Taiwan Confronts Its Past
Michael Rand Hoare probes the truth behind a little-known massacre which is reverberating in Taiwanese politics today.
When the Cairo Conference in November 1943 endorsed the return of Taiwan to China on the eventual defeat of the Japanese, none of the participants, perhaps least of all the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, seem to have foreseen the tragedy that the return of the 'beautiful island' to mainland government would create. Yet, within two years of the 1945 surrender many thousands of islanders were to be slaughtered by their fellow Chinese in a bloodbath that ranks high in the list of massacres which punctuate Asian history.
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