Q. and A.: Shawna Yang Ryan on the 1947 Incident That Shaped Taiwan’s Identity

I have not read this book in English but I have read lots of books published in Chinese about Green Island. During Prohibition period of US, law is not welcomed by citizens and criminals but who against it is illegal. This is the condition of Green Island during that war time. Green Island is a place for criminals (defined by law, directed by party) that included political prisoners and sometimes innocent people. Civil war of China, and Cold war, even Korea war, both contribute the story of Green Island. From a broader perspective, US and Japan were said involving in story not mentioned Communist China and Russia. This bloody history helps no one just as WWII for human beings. However, it is good to read "Green Island" for English speakers. Beware, read more Chinese books so you will not confuse by one story.

I have a long association with Taiwan going back to 1982. The mainlanders who came to Taiwan and many of their descendants (excepting the low rank soldiers) have lived the lives of rulers having the best jobs, amazing pensions and the like. Not surprisingly, with the DPP's comprehensive victory in the last election, many of these mainlanders have turned bitter and critical. Truly, even if Taiwan never returns to China, these people are free to return there. Do you think they will?

They didn't even talk the same language as the KMT retreaters, putting aside the Japanese language issue, see wilipedia on taiwanese.Hokkien

"After the handover of Taiwan to the Republic of China in 1945, there was brief cultural exchange with mainland China followed by further oppression. The Chinese Civil War resulted in another political separation when the Kuomintang government retreated to Taiwan following their defeat by the communists in 1949. The influx of two million soldiers and civilians caused the population of Taiwan to increase from 6 million to 8 million. The government subsequently promoted Mandarin and banned the public use of Taiwanese as part of a deliberate political repression, especially in schools and broadcast media. In 1964 use of Taiwanese in schools or official settings was forbidden,[21] and transgression in schools punished with beatings, fines and humiliation.[22]"

Not to mention the many other languages.

The 1947 “February 28 Incident” in Taiwan was truly a sad chapter which, to these days, has not been objectively studied. It was initially a small incident which led to a group of Taiwanese gangsters indiscriminately killing any Chinese mainlanders happened to be on the street. The “mass killing” of Chinese mainlanders (not just “protests”) quickly spread out to the whole island. The KMT General Chen Yi’s “an-eye-for-an-eye” style military retaliation was definitely a terrible mistake. He himself was later sentenced to death by Chiang Kai-shek for his intended defection to the CCP army. I was told by some Chinese mainlanders who survived that terrible incident, that some competing political entities, possibly Japanese collaborators, had played decisive roles with the intention to create chaos in Taiwan. They believe, otherwise the initial violence against Chinese mainlanders could not have spread out in an organized fashion so quickly. There were definitely many sides to this story.

Thank you for this excellent and informative interview. Ms. Yang-Ryan's book definitely looks like a story worth reading.

There's plenty of information for anyone who bothers to read it. Start with the widely known "Stilwell and the American Experience in China," (Tuchman, 1971) for an accurate read on Chiang Kai-shek, who deserves to be singled out for the most damaging and long-lasting effects of our support of dictators - Pahlavi, Batista, Marcos, Duvalier - in the name of anti-communism.
I look forward to reading Ms Yang Ryan's work for an unheard aspect of Taiwan's history and some much-needed nuance in our understanding of Asian affairs.

I grew up during the marshal law era in Taiwan. That era was also called "white terror" because the severe punishments for "subversive" speeches or writings, not unlikely the present day Communist China. After coming to America, many of us were "black listed" and prohibited from returning to Taiwan even to attend parents' funerals because of speaking out against KMT's brutal oppressive military rule; or even just join the "Taiwanese Associations" here in America. The "professional students" of KMT spied on other Taiwanese students on American campuses. All of these are being duplicated by the Chinese Coomunist Party now-a-days against their own people.
None of us could imagine a day when Taiwan would become free. It is just amazing and magical that Taiwan now is a free and vibrantly democratic. Now, if China would just stop threatening Taiwan.
Though I have not read the book, it sounds like a must read if one wants to understand Taiwan.

What the author chose not to tell us – local Taiwanese of Chinese heritage joined the Imperial Japanese Military in invading China in WW2, especially in the Massacre/Rape of Nanjing. They were allegiant to Japan, not China. Brother of Taiwan’s first elected president Lee Teng-hui is enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine along with 1000+ war criminals. Understandably, Kuomintang Chinese retaliated against these traitors upon their landing on the island. When colonial Japan failed to eradicate all Taiwan’s indigenous people through the use of mustard gas (first such use of chemical warfare in Asia), the colonial master resorted to divide-and-rule: treating the aborigines whom they call “raw barbarians” as savages. That made ethnic chinese on the island felt more superior and became loyal to their colonial master.

Ms. Ryan's book seems interesting and I look forward to reading it. But one wishes that the interviewer had engaged in more research regarding Taiwan and its relationship to the mainland during the period under discussion. Everything occurring there at that time must be observed through the lens of Mao's revolution, its powerful backing by the Soviet Union, and the desperate attempts of the Chinese Nationalists-- the Kuomintang-- to maintain the integrity of the Republic of China initiated by Sun Yat Sen in 1911. To further complicate the issue, the Cold War emerged simultaneously in 1947 as the US finally began to sense the global imperialist ambitions of Stalin in Asia and how he was supporting Mao in his fight with Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT. In this context, Taiwan and the native Taiwanese became unfortunate victims of the defeat of the KMT on the mainland as the island became the latter's refuge and last claim to represent "one China." A better question is to view this "2/28 incident" in today's context: are the Taiwanese better off now due to the KMT invasion or would they have prospered more under Mao who without doubt would have claimed Formosa for the Communists? Obviously it would have been best if the suspected resistors to the KMT were not imprisoned and killed wantonly. But to think, for example, that the island could have somehow become independent at that time and in that region is nonsensical. The 2/28 Incident did not happen in historical isolation.

My wife is Taiwanese — a descendant of Chinese farmers who emigrated to Taiwan (then called Formosa) sometime during the 18th century. The family mixed with the native austronesian population and so is racially mixed — as are probably most families in Taiwan. My wife's parents grew up during the time (1895-1945) when Taiwan was a model Japanese colony. Consequently, they always conversed in Japanese with old friends and never throughly mastered the Mandarin that the Kuomintang required my wife and her brothers to use when that generation attended school during the era of martial law (1949-1987). If foreigners understood that Taiwan has not been governed by China since 1894 (and was not well governed by China before then), then they might understand why many Taiwanese would like to see the world recognize Taiwan as an independent country.