Allan J. Shackleton was a New Zealand officer with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration assigned to in Taiwan at the time. His eyewitness account of the massacre is an important piece in understanding modern Taiwan’s founding tragedy. Shackleton tried for years to get Formosa Calling published, but it was deemed too politically sensitive during the Cold War when “Free China” was an ally of the Western world. Finally, after Taiwan’s first democratic presidential election, a Taiwanese-American publisher approached Shackleton’s son to publish the book, and it first appeared in 1998, forty years after it was written.Camphor has also released the autobiography of independence stalwart Peng Min-min, A Taste of Freedom:
An astonishing life in the grip of historic events. Peng was born in the Japanese colony of Taiwan in 1923. While living in Japan he witnessed the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and on his return to Taiwan saw the corruption and brutality of the new Kuomintang government. He established an international reputation as a legal expert, something which probably saved him from a worse fate when he was imprisoned for sedition after printing a manifesto for a democratic Taiwan. Later released under house arrest, Peng fled the country under the nose of his guards and was granted asylum in Sweden. He later moved to the United States and, after the end of martial law, back to Taiwan where he stood in the first democratic election for president, in 1996. A gripping and well-written account of a turbulent life and turbulent times.Both these books should be considered must-haves.
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