ABSTRACT

The deadliness of nationalist repression was most clear to all on Formosa (Taiwan). China ceded Formosa to Japan after losing the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. At the end of the (Second) Sino-Japanese war in 1945, the nationalists occupied Formosa and set up an administration on the island. The nationalists acted as conquerors, and Formosans soon began to feel that life under the Japanese had been much better. They began to demonstrate, organize, and petition for better treatment and representation. Finally, in February 1947, after a demonstration had been fired on by police and mainland Chinese attacked by Formosans, General Chen promised reforms. Where nationalist Chinese armies were garrisoned or passed, villages and peasants in the field might suffer looting, burning, rape, and murder, often abetted if not condoned by their officers. A vastly greater democide involved the military's treatment or its conscripts during the Sino-Japanese War and the following civil war.