February 28th Incident
Directed by provincial governor Chen Yi and president,
Chiang Kai-shek, who was still in Nanjing directing the
nation and the Civil War in the Chinese mainland, thousands
of civilians were killed beginning on February 28, 1947.
A government commission was set up under the
administration of the pro-Taiwan independence president, Lee
Teng-hui, to determine the facts of situation. Using the
Civil registry set up during the Japanese administration,
which was acknowledged by all as very efficient, they
determined who were living at the time of the handover to
Chinese administration. The commission was given the power to
award to the family of anyone who died in the period of the
insurrection and the restoration of Nationalist government
rule, an amount of NT$6,000,000, about US$150,000. The
families did not have to prove that the death was related to
the above events. A total of 800 persons came forward to get
the awards for the people who died in the period. This award
was not designed to include any of the 1,000 mainlanders
estimated to have died in the uprising. The incident is one
of the most important events in Taiwan’s modern history and
was a critical impetus for the Taiwan independence
movement.
In 1945, following the surrender of Japan at the end of
World War II, the Allies handed administrative control of
Taiwan to the ROC, thus ending 50 years of Japanese colonial
rule. Local inhabitants became resentful of what they saw as
highhanded and frequently corrupt conduct on the part of the
KMT authorities, including arbitrary seizure of private
property, economic mismanagement, and exclusion from
political participation. The flashpoint came on February 27,
1947, in Taipei, when agents of the State Monopoly Bureau
struck a Taiwanese widow suspected of selling contraband
cigarettes. An officer then fired into a crowd of angry
bystanders, striking one man who died the next day. Soldiers
fired upon demonstrators the next day, after which a radio
station was seized by protesters and news of the revolt was
broadcast to the entire island. As the uprising spread, the
KMT""installed governor Chen Yi called for military
reinforcements, and the uprising was violently put down by
the National Revolutionary Army. Two years later for the
following 38 years, the island was placed under martial law
in a period known as the White Terror.
During the White Terror, the KMT persecuted perceived
political dissidents, and the incident was considered too
taboo to be discussed. President Lee Teng-hui became the
first president to discuss the incident publicly on its
anniversary in 1995. The event is now openly discussed and
details of the event have become the subject of government
and academic investigation.
