Taiwan's Own Holocaust Revisionists

One reason that 2-28 won't go away is because right-wing elements in the Chinese community that refuse to concede that the KMT government looted the island, tanked the economy, let famine and tropical diseases reappear, and then killed the Taiwanese when they naturally violently objected to this treatment. Yesterday the Taipei Times reported on group of right-wing nutcases who still insist that it was Japan that screwed things up:

A recent official report concluded that Chiang should bear responsibility for the incident, and on Monday President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) called Chiang the "true killer" in the violence.

But Academia Sinica fellows Chu Hung-yuan (朱浤源) and Huang Chang-chien (黃彰健) and four other academics called a press conference yesterday to challenge this portrayal of Chiang.

"The incident took place when Taiwan had just been handed over by Japan to China. As Japan was reluctant to give Taiwan over to China, it used economic measures to cause inflation and food shortages before it left," Chu said.

Chu said that Taiwan's economic situation -- which created resentment against the government from China -- was the result of Japan's premeditated economic attack on Taiwan.

The academics also criticized former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for saying that "government suppression was the main cause of the 228 Incident."

"What Ma said was contrary to the facts. The government had no choice but to send in the army to suppress the violence launched by the people," Huang said.

Yes, that's right. There are academics out there who argue that the KMT was the victim. Meanwhile former intellectual and current mainlander crackpot Li Ao said 800 people died because that's what Chen Yi, the corrupt and brutal governor of the island, had said in a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek:

In other developments, Independent Legislator Li Ao (李敖) told a press conference yesterday that the "sadness of the 228 Incident was created by politicians."

"The Democratic Progressive Party has been saying that tens of thousands of people died in the incident. Only about 800 people died at that time," he said.

He said the executive administrator of Taiwan at the time, Chen Yi (陳儀), had sent a confidential telegram to Chiang to say that the death toll in the incident was about 800.

These people are a sickness. Eyewitness accounts of the 2-28 massacre by US consul George Kerr and Allan Shackleton are online. Kerr's work is particularly powerful, for it discusses in full, knowledgeable, and minute measure the corruption, incompetence, and venality of the incoming party of thieves and looters:

By late 1946 an orderly import and export trade was no longer possible, the entire island economy lay at the mercy of newcomers who controlled the ports and were able to interpose regulations profoundly affecting the use of relief and rehabilitation supplies.

But where regulation was most needed, there was none; the Quarantine Services were neglected and the offices stripped of medical supplies and equipment. As the entire economy sickened, there was a general breakdown of the health and welfare services, most dramatically demonstrated when cholera and bubonic plague entered Formosa in epidemic proportions.

and more..........

In midyear 1946, four cases of bubonic plague were discovered at Tamsui and in the Hsinchu district. The victims had come in aboard Chinese junks and had not been quarantined.

The Formosan press broke into an uproar of protest; there had been no bubonic plague among the civil population for nearly thirty years. Here indeed was a threat, directly traceable to the collapse of the quarantine system so strictly enforced under Japanese administration. Houses which had sheltered the plague victims were burned to the ground. Some feeble steps were taken to reactivate quarantine services at the ports, but in these no one had confidence.

As summer approached cholera reappeared in Formosa. Within a few days it had spread beyond control in the southwest. It had not been known in epidemic proportions since 1919. The Director of Public Health made no move to recognize the threat, but UNRRA doctors and nurses, aided by CNRRA personnel, Formosan doctors and public health employees, promptly moved to Tainan and Kaohsiung, cut through extraordinary official red tape (deliberately spun out to embarrass them) and promptly reduced the death rate from 80 per cent to 29 per cent of all known cholera cases. After a long summer fight cool autumn weather brought relief, but by November 1 the UNRRA team had recorded 2690 cases, with 1460 dead.

2-28 commemorates and symbolizes not merely the thousands who were killed, but the Taiwanese experience of re-colonization, exploitation, and expropriation.

[Taiwan]