking up strategic
positions. Single shots which every now and again echoed down the
streets made me realise that the mopping-up process had begun. The
shots came closer, until we found it expedient to retire again to our
retreat. Suddenly there was a shot and a crash of glass in the entranceway.
I put my head out of the door to see dust in the building, and
realised that this was the time to meet the Chinese soldiers. So I went
along the passage calling out in English, “Alright! Alright! There is no
need for all that”, with the idea of letting them know that I was a
Westerner. However, when I poked my head round a corner, I found
my eyes were six inches from the bayonet at the end of the rifle of one
of the soldiers, which he had up to his shoulder, and it appeared to me
that he was taking the pull preparatory to firing. I immediately dodged
back and shouted to him in English and, putting my head round the
corner at a lower level, was relieved to find that he was lowering his
57
rifle. When I came into full view, he came forward with his right hand
outstretched to shake hands. I called out to my interpreter to come
along, and the first thing the soldier did was to order everybody to line
up in the front. One of the men of his section that had now arrived,
marched the men who were staying in the hotel off to prison. My
interpreter and I, of course, refused to go. But, eventually, my
interpreter agreed to accompany him to the Headquarters once more.
While they were away - and the remainder of the soldiers having left another
group made their entrance in a similar manner. Fortunately one
of the guests could speak Mandarin and explained the situation. While
they were still discussing the matter, my interpreter returned with an
English-speaking officer who took us to the fortress on the hill beyond
the town. He had been in the Burma Campaign and drove us in our
own jeep. On our way we saw immediately that the rebellion was
doomed to failure. The streets and the hillsides bristled with machineguns,
some of them of very large calibre, and the comparatively
unarmed Formosans would not have had the slightest chance.
We were courteously received by the Commanding Officer,
who informed us that they were compelled to attack the town as the
communists had come in. For our part we had seen nothing that would
indicate that there were communists. We were given the QuarterMaster's
office for our room and beds were made up for us on the office
tables. There was a shortage of food and, fortunately, due to the
foresight of one of the guests, we had brought with us some bread and
cheese which the hotel had specially obtained for us.
During the evening we were visited by two officers who were
also engineers and could speak English, having had to use English
textbooks for their professional studies. They also impressed on us that
this rebellion was the dirty work of the communists. We had quite an
interesting discussion and were very pleased to have their company.
We slept fitfully that night, interrupted frequently with the
sound of machine-gun firing. We got up about eight o'clock, but an
hour later there was still no sign of breakfast. The reception given to
some fresh vegetables which had been brought to a group of soldiers
next door indicated that food was scarce and the soldiers were probably
hungry. This was confirmed by a request from one of our engineer
friends of the previous evening to borrow our jeep which we had left
locked in the front of the building. After we had explained that it was
impossible for us to allow an UNRRA jeep to be used for military
purposes, he said that it was for relief work; it was wanted to take the
rice from the military stores to the camp where all the Chinese civilians
58
were taking refuge, and they were short of transport. Further
discussion brought out two points: one was that the food store was cut
off by the rebels and the other was that the rice had to be brought to the
fortress where we were, before being distributed to the refugees. It was
obvious, then, that what rice would go to the refugees would be what
the military did not want, so we respectfully declined. We were
strengthened in our position by the fact that we had refused to let the
students use the jeep for commandeering rice in the town, and we were
only maintaining a strictly neutral attitude. So he went away, obviously
to discuss the situation with the Commander of the fortress, but
returned some minutes later to state, to our great relief, that they were
able to make other arrangements.
Our breakfast eventually arrived at 11 a.m. and comprised
poached eggs in diluted soya bean sauce - but no rice. So, with our
blessings on the guest who had given us the bread at the last moment at
the hotel, we supplemented the meal with the bread and cheese. Later
we saw several field guns harnessed behind motor trucks and realised
why there was a shortage of transport for food. We also met the
station-master of Takao, and from him gathered that fighting was still
going on round his station. But what hope would the rebels have
against machine-guns and field guns!
Tea in the evening was our next meal and comprised fried duckeggs
with boiled rice, Chinese Army bully beef, and again our bread
and cheese. As the lights kept failing and we had no visitors, we retired
to bed early, but were again wakened in the early morning by the sound
of firing, but this time in the distance. We had hopes, therefore, that we
might be able to return to the town.
During the morning we saw several groups of prisoners brought
in with ropes around their necks. One of the prisoners was standing by
himself at an entrance-way trussed up with wire which tied his two
wrists together behind his back. The wire had been screwed so tightly
that it was buried in the flesh. A similar arrangement with wire brought
his two upper arms closely together and he also had a rope around his
neck. He looked in the last stages of exhaustion and could barely stand
up, but every time his head drooped the guard clipped him under the
nose with the back of the bayonet which was fastened to the end of the
rifle. My interpreter thought it was our friend, one of the leaders of the
people's group who had been very concerned that there should be no
fighting. I did not think so, but my interpreter maintained that I did not
make allowances for the harrowing experiences that the man had
undergone. For one thing, he certainly was very much thinner.
59
Nevertheless, no matter who he was, it was a shock to see a man so
treated. We discussed whether we could do anything about the matter
but decided that, if we showed any interest in the man, it would
probably only bring him more trouble at the hands of the military.
After breakfast we discussed the question of going back to
town; but the military were unwilling to let us go. When they began to
insist on our staying, we pointed out the serious repercussions it would
have for them by making UNRRA officials their prisoners. Their next
argument for our staying had more point to it. They said that, in the
jeep, we were likely to be sniped by one side or the other. We therefore
decided to make a flag out of a pillow case we had with us, by writing
“UNRRA” along the top and the Chinese characters below. This was
done on both sides, so that when it was mounted above the head of the
jeep it could be seen clearly from almost every direction.
But we had more difficulties to overcome before we got away.
An examination of the jeep showed that the spare wheel was missing
and, of course, no-one knew where it was. Eventually a story was put
together that it was locked in a shed and the officer who had the key
was absent in Takao on duty and would not return till the evening.
However, the condition of the tires on what jeeps they had, indicated to
us that our spare was most likely running round the country helping to
quell the rebellion. After considerable argument, when we refused to
be satisfied by a receipt for the wheel, they promised to deliver it to us
at a specified hotel by ten o'clock the following morning. Tempers
were rather short, and in trying to start up our jeep to leave the fortress
the starter jammed, and the officers heaped coals of fire on our heads1
by sending a mechanic to make repairs, an operation which took about
two hours.
1 Meaning: ‘made us feel very uncomfortable’.
60
61
CHAPTER IX
THE FINAL PHASE OF THE REBELLION
When we arrived in the town of Takao once more, we found
that our flag had quite a different effect from what we intended, as we
were frequently stopped by people who had been robbed of all their
food by the soldiers and were short of several meals. Whenever we
stopped the crowds soon collected, and we heard many tales of distress.
Typical was that of a girl who was doing her very best not to break
down, and her story was punctuated by periods of silence while she
regained a grip of her emotions. Her father was an important personage
in the town and was not in favour of an armed rebellion. He had,
however, been taken off by the soldiers and no-one had heard of him
since. She had inquired of all her friends and persons with whom he
was likely to meet, but he had disappeared. The soldiers had come and
plundered the house, including food and belongings, and her mother
was prostrate with grief. She, the only child, was trying to find her
father. But what could we do? Reluctantly we had to tell her that we
could do no more than she had done.
A journey through a certain part of the town, which normally
took about ten minutes in the jeep, took us nearly an hour due to the
various holdups we had from people seeking relief and news of
relations. We returned first of all to the original hotel in which we had
stayed at the beginning of the rebellion, intending to stay there, but we
were informed that they had no food whatsoever and did not know
where to obtain any. So we moved off to the hotel from which we had
been removed by the military, again being stopped many times on the
street.
Our arrival at the hotel was apparently a very popular event.
The only men there were the soldiers who had first come to the hotel
and they were talking with the occupants, all women, in the entranceway.
I greeted the soldiers as though they were old friends. In the
course of the conversation we said that we did not intend to stay the
night, but this was greeted with such consternation that, although at that
time I did not understand the position, I told my interpreter to tell them
that we had changed our minds and would stay there. I did not know,
of course, what was going on, as my interpreter was too busy himself
62
trying to find out. However, I saw the proprietress slip a bundle of
notes into the hand of the leader of the soldiers, all of whom shortly
after departed. Then my interpreter turned to me and said that the
soldiers had come along to take the girls away to sleep with them for
the night and our arrival had caused them to give up the idea. The
leader was intent on taking one particular girl, who of course was very
much distressed. As we could see no real reason for the soldiers
withdrawing, especially as they evidently did not stop at murder to
obtain what they wanted, we thought the withdrawal was only
temporary, and after a few minutes the girl whom the leader had picked
out ran away to stay with a friend in another part of the town. There
was a very strained atmosphere in the hotel for the rest of the afternoon
and evening, and everybody came and sat in our room. Their talking
was interspersed with sighs and shuddering. After they had left we
could still hear them talking well into the night.
The stories they told were all of the same strain, that is of
reports of the soldiers shooting their way into homes exactly as they
had done in this hotel, but in addition the first one (who was of course
usually the head of the house) who came to greet them was shot and
they all maintained that I had saved somebody's life by greeting the
soldiers. This dastardly notion of the soldiers was apparently not done
all over the town, but only in certain blocks. No-one knew whether it
was on account of the fact that those blocks were considered to be more
rebellious or whether it was the whim of certain groups of soldiers.
Whatever the reason, there were many red-eyed and sorrowful women
in our locality.
An interesting fact was that, the night that I had left, the hotel
was very thoroughly machine-gunned, especially the upper stories, the
bullets going right through the building and at times passing completely
through four walls. They must, therefore, have been armour-piercing.
The following day we were besieged by requests to help find if
relatives were alive and where they were imprisoned. So we went
round the various prisons making inquiries. The gates of each prison
were surrounded by women who were bringing clothes and food when
they found where their menfolk were imprisoned. We of course were
able to vouch for the fact that the men who were taken away from the
hotel by the soldiers had had no part in the rebellion, and a day or two
afterwards they returned back to the hotel.
Many men had been taken in the middle of the night in their
night clothes and were suffering from cold, as there was no
63
accommodation for them in the prisons. Similarly, the onus was on the
relatives to bring them food, and the food containers were always
returned back to the waiting womenfolk outside the prison gates. It
was interesting to see that the distribution of these containers was done
in a very orderly manner. On one occasion, when driving away from a
prison in the jeep, somebody cried out in English, “Thank you”, as we
went past and it was taken up by the crowds which lined the roads.
Evidently our efforts had been appreciated. But it was little we could
do in the face of that sorrow and misery.
Among the requests for help was that of the wife of the lawyer
friend of ours who was against the rebellion and whom my interpreter
thought he had recognised in the fortress being ill-treated by the guard.
We went round to his office to meet his wife and she had the usual sad
tale to tell. Her husband had harangued the mob and exhorted them not
to fight, but had raised so much antagonism that he had to flee, and the
mob went round to his place to burn down his home. While there, the
wife was brutally attacked by the mob, and she showed me her legs
blackened all over with bruises and said that her body was like that all
over. She was in a state of nervous collapse and it was obviously not
the time nor the occasion to tell her of our suspicions at the fortress.
She said that two other good friends of his were also helping. One was
already up at the fortress. As there was still no sign of our spare wheel,
we thought it was time to make another trip there and also to consult
with the friend. When we arrived we met one of our officer friends
who had visited us the first night we were there. He, of course,
inquired our business, and when we told him of whose whereabouts we
were inquiring, he exclaimed, “Oh, he's a leader”, in a tone of voice
which indicated that there was no hope for him. Although I explained
that he tried to lead the people away from rebelling, it apparently made
no difference. Obviously leaders of any type were being much sought
after for liquidating. (In parenthesis I wish to point out that this was the
first indication that I had that there were signs of a systematic
extermination of leaders irrespective of any other reason but just that
they were leaders). I also said that I was inquiring for our spare wheel
and wanted to know whether the shed was open yet, and what the
chances were of getting it. We were handed on from one person to
another and obviously were “getting the run-round”. I therefore asked
to see the Commander, whom I had previously met, giving as my
reason that I was officially informing him that our equipment was being
used for military purposes and I was going to report the matter to
Nanking. This had the desired effect. Telephones soon began to buzz
and various posts were being contacted. However, it was not located
but I was promised that it should be returned to our hotel faithfully
64
within the hour. I reminded them that they had already made a similar
promise and that it was therefore not worth much. However, they
assured me that all would be well this time. It was obvious they meant
business and I went off content.
On making inquiries for the co-helper of our lawyer friend, I
was informed he was in the refugee camp, so with an officer as escort
we eventually found him and discussed the situation. I was careful to
state that I was not asking for his release but only checking that all the
facts would be brought out in the trial which I assumed he would have.
In this connection I was therefore prepared to make a statement myself
that I had met him several times and believed him to be a law-abiding
citizen. Our co-helper also said that he had made inquiries and that,
due to his good offices, our mutual friend was being well looked after
in the fortress.
We reported to our friend's wife and returned back to our hotel.
We learned that a jeep full of soldiers armed to the teeth had in the
meanwhile brought our spare wheel but, as we were absent, they had
returned back with it to the camp with the promise to return an hour
later. This they did, and in exchange for the receipt I got back the
wheel.
The authorities were keeping a close watch on us too. I was
stopped by an official and asked if I knew all the UNRRA personnel in
Takao. On replying that I did, he said, “Well, there was a Formosan
dressed in UNRRA uniform who, on the night of the 3rd demanded
100,000 yen from a certain person”. (He obviously was referring to my
interpreter).
I said, “The only other UNRRA person in Takao is a Formosan
who is dressed in an UNRRA uniform, but he has not been out of my
sight for practically the whole time. Furthermore, he is not the kind of
man who goes round demanding money. Either somebody has been
masquerading in UNRRA uniform or you have been seriously
misinformed”.
He then apologised and said, “but of course, we cannot be too
careful.”
“Yes,” I said, “that is so. You will have to more careful in
accepting statements like that again.”
On describing the incident at the hotel we were informed, from
65
the description we gave of our interrogator, that he was reputed to be
the head of the secret police.
As very little firing could now be heard, we thought the
rebellion was about over, but there were still no trains running and still
no telegraphic communication, as all the telegraph wires had been cut.
We had, however, been able to send a brief message to our office at
Taipei through the military channels, saying that we were both safe and
well.
In this locality there was an UNRRA doctor and his wife in
Tainan and three UNRRA nurses in Haito. Inquiries at headquarters
showed that Haito was still a dangerous place, but things were getting
back to normal in Tainan. So, as it was too far to drive the jeep with
my sprained ankle, we engaged a boy from the hotel to drive us to
Tainan. On our way we were stopped by two Chinese men and a
Chinese lady, who asked for a lift to Tainan, which we gave them. It
turned out that they were walking to Tainan from Takao, having
escaped from the Tonyan Hotel in Takao just before the rebels arrived.
We found Tainan a city of the dead. At every street corner there were
machine-gun posts and not a civilian to be seen. I felt very insecure
driving through the streets as there is a large amount of illiteracy in the
Chinese Army and our white UNRRA flag might mean nothing to
many of the watching soldiers. At this time, too, they seemed to
consider it advisable to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. We
visited several places where we might have had news of the doctor
before we eventually learned that he had already left Tainan to carry
out the next stage of his itinerary. So we returned to Takao.
Next day we visited Haito, where the three UNRRA nurses
were working in a hospital. We found them safe and sound, but very
much upset as they had had some harrowing experiences. But they
were greatly relieved to see us as they had thought they had been
entirely forgotten. We pointed out to them that we also, except for our
radio through the military, had been out of touch with Taipei and had
received no reply. The hotel in which they were staying had originally
been the headquarters of the rebels, and therefore came in for particular
attention from the Army. At one stage they were caught by machinegun
fire and took refuge behind a large post at the entrance-way, one
bullet striking the post.
When the rebels had been driven out of the hotel, the nurses
were left entirely alone and the officers billeted themselves in the hotel.
Later they obtained girls and turned it into a brothel. The officers only
66
stayed one night and then the nurses were left on their own, the staff,
except for the janitor and his wife, having fled. They had given the
janitor 3,000 yen to buy provisions, but the night before we arrived,
soldiers had come to the hotel inquiring for the proprietor and, as the
janitor did not know where he was, they had beaten him and taken the
3,000 yen. The nurses then appealed to the Mayor who had them
transferred to the municipal Guest House where he also was staying.
But there was more trouble ahead. A soldier had died that morning
through being shot in the head, and the military then arrested three
doctors and three nurses because they said, he had not been looked after
properly. As one of the UNRRA nurses, a Formosan, had seen him on
admission she was implicated, so we all appealed to the Mayor to
straighten matters out. Under the circumstances, the other two nurses,
who were Canadians, felt that they could not leave the other nurse in
this difficulty and decided to stay.
We returned to Takao to see whether we could get in touch with
Taipei. Instead, the next day a telegram arrived dated March 4th,
“Request you return Taipei immediately”. We argued that, as the
telegram had come in, obviously one could go out, but inquiries at the
telegraph office showed that the telegram had come down by train and
road and had passed through many hands before we received it, having
taken eleven days to reach us. The next day we returned to Haito and
brought the two nurses back to Takao, having heard that there was a
train on Monday, the following day. The Formosan nurse was now out
of difficulties regarding the dead soldier and, as she had not quite
finished her work in establishing a training course there, she decided to
stay on till it was finished.
During all these days I had been visiting a Japanese-trained
Formosan doctor who was treating my ankle, and this day he had
several interesting visitors. There was a man staying in the house who
was frightened to go out as the military police might pick him up. They
told interesting stories of the looting that was carried on by the military.
In general this was done, not only to make good deficiencies in food
and equipment, but also with the idea of re-selling and making money.
Therefore, nothing was really exempt from the attentions of the
soldiers. But more serious was the fact that there were lying about the
streets in the mornings, the dead bodies of important people who had
been dragged from their houses at night and shot. The military police
had been making inquiries for a certain Council member who was over
at Taito. He had gone to Taipei via Karenko and Suo while the trouble
in Takao was on. He had, therefore, no connection with the rioting in
Takao at all. But what he had done frequently was to ask the
67
Government to establish law and justice in place of the travesty that
was now being foisted on the people. He was therefore a marked man.
The next day the train actually was running and we were on it.
Of course, it was guarded by soldiers who rode in the carriages; and to
the time of my departure in November soldiers still occupied the seats
at one end of a carriage. Of course, the stations were all heavily
guarded with machine-guns at all vantage points. On the train a very
inquisitive official came up and, by various means, tried to find out
what we knew of the events that had been going on in the Island, both
before and during the rebellion. Apparently he got the impression that
our knowledge was very slight and, as he spoke perfect English, he
proceeded to give up the “facts” including the work of the
“communists.” Particularly was he disparaging concerning the Mayor
of Takao. We felt we could not let that pass and told him what we had
done in an attempt, at the invitation of the Mayor of Takao, to help
bring about the cease fire in Takao. Shortly after that he left us, but one
of our party said, “If they keep telling themselves that the rebellion was
caused by the communists, sooner or later they and the world will
believe it”.
In Takao we had thought that our experiences were grim
enough, but they were as nothing compared with what went on in
Taipei. One UNRRA official, a woman, had her house attacked by the
Army, although she had the American flag flying, and a Westerner
driving along in his jeep and seeing her predicament rescued her. As a
result he now drives round his jeep with several bullet holes in it and a
portion of the steering column shot away. This was typical of the
attitude of the Army.
Governor Chen Yi kept the rebels at bay with promises until
reinforcements arrived from the mainland. Then they began a
systematic murder of the populace, shooting on sight. Truck loads of
troops armed with machine-guns and automatic rifles quickly sped
from the port of Keelung to Taipei. Not content with firing at people
on the street, they fired indiscriminately into shops and houses. In one
village between Taipei and Keelung twenty youths were castrated, their
ears were cut off and their noses slit before they were bayoneted. Their
bodies joined lots of others for many days to come. It was not an
uncommon sight to see bodies floating down the river. A boy riding a
bicycle apparently did not get off quickly enough when ordered by the
police. They made him hold out his hands and slashed them with a
bayonet before running him through.
68
In Taipei, also, it was the custom for troops, when searching
houses, to shoot the first one to open the door.
Early in the rebellion a party of middle-school students went to
Manka station to see about a train going home, and two tried to inquire
from the station-master. The military police called them and would not
let them come out of the station. The other students, waiting outside
and wondering what had happened to them, decided also to go into the
station. The four or five military police then fired on them without
warning and about twenty were killed.
For days manhunts went on, and for months people kept
disappearing. No-one knows how many were killed.
69
CHAPTER X
THE AFTERMATH
Any rebellion leaves behind its sorrow, misery, bitterness, anger, hatred
and revenge and the Formosan rebellion was no exception. The Island,
of course, was under martial law and what security and safety of life
and property existed before the rebellion, had now entirely vanished.
Soldiers, using the excuse of making a search, entered homes and took
what they fancied at will. But much worse was the fact that relatives
disappeared without leaving any indication as to whether they had been
carried off and killed, or merely thrown in prison, or had gone into
voluntary hiding. In the last case, the less relatives knew of the matter,
the less could be extorted from them by beatings. For weeks after the
rebellion, the mornings found the dead bodies of people in the streets
who had been shot during the night, and bodies were still floating down
the rivers.
The authorities, of course, endeavoured to disarm the
Formosans and made promises of amnesty, but the Formosans had been
tricked once and were very suspicious. As it was, stories of men who,
relying on the promise, had come out of hiding only to be taken off by
the police, were common. All arms, of course, were to be surrendered
and, while it is true that some rifles were given up, if what I saw in the
military headquarters in Takao was a criterion, the weapons
surrendered were largely of the sword, spear and lance types. Actually
the Formosans were pitifully short of arms. The only rifles I saw, apart
from those surrendered, were about half a dozen shared by a truckload
of young men careering down the street. In the initial stages of the
rebellion I was told that the arms were being obtained from the Chinese
soldiers who, when attacked, flung their arms away and ran. But the
reinforcements Governor Chen Yi summoned from the mainland were
of a different calibre, and the sticks and spears of the Formosans,
combined with ruses and trickery, were no match for a determined
soldier with a rifle, not to mention a machine-gun or hand grenade.
The mortality among the Formosans must have been very great,
but it gave evidence that they were a brave, determined people goaded
to desperation.
70
As was to be expected, there was a marked change in the
bearing of the Formosans in the streets after the rebellion, and nowhere
was it more noticeable than among the children. Like many other
places in the East, the streets contained a large proportion of children
and, riding in our jeeps in various parts of the Island, we had always
been greeted with cheers and waves from the smiling children. This
was particularly the case when we passed through the various villages
on the way to our billets from the office. Sometimes they called out,
“Hello”, or “O.K.”, and sometimes a word of their own coining, a
combination of both greetings which became “Hellokay”. But after the
rebellion there were few people in the streets and the sad-looking
children were in no mood to give us cheery greetings. Sometimes, too,
we saw boys or women struggling behind a plow and wondered
whether they were trying to carry on the work of a father who had died
to regain freedom for his country.
But what did the Formosans die for, and what were their sins?
From some of the preceding chapters some of the reasons will be
evident, but the statement of the aims of the rebellion that they
broadcast to the world is of considerable value.
It seems that on or about March 5th
, the Island was almost in
complete control of the rebels, the troops from the mainland not yet
having arrived. That evening, Mr. Chang, President of the Political
League, broadcast from the Taipei radio station an outline of events
leading up to the rebellion. He also gave an outline of the objects of
the rebellion, which will be discussed in the next chapter. But there
was nothing in their objects that was unreasonable. They were only
asking for ordinary democratic rights. Obviously that was the time
when the authorities could have averted the rebellion. It may be,
however, that the Governor and the Army had lost so much “face” at
the hands of the Formosans that they were determined that nothing
should be left undone to regain it. But it also appears that the fact that
such demands should be followed by what has been aptly described as
a “blood bath”, lays the Government - and particularly Governor Chen
Yi - open to the charge that they did not want to do justice.
Chen Yi was the first Governor of the Island to be appointed by
the Kuomintang, and was a member of the Liberal Political Science
Group within that party. From 1934 to 1941 he had been Governor of
the Fukien Province on the mainland and, after a criminal record of
economic ruin and bloodshed, was expelled. Yet the methods which
had produced disaster in Fukien were the same ones that he introduced
in Formosa. They, of course, had the big advantage that they were very
71
lucrative for the officials, as was soon found in Formosa. The
Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek were fully informed by competent
neutral observers of what was going on in the rebellion and received
first news from this source within three days of its commencement.
Still Chen Yi was allowed to pursue his bloodthirsty course, and it was
not till two months later that he was removed from office, by which
time he had done irreparable damage to the relations between the
Formosans and the mainland Chinese. It will be noted that Mr. Chang
broadcast that they did not wish to secede from the mainland, but by
the time the rebellion had been quelled the Formosans had entirely
changed their ideas. They realised that no freedom, social, economic or
spiritual, would be obtained at the hands of the Chinese.
72
73
CHAPTER XI
APPORTIONING THE BLAME
A rebellion is, of course, the result of violently conflicting aims
and the Formosans, as has already been mentioned, made their objects
quite clear during the rebellion. These were given in detail by Mr.
Chang, President of the Political League, when broadcasting from the
Taipei radio station on March 5th. He said that there was no attempt to
change from the Chinese Government but only from their methods of
governing, and maintained (1)
The responsibility for the trouble was the Government's.
(2) Half the Government Department heads should be Formosans.
(3) The Trade Bureau and the Monopoly Bureau should be abolished.
(4) In taking over factories, responsible position should be given to
Formosans who had the qualifications.
(5) The mayor and city councillors should be elected by the people.
(The mayor, particularly, was a Government nominee, frequently
having a military background, and possessed full powers of veto).
(6) Freedom of speech, discussion, publication, assembly and
organisation of parties were their right.
(7) The Government should guarantee the people's lives, property and
rights.
On the other hand, on March 19th or 20th 1947, the Formosan
Provincial Government newspaper “Hsin Sheng” published an editorial
entitled, “Who are the Criminals”, as follows:
“(1) Industrialists who co-operated with Japan still dream that Formosa
should go back to Japan so that they could regain prosperity under
Japanese rule. But the present Government is not going to allow
middle-men to make profits. The profits should be for the country.
The industrialists therefore agitated the young people to rebel
against the government.
74
(2) The leaders of the Formosan Political Promotion Association,
because they have political ambitions, and have attacked the
Government from every angle in the past. This trend has led the
young people to revolt.
(3) Newspapermen who stir up the students and have opposed the
privilege of freedom of speech and expression of thought in
attacking the Government frequently.
These three groups are responsible for this incident. In the past the
Chinese Government was too generous to the people and, since
this incident is a well-planned revolt against the nation, these
people will be punished according to the law. Good people should
not worry about their lives. The Government will protect them
and the soldiers are sent over here to do so.”
To anyone not familiar with the background, and unaware of the
real facts the Government statements might appear reasonable enough,
but UNRRA officials had long learned to take Chinese official
publications with several grains of salt. Some had found that the
opposite to the published statements was frequently more correct.
As an example of the liberties with what Westerners call “truth”
may be quoted the experience of an UNRRA official who visited the
office of a Government Department and found that the person he was to
see was, at the time of the visit, preparing a report for the Department
to present to General Wedemeyer who was coming to Formosa very
shortly afterward. The UNRRA official happened to see the report on
the desk and, as it concerned work in which he was co-operating with
the Government, he examined it more closely. He found that much of
the report was taken up with describing, as actual accomplishments,
plans which would really take another year to develop. So he pointed it
out to the Government official saying, “You state we have done all that,
but we haven't. They are only proposals.”
He was amazed to receive the reply, “Yes, that is so, but what
difference does it make?”
Lest anyone might believe that the Chinese had thus
successfully misled General Wedemeyer, Americans in Formosa who
met him were confident that, as they put it, “he knew the score”.
There therefore is much more in the “Hsin Sheng” editorial than
appears on the surface. The most outstanding point is that the three
75
groups mentioned were the groups which, for various reasons, the
Government officials would like to liquidate, namely, the industrialists,
the Formosan political Promotion Association and newspapermen. In
Japanese times, private industry was frequently profitable, but under
the Chinese it is slowly dying. The immediate reasons have already
been given in previous chapters. But the decay arises mainly from
restrictive regulations, and I do not think I am unfair in suggesting that,
when the Formosan industrialists are finally forced to give up the
struggle, their industries may be bought by the Chinese officials on
Chinese terms. The officials could then arrange among themselves to
have the restricting regulations removed and private industry would
flourish once more - in Chinese hands, and all done very legally. On
the other hand, should my suggestion not be correct, it works out
almost as well for the officials to have industry, which was previously
in private hands, turn into Government channels. The opportunities for
getting rich from the extra “squeeze” that could be obtained, could be
as great as if the officials owned their own private companies.
But the remaining part of the editorial paragraph relating to
private industry the Formosans seemed to consider as merely childish
bluff. It was simply farcical for the Government to claim openly that
the profits should be for the country when shiploads of rice, coal and
sugar were going to the mainland, and shiploads of salt to Japan, but no
money nor goods were coming back in return to Formosa: but to say
that the profits should be for the country was good window-dressing
which impressed those ignorant of the facts. And the industrialists,
instead of stirring up young people to rebel, were largely against the
rebellion. They were too practical and hardheaded not to realise that it
had no chance as soon as reinforcements arrived from the mainland;
and they knew, too, that there was a danger of their property being
confiscated, or even their lives lost, in the lawlessness that
characterized such times.
From the Chinese officials' point of view, then, the smearing of
industrialists could lead to very profitable business.
With regard to the second-numbered paragraph of the editorial,
the Formosan Political Promotion Association was formed to educate
the young people in the new Constitution and to train them to be ready
for democratic government which was promised when the Constitution
was proclaimed in October 1947. Apparently Chen Yi saw the dangers
he would have to face if the Formosans were able to establish a
democratic form of government. Therefore, on January 10, 1947, he
announced that Formosans were too retarded politically to enjoy its full
76
benefits before 1950. My own opinion is that Formosans are much
more politically advanced in general than the Chinese and have a
consciousness of and consideration for public welfare, of which I saw
very little evidence in China proper. A shrewd old political campaigner
like Chen Yi, therefore, was fully aware of the dangers that could
threaten his totalitarian Government from a strong Formosan Political
Promotion Association, and the rebellion gave him the opportunity that
he was looking for to remove potential political trouble.
The same remarks refer in general to newspapermen, who, right
from the commencement, have the Chinese trouble. Such a corrupt
Government could not stand the searchlight of public criticism on their
actions, and the rebellion was again most useful.
In fact, the rebellion offered such golden opportunities of
tightening Chen Yi's stranglehold on the Island that it suggests that the
rebellion was really desired by Chen Yi and his henchmen. After he
took over, Formosan history was just a repetition of Fukien history.
Formosa had the same kind of organisations which were used to bleed
Fukien. True, Chen Yi was finally expelled from Fukien but, profiting
from past experience, he probably had plans to prevent that happening
in Formosa. The fact that it took two months of strong public protests
before he was removed, indicated that he must have had considerable
support in the Kuomintang, even though he was responsible for “the
greatest atrocity of the post-war world”.
Neutral observers have agreed that the Japanese have turned to
the original Chinese stock, which they took over in Formosa, into a
race superior to the mainland Chinese and, as has been indicated, the
Formosans did not take the plundering tactics of the Chinese in a
submissive spirit. To goad the Formosans to rebel, then, would be the
first stage in reducing them to serfdom, when the rich Island of
Formosa could be plundered at will to make huge fortunes and
luxurious livings in the “beautiful isle”.
Against my suggestion it may be argued that, if Chen Yi had
entertained such ideas, he would not have been caught napping and had
to wait for reinforcements from the mainland before quelling the
rebellion. But he may have misjudged the courage of the Formosans
and the cowardice of his own soldiers. Certainly there was no lack of
soldiers on the Island with modern equipment, and the place bristled
with police of one kind or another, armed with automatics, even before
the rebellion. For instance, there were regularly from ten to twelve
armed policemen on duty on the main platform on the Taipei railway
77
station. Furthermore, he may have under estimated the fighting spirit
and temper of the Formosans. The event might have arrived a little
quicker than he had anticipated. To anyone knowing the conditions in
Formosa in the beginning of 1947, it was obvious that the whole policy
of the Government would produce serious trouble, but not many
anticipated that it would come so quickly. In discussing the position in
January, I myself ventured the opinion that there might be a rebellion
before the year was out.
In support of my contention that it was the considered policy of
Chen Yi to goad the Formosans into rebellion, may also be quoted the
treatment of the Formosan leaders, irrespective of their actions in the
rebellion. I have already drawn attention to the systematic liquidation
of leaders, a process which was continued into the schools, and so
many students disappeared that even the guiltless were frightened to
continue their studies.
Early in May 1947, in the course of my duties, I had to report
on the technical equipment of the Formosan University at Taipei. A
remarkable thing about my visit to the University, which occupied a
whole day, was that although I was told, and given figures to
substantiate, that the total number of students attending was 2,000, the
grounds and buildings had a completely deserted appearance, with very
few students to be seen either in the buildings or outside. When I
inquired from the authorities where the 2,000 students were, I received
the explanation that they were scattered over the various buildings and,
of course, all did not come to University at the same time. Formosans,
however, convinced me that the situation was evidence of the terrorism
which was going on among the students.
But there was one dastardly liquidation of a leader which
deserves much publicity. The facts are irrefutable. At Honglim, on the
East Coast of Formosa, there was a doctor named Tiu Chit-Liong. He
was an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Honglim, and in 1946 was
the representative for Formosa to the National Government in Nanking.
He was a prominent leader on the East Coast. He had been the village
Chairman (Mayor) and an outspoken advocate of justice and right.
Among other things he had inquired about the appropriation of funds at
the Prefectural Government, when smaller amounts were received than
had been granted. Such inquiries, of course, were not welcomed by
officials. He had three sons. Two had recently finished at the medical
school and the third had been a medical officer for the Chinese Army
on the mainland, but none of them had anything to do with the
rebellion. Nevertheless, one night the father and two sons were taken
78
out of their houses by military police and shot. Their bodies were
found a couple of days later in a graveyard. The third son was able to
prove by his Army certificate that he had been a medical officer for the
Chinese Army, so his life was spared, but he was put in prison, and
when I heard the story had been there for two months, the authorities
being afraid to let him out on account of the trouble he might cause. I
was told people from one end of the East Coast to the other wept when
they heard of Tiu Chit-Liong's murder.
But what did that matter, when a leaderless Formosa could be
much more easily plundered!
79
CHAPTER XII
THE NEW DEAL
When Chen Yi was finally removed, the new Governor, Dr.
Wei Tao-ming, former Chinese Ambassador to Washington, gave
promise of better things. The National Government at Nanking had
had a thorough report of the rebellion made out by the Minister of
National Defense, General Pai Chung-Hsi, and Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-Shek had given a blanket approval to recommendations made by
the General.
Published statements on April 26th indicated that Dr. Wei's
administration policy would hinge on co-operation between the
mainland Chinese and the Formosans. The Monopoly and Trade
Bureaus were to be abolished “to prevent capitalistic exploitation and
manipulation of local productive enterprises”. At the same time, in
order to improve Formosa's economic conditions, Formosans were to
be encouraged to form corporations in industrial enterprises.
The Island's agriculture was also to be rehabilitated and public
land was to be distributed among Formosan farmers. Steps were to be
taken to relieve unemployment.
About the same time Formosan delegates in Nanking submitted
to general Wei a long list of recommendations for a new deal and this
included (1)
To cease the purge in Formosa.
(2) To release all arrested persons.
(3) To dismiss all officials appointed by Governor-General Chen Yi,
regardless of whether they were Formosans or mainland Chinese.
(4) To form a Committee of Investigation on the reason for the riots.
(5) To lift the ban on the press.
In Formosa the Formosans looked upon the promises of Dr Wei
as the usual Chinese window-dressing. They pointed out that, even
80
with the best will in the world, Dr. Wei had the odds very much against
him. The chief difficulty would come from the Chinese bureaucrats in
Formosa who had been waxing fat under the old regime. The
Formosan delegates were really being realistic when they asked for a
clean sweep of Chen Yi's appointees. No other jobs in China could be
as lucrative as those connected with the Island's economy. The
abolition of the Monopoly and Trade Bureaus would throw many of
them out of work, and they would put up a strong opposition to resist
any drastic attempts that Dr. Wei might make in this direction. The
introduction of Formosans to responsible posts would reduce the
chances of re-employment for these displaced officials and it is
understandable that they would bring all the pressure possible to
prevent any drastic change being made. In fact, it has been suggested
that some may even be expected to take active steps to sabotage his
administration. Unfortunately, my connection with Formosa practically
ceased about mid-October, by which time the new administration had
not produced any very striking changes. When it was pointed out to
Formosans that there were now Formosans in responsible offices, they
countered with the statement that, although that was correct, many of
them had lived so long on the mainland as to be almost entirely
mainland Chinese in their outlook. They were also willing to admit
that useful reorganisation was being carried out at top levels, but the
old injustices inherent in the Chinese system of government by
exploitation of the governed still remained. Life was still insecure.
They were still bullied and harassed by officials. Even as late as
October 1 had an example of this. I had occasion to inspect lumber
equipment in the mountainous district in the interior, and our return
back to the town was compelled to take place much later than expected,
so that a quarter-past midnight found us approaching a large bridge.
On the side of the approach we noticed several lorries drawn up, but
continued on our way. Near the bridge we were stopped by some
soldiers who adopted a very truculent attitude, which was not mollified
when my interpreter explained that we were on Government business.
Considerable haranguing went on, and it appeared at one stage as
though we were going to be forcibly pulled from our vehicle.
However, my interpreter recognized the insignia of the soldiers and
informed them that he knew their Commanding Officer, giving the
Officer's name. The effect was magical. Bows, apologies and
ingratiating smiles immediately replaced the hostile, aggressive
attitude, and we were permitted to continue our journey home.
Apparently the reason for stopping us was that no traffic was allowed
to pass over that bridge after midnight. The local opinion was that the
authorities were afraid of gun-running.
81
Right until the time that I left, the people were roughly pushed
and shoved by the police, especially in queues at the railway station
barriers. There was no discrimination in the rough handling, in age or
sex. People complained they were never treated so badly, even under
the Japanese.
Similarly, even as late as June a hotel in which I was staying
was literally broken into by the police at three o'clock one morning.
True, they knocked violently once and the proprietor called down. But
they were too impatient to await his arrival and broke the door down
and noisily, with shouts and tramping, searched all the rooms but mine.
Apparently it was just a routine inspection of the hotel, still looking for
rebels.
At an earlier date I had been awakened in an hotel at the early
hours of the morning and had been asked to show my credentials. But I
could understand that, as it was not long after the rebellion.
At the end of August, too, I was staying with two other UNRRA
officials in Taichu and we were subject to considerable annoyances by
the police. So much so that we complained to the Mayor. After
apologizing, he explained that there was a report that there were three
Communists in the Island disguised as a professor and two students,
and it was thought that I was the professor and my companions the
students.
The temper of the people has not been changed. Whether Dr.
Wei will be successful still remains to be seen, but the people are in no
mood for half measures. They want democracy. They want to govern
themselves. They want justice. In fact, they want what we have come
to call “the four freedoms”.
82
83
CHAPTER XIII
CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES
There have been three missionary activities operating in the
Island, one of which originated from the Presbyterian Church in
Canada, another from Presbyterians in England, and one from the
Roman Catholic Church. All three were running on similar lines evangelism,
schools, medical services - and all three were meeting with
a measure of success. I regret that I am not competent to speak on the
activities of the Roman Catholic Church, my contact with the
Presbyterian activities being much greater, partly because I have had a
Presbyterian upbringing and much more strongly because my
interpreter for some considerable time was the son of a Christian
Formosan and most of the family have close ties with the Christian
church. This interpreter himself, after receiving training in Japan, had
graduated as a Doctor of Divinity in America and had done work in a
Japanese church there. Furthermore, UNRRA had close contacts with
the missionary activities on the Island. It appears that the Japanese
opposed the work of the churches during the war and that they
struggled on with considerable difficulty. The war, and particularly the
bombing phase of it towards the finish, destroyed much church
property, in addition of course to private property, and the conclusion
of the war found the churches with property damaged to a greater or
lesser extent, depleted numbers and reduced financial resources. They,
of course, suffered the same difficulties of rehabilitation as the rest of
the community: shortage of building material, high costs and inflated
money. Churches, in the true Christian spirit, however, were also
mindful of the difficulties of their neighbours and made valiant efforts
to help them. The activities of the Presbyterian churches were
strengthened by fusion of the two original divisions into “The
Formosan Presbyterian Church”.
But one unexpected development, which could be an enormous
source of strength to Christianity on the Island, arose as a direct result
of the war. Among the Formosan conscripts that the Japanese sent
down to oppose the Americans in the Island fighting in the South Seas,
were aborigines from the central mountain ranges. The Japanese
propaganda had persuaded them that Westerners were barbarians who
tortured their prisoners and cruelly put them to death, sometimes even
84
resorting to cannibalism. The aborigines, particularly, seemed to have
believed this, because it was in line with their tradition. Their surprised
feelings can well be imagined when they found, on being wounded and
captured by the Americans, that they received exactly the same
treatment as the American soldiers. This caused them considerable
surprise, not to mention relief, and when convalescing they had
numerous discussions among themselves as to why it was that
Americans treated their prisoners like this. They ultimately came to the
conclusion that it was due to their religion, and they returned to their
homes after the war convinced that Christianity was a “good thing”, an
opinion in which their chiefs also agreed. They knew that Christians
had a meeting place called a “church”, and so they built churches. But
how would they become Christians? The surprise of a missionary from
Taipei may well be imagined when, on approaching the foothills, he
was received by a chief who had come down from the mountains with
six hundred men to ask him to come and tell them about Christianity.
This ferment is apparently going on among all the aborigines.
Nevertheless, what churches there are, are used to their fullest
extent. For instance, in Karenko, which is the centre of a large
aboriginal population, there were at least four services on a Sunday, not
to mention Sunday schools. On my first visit to Karenko I went to this
church, led by a servant from the hotel, and accompanied by a nonChristian
engineer as interpreter. It was evident that the people of
Karenko had not seen many Westerners before, because, as we
proceeded on our way to church, the numbers of people, mainly
children, who followed us kept increasing. We were better than a
Salvation Army band in attracting the people to the church, which was
soon packed to the doors. But not only that - the windows, which were
thrown wide open, were full of the faces of people peering in.
The services in Formosa are interesting from the point of view
that the most popular hymns are all the old Moody and Sankey, Torrey
and Alexander types. Fortunately there is a Romanized form of the
written Formosan language, and it is easy for a Westerner to produce
the necessary sounds from the print and, if he is familiar with the tunes,
to join in the singing, although the meaning of the words may be
unknown. The address at Karenko that particular day was appropriate
to that situation. When I asked my interpreter what the subject of the
sermon was, he said, “The rice is now ready for cutting, but where are
the workers?” Obviously, his translation of “the fields are ripe to
harvest but where are the reapers?” - and that text fairly well explains
the situation as far as the Presbyterian churches in Formosa are
concerned.
85
One minister explained to me that immediately after the war
they were in rather a low condition in every way, but certain UNRRA
personnel had inspired them and they had taken new courage and faith
to perform important work that they believed they had to do in
Formosa. As an instance of the influence which might be exerted by
UNRRA officials, this event may be quoted:
While waiting for a train at Karenko an UNRRA official and his
interpreter met a very devout Christian, a Formosan, whom the
interpreter knew. Explanations followed as to the work of UNRRA,
particularly of that of the official, together with his personal
characteristics, such as to whether he was a Christian. The train
happened to be crowded and, at a small station further down the line, a
young mother entered with a young baby strapped on her back, a small
child holding one hand and a bundle in the other. She stood wearily
near the UNRRA official, - never expecting to receive a seat.
However, it was too much for the official and he offered her his. In
spite of her refusal, he insisted and she eventually accepted. About the
same time the Formosan whom the official had met on the station, and
who was also standing nearby, began to address the carriage and
received an attentive hearing for the duration of his talk, which lasted
over twenty minutes. At the conclusion, the official remarked to his
interpreter, “He got a very good hearing”, to which the interpreter
agreed; and when the official asked what it was about, he was amazed
to receive the very laconic reply, “You.”
On receiving a request for more details, the interpreter replied
that this was the gist of the address.
“You were a man from UNRRA, the organisation that was
responsible for the relief goods that had been received in the district.
You were a sincere Christian and were their guest, and had given your
seat to a woman while they, your hosts, had all sat down and let her
stand. The Japanese had told them that your people were barbarians,
savages and cannibals. Your act was not the act of a barbarian. It was
the act of a kindly people. Look at your clothes. They were better than
any Formosans wore. They certainly were not the clothes of a
barbarian. You belonged to a people who invented the marvellous
wireless. Why had you come, and why had you been sent with all the
food and clothes and fertilizer to help them? It was because you were a
Christian and these were the things Christians did - and then he gave a
very good sermon about Christianity. He made the most of the
opportunity you gave him.”
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Much of the Christian work in Formosa frequently centred
round the Y.M.C.A. and it was a striking sight, amid all the
hieroglyphics used for various purposes on the streets, to see standing
out the capital letters, “Y.M.C.A.”. An account has already been given
of the co-operation between the Y.M.C.A. and the Church in the
Pescadores, and similar co-operation exists in other parts, particularly
in Taipei, where, for some considerable time, Christian church services
were held in Mandarin in the Y.M.C.A., till the accommodation
became too small. The services then were removed to a church which
had been partially abandoned. In these particular services the
congregation consisted very largely of mainland Chinese, and I often
wondered whether their difficulties in lining up their practices on weekdays
with their profession on Sundays, were any greater than those of
Westerners. An illustration of this occurred at a dinner when a young
Chinese noticed that I was not drinking the sake and the beer which had
been liberally pressed upon me. He asked if I was teetotal and I replied
that I practically was. He said, “Then you must be a Christian”, to
which I agreed. He then added, “And so am I - London missionary but
I'm afraid I'm not a very good one because I drink and also smoke”.
I do not think that this reflects the current idea of the qualifications for
a Christian; but ministers have told me that in Formosa they have felt,
and do feel, very cut off from overseas ideas. There is also evidence
that the Provincial Government is not taking too kindly to Christianity,
particularly when a suggestion was received about July 1947, that it
would be better if no more church services were held in English in
Taipei. In view of the disturbed state of the Island, it was considered
expedient to accede to this request.
There are some who decry the work of missionaries, but I find
myself disagreeing with this attitude. Nevertheless, I feel that in this
day of rapid communication something more could be done than
merely sending persons to persuade people into the Kingdom of
Heaven - that some means, or some scheme, could be devised whereby
a greater exchange of ideas on Christian topics would be mutually
advantageous. For instance, if in the struggle to maintain their religious
faith, Formosan Christians felt that they had the personal and active
support of Christians, say in the Pacific area, it would greatly
strengthen them. This could be accomplished by personal
correspondence between Formosans and Westerners. After all, it was
through the personal approach that early Christianity spread.
At present the Formosans feel they are battling against great
difficulties - difficulties which are partly due to the conditions under
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which they live and partly due to the intellectual isolation of Formosa
from the Western world, the stronghold of Christianity being at present
in the Western world. The language difficulty is not so great as it
seems, as English is a necessary subject for anyone requiring an
advanced education, and is a subject taught in the middle schools.
Such a scheme as I suggest would not be difficult for Englishspeaking
nations. “The rice is now ready for cutting, but where are the
workers?”
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CHAPTER XIV
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
In August 1945, President Chiang Kai-shek addressed a joint
session of the Supreme National Defense Council and the Kuomintang
Central Executive Committee on the subject of China's Foreign Policy.
Discussing the Kuomintang Principle of Nationalism, he said:
“If frontier racial groups situated in the regions outside the
Provinces have the capacity for self-government and a strong
determination to attain independence - and are politically and
economically ready for both - our Government should, in an friendly
spirit, voluntarily help them to realise their freedom and forever treat
them as brotherly nations and as equals of China. We should entertain
no ill-will or prejudices against them because of their choice to leave
the Mother country.”
“We should accord the large and small racial groups inside the
provinces legal and political equality and unhindered economic and
religious freedom, so that a warm community spirit and friendly
collaboration may develop among all the groups.”
In this extract there are three words, “should”, and it is difficult
to decide whether the President meant them to express a duty or an
intention. However, ultimately to a man of integrity a duty becomes an
intention, and there is therefore no reason to split hairs on the meaning.
The fact is evident that Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang know
what is their duty when racial groups conform to all the “ifs”, viz., a
capacity for self-government, a determination to attain independence,
and are politically and economically ready.
The Formosans have exhibited all these qualifications and have
brought them to the notice of Chiang Kai-shek. But, even if they had
heard about this speech, they (like anyone else who was familiar with
Chinese speeches) would not be impressed by it. They now have a
keen appreciation of what that kind of speech is worth from that
quarter.
They can see very little evidence of improvements in their
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conditions brought about by Dr. Wei and his “new deal”. So far his
promises have not been of much avail. The descent into poverty,
squalor, starvation and serfdom is not being arrested, and the reasons
are quite evident. They are fundamental in the Chinese system of
government.
Much springs from the rapacity of the officials who, operating
the system of “squeeze”, are able to amass large fortunes. It is true that
officials are sometimes punished for “squeezing”, but the cynical say
that that is because they have not given sufficient to the “higher-ups” as
their share. There are, of course, honest officials who endeavour to live
without extorting “squeeze”, but as those who “squeeze” are so much
more numerous, the honest make little difference to the general effect
of the system on the economy of the Island. For instance, export and
import trade can be carried out within limits, but success or failure is
largely determined by the amount of “squeeze” disbursed. Naturally
the importer, say, recoups his “squeeze” payments by increasing the
selling price of his goods. This, of course, means that the cost of the
article to the consumer is increased and the general effect is to increase
the cost of living. It is believed that “squeeze” has to be paid out to so
many customs and harbour officials, that this is the chief reason why it
requires 180-200 yen to buy in the Pescadores what 100 yen will buy
on the main island of Formosa. In the Japanese time there was no
difference in the purchasing power of money in the two places.
The following true story, although taking place in Shanghai, is
not without interest and illustrates the operation of “squeeze”. In a
hairdressing salon, a girl came in and introduced herself to the
proprietor as coming from the Bureau of Internal Affairs, and informed
him that he had not paid his income tax. The proprietor said that that
was quite correct, but since there were still some days left in which to
do so, he was waiting till he was not quite so busy. However, as he had
the money he said that he was quite willing to pay it then. The girl then
said that her boss was also quite willing to receive a present. When
asked what sort of a present, she replied, “Oh, anything above 25,000
dollars CNC.” When the proprietor replied that he had no intention of
giving a present, the girl pointed out that they would require his
business account books for examination, to which the proprietor replied
that he was quite willing to let them have the books as they were quite
in order. But the girl then explained that there was such a lot of paper
in their office that the books were liable to be lost, and then he would
be in trouble for not keeping proper books and, of course, his taxation
would be much heavier because he could not prove that the returns he
made were correct. The proprietor saw the force of the argument but,
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unfortunately for him, the matter was not settled until he had paid as a
present from twenty-five to thirty percent of his gross profit.
Intelligent Formosans are also well aware of the harmful effect
the Government monopolies exercise on the industries of the Island. I
have already quoted the excessive charges asked for the transport of
phosphatic rock by a Government monopoly, the China Steam
Navigation Company. Industry is also greatly affected by the system of
Nepotism whereby relatives and friends are given lucrative jobs, often
with little or no qualifications for the positions. That much damage can
be done to an organisation by an incompetent in an important position
is readily apparent. Usually the superior who provides the position for
the incompetent person has enough influence to maintain him in that
position, no matter how much harm is done, and the organisation
stumbles along as best it can under the load the incompetent imposes
on it. If the incompetent has no responsibility, the good salary (or the
results of “squeeze”) still imposes an extra charge on industry, for
which the consumer has to pay.
Instances have already been given of how “squeeze” prevents
justice being done and the Formosans have come to see that they will
not receive justice at the hands of the Chinese. I have already pointed
out that, harsh as the Japanese regime had been, they lived in
comparative security; but now there was no such thing as security and
no-one knows when police of some kind or other will make false
accusations, and only the payments of “squeeze” will keep them out of
jail.
But the greatest difficulty for the Chinese in the future is the
bitterness and hatred that they have piled up against themselves owing
to the stupid and brutal way they have dealt with many innocent people.
The Formosans are an industrious, hardworking race and have shown
that they will fight for their rights and justice, and knowing this, some
neutral observers have been forecasting another rebellion. The Chinese
broke the spiritual link which bound the Formosans to the Motherland
directly after the war, and the Formosans will make every effort to
break all the other ties that bind them to the mainland.
An interesting point about all this is that China at present is only
the “military occupying power”, the “Big Four” having decided at the
Cairo Conference that, to encourage China to stay in the war against
Japan, Formosa should be returned to her. Therefore, by international
law, the island does not legally belong to China - yet - not until the
Peace Treaty is signed with Japan.
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As the Formosans are a highly intelligent people, with a little
initial help from the United Nations they would be capable of
governing themselves. Some months before the rebellion Formosans
were discussing how they could obtain justice at the hands of the
United Nations. They knew of the Atlantic Charter and the “Four
Freedoms”, and they believed that if they could only have their case
brought before an international court, the inequities of the Chinese
would be exposed to the world, and would demonstrate clearly that the
Chinese were unfit to govern Formosa. The Formosans have now been
freed from the Japanese yoke and, instead of helping them in their
newly-found freedom, their Motherland has imposed on them another
yoke too heavy to be borne. Here, then, is a free people wanting to
exercise the right of free peoples to self-government. And what are
their chances of getting it?
At the present moment the evils which I have shown as being so
extensive in Formosa are also undermining China on the mainland.
The Army is honey-combed with “squeeze” and graft so that the
fighting soldier is underfed, uncared-for and cowed, while his officers
grow fat. To make up his shortages, he has to steal and plunder and his
morale is so low that frequently when he meets well-trained,
disciplined opponents he is beaten almost before he commences
fighting; that is, if he has not already run away at the approach of
danger.
Similarly their governing, economic and social systems are full
of corruption and the operation of these systems in Formosa is really a
reflection of the conditions on the mainland. It will be only a matter of
time before the sturdy foundations laid by the Japanese will be in the
same crumbling conditions as those on the mainland. Chiang Kaishek's
China is collapsing through her own rottenness.
The United States, in its war against communism, is spending
much money to bolster up the struggle of Nationalist China against the
Chinese Communists. It appears to me that it can save itself the
trouble. Nothing short of a revolution in the Nationalist ranks - capable
of sweeping away all its evils - would avail. It is significant that there
was such delay before General Wedemeyer's report was published,
especially seeing he is reputed “to know the score”. The United States
is on the horns of a dilemma. It is upholding a rotten institution which
is more and more losing the support of its own people. Yet to
withdraw the kind of support which is now being given would mean
victory for the Communists in China. The solution, as I see it, is at the
least for the United States to interfere in China to such an extent as to
93
revolutionise the Army and put it on a well-disciplined basis. Another
important step would be to insist that in return for assistance, the
National Government allow the growth of an opposition party. Recent
events have shown that, as soon as a definite opposition party appears,
it is declared illegal and its leaders removed. The world is now seeing
the democratic United States supporting the totalitarian state of China.
Although it is beyond the intended scope of this chapter, I feel that
further comments are necessary in support of the above remarks, as
China has recently blazoned to the world that she has had her first
democratic elections. I have already tried to indicate just how much
such statements may be worth, and the following story from a
Westerner who saw these elections carried out, illustrates my point.
The entrance to a particular polling booth which the Westerner saw was
guarded by two soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets. The “voter”, on
entering the booth, was handed a voting slip which was taken from him
by an official who, without consulting the voter, put a Chinese
character in each of three circles printed on the paper, evidently for that
purpose. The paper was again handed to the voter, who placed it in a
ballot box and thus recorded his vote.
At the moment, paradoxical though it may seem, the Nationalist
Army is one of the best agencies for extending the power of the
Communists. The Army, of course, “lives off the land”, mainly by
plundering and robbing but with rape and murder added to these. The
more disciplined armies of the Communists also “live off the land” but
endeavour not to antagonize the inhabitants. Their agents and fifthcolumnists
also promise better things in the way of dispossessing
absentee landlords and cancelling debts and mortgages. So, naturally,
the inhabitants lean towards the Communists. It seems to me that if
things continue as they are at present, China under the Kuomintang is
doomed. The Formosans recognize this, and some of them think that
this may be their opportunity.
The rebellion has frequently been attributed by the Chinese to
the work of the Communists. As far as my knowledge extends,
Westerners on the Island at the time found no evidence of this, but the
way things are now the Island is ripe for communism. Nor would it be
difficult for Communists, through for instance, paying sufficient
“squeeze” to corrupt officials, to get a useful supply of arms and
ammunition into the Island. It is questionable, however, whether the
decline has yet gone so far for the Island to give wholehearted support
to communism. There are, of course, sections of the population whose
possessions would be taken from them under communism, but as they
are now in the process of losing them to the Chinese, it will not be long
94
before they have little more to lose, and will therefore become typical
candidates for the Communist Party. I believe this is a real danger and
cannot be avoided without radical changes taking place in the set-up of
Formosa. I feel that the Chinese Government is too corrupt and
impotent to bring about the widespread reforms which are necessary.
The only gleam of light on the horizon (and it is only a gleam and just
on the horizon) is the spread of Christianity. This makes it all the more
necessary that the Christian influences at work in Formosa should have
the fullest support. To thorough-going Christians I feel apologetic in
making such a statement, for I fully realise that there are much more
cogent arguments for the spreading of the Kingdom of God in Formosa,
but it may help to waken those less aware of the justifiable claims of
Christianity, to its possibilities in Formosa. To overcome evil with
good would, of course, be in the direct line of Christ's teaching. But,
although it is likely to receive assent as a long-term policy, its
advantages as a short-term policy may not be generally apparent in this
particular situation.
There have been suggestions that the Chinese brand of
communism is different from that of Russia. Whether that is so or not
does not matter, because just as soon as Russia considers the time is
ripe to absorb Chinese communism into her system, then it will be
done. Even if the Chinese did have their own brand, they would not be
strong enough to withstand Russian pressure.
There is, therefore, a real danger of Formosa becoming a
communist stronghold, a situation which would have serious
implementations in the Pacific. Japan fully recognized the strategic
value of Formosa. With its naval bases at Keelung, Takao and the
Pescadores, and its large aerodromes scattered in various parts of the
Island, it could dominate the approaches to China and Japan. Few
people realise that Formosa is only about fourteen or fifteen flying
hours from Australia. In time of war and in peacetime, Formosa could
greatly assist the southward infiltration of communism, and it would
thus largely nullify any advantage the Philippines and Japan might have
as bulwark against communism.
It seems necessary, then, that the future of Formosa should be
reconsidered at the conferences about to take place in formulating the
Peace Treaty with Japan. Any suggestion that revision of its status was
being considered would greatly hearten the Formosans and
consequently hold off, or at least slow down, communistic influences.
The Formosans are a kindly and generous people at heart who have,
through the work of UNRRA and other agencies, formed a very
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favourable opinion of Western peoples and entertain very friendly
feelings towards them. In my movements round the Island I had
frequent evidence of this, and is well illustrated by the following
incident. Walking with my interpreter to our hotel, we were followed
by two schoolgirls about eleven years of age, who walked close behind
us. After a few minutes one of them asked, “Are you the men
responsible for the UNRRA supplies we have received?”
My interpreter replied, “This man is representing UNRRA,”
whereupon she spoke to my interpreter, who translated as follows:
“Please express the very deep gratitude of my people to him, to
tell to UNRRA for all the good things UNRRA has given us”.
We then asked, “What good things?” and received the reply
“Fertiliser.”
When we inquired if that was all, she said, “No. We have
received cloth, and milk for the children”, and she again expressed her
thanks. My interpreter said that he had never met anyone so openly
grateful.
The following notes, dated 29th May 1947, are also taken from
my “Work Journal” and, although referring to the East Coast, are in
general typical of the whole Island:
“All along the East Coast I am receiving expressions of
gratitude and thanks from various prominent men in towns and villages.
UNRRA's work has made a deep impression on these people, whom
the Japanese had taught were wild barbarians and savages. To find that
their former enemies are considerate for their well-being, will play an
important influence in the thinking and opinions of these people in the
future.”
I am convinced we have established in this Island a reservoir of
goodwill towards the Western democracies, which, if used rightly, will
help to establish, at least, peace in the Pacific. Nevertheless, that
reservoir will be quickly emptied if the Formosans feel that the Western
democracies are going to abandon them to the suffering and serfdom
that they can see will be their lot under the Chinese Government. To
see, then, that justice is done to Formosa would entrench the people
firmly on the side of the Western democracies and, instead of Formosa
being a breach in the wall against communism, we could make it one of
our strongest bastions. Exactly what steps should be taken is rather
96
beyond my province, but those steps should ultimately lead to
democratic self-government for the Formosans - perhaps within a larger
federation. Now is the time when the Western democracies can make
an important and helpful friend or a dangerous enemy.
THE END