They are about the pillage: the 228 Incident & KMT properties

2012/02/28閱讀時間約 11 分鐘

They are about the pillage: the 228 Incident & KMT properties

1947, the year that 228 Incident occurred, was by all means the "hostile occupation period" of the Allies, which extended from the end of war to the entering into force of the treaty of peace, according to the US Military Codes as well as laws of war.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) and his subordinate General Chen Yi, the Administrator of Taiwan, were the proxy occupation authority by the Supreme Command of Allied Powers / General Head Quarter (SCAP/GHQ). Taiwanese, who spoke Japanese then, were subjects of Japanese Empire. In this regard, suppression or even massacre of civilians was just a part of war, even if the war had ended. To many servicepersons, it was nothing odd in the hostile occupation. No wonder the victorious Chinese Nationalist authority has been reluctant to apologize to Taiwanese victims in the 228 Incident. A high-ranking general Hau still denies the massive deaths and the sufferings of the Incident 65 years later, and even two decades' democratization could not alter his biased view on who is the victor.

The pillage of CKS proxy occupation after the end of war, in fact, has prolonged the 228 sufferings.

For revenge, reparation, paying for the occupation expenses and neutralizing Japanese capacity to restart the war, SCAP/GHQ drafted an "Interim Reparation Plan" on November 15, 1945, which allowed the UN allies to confiscate Japanese financial assets and to dissemble their industrial facilities, either public or private, in Japan and its overseas territories under occupation. The nationalist government of China set up a reparation committee to deal with it. They claimed the reparation of31.3 billion US dollars damages on Japan, in addition to some 6 billion Yen loss to Taiwan; and three-fourths of 380 million US dollars Japanese assets in China were claimed to have derived from China during the invasion.^[1] As the shares among the UN allies in the Plans were never confirmed, the allies could not wait to split up the massive assets. The CKS authority was no exception.

To counter the ever-growing communists and as a consequence of the Reverse Course in 1947, the Plan was terminated in 1948 under the strong protest of China and the Philippines. The reparation was finalized in Article 14 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, in which Japan renounced all their private and public assets to the occupation authority and local government as reparation. However, many UN allies kept claiming reparation on Japan.

A big question remains: Taiwan and Korea were two similar foreign territories to Japanese Empire before the War. The US military government in South Korean issued Directive No. 33 to confiscate all Japanese assets on December 6, 1945, and transferred them to South Korean government on September 11, 1948 according to Article 5 of the Agreement referring to Finances and Assets between the US and South Korea. According to the case of South Korea, the vast Japanese fortunes should have been transferred to the Taiwanese legitimate government, not proxy occupation authority. Quite the opposite, CKS confiscated some 1.9 billion US dollars Japanese assets in Taiwan, which was equivalent to some 700 billion NT dollars today^[2], and laundered them into the pocket of Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party which stayed loyal to CKS personally. They have been used as a partisan weapon to defeat KMT's political rivals and have thus kept KMT in power with or without the election. The laundering that occurred around 1947, the year that KMT committed the 228 slaughter, was neither a legitimate confiscation under the laws of war, nor an interim reparation. In fact, it was against Article 47 of "the Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land," or known as "The IV Hague Convention of 1907," which stipulates "Pillage is formally forbidden."

The 228 Incident, the vast KMT assets, Taiwan's undecided status, and even the Shanghai Communiqué on February 28, 1972, which has exactly the 40th anniversary today, are all episodes of WWII aftermath. We should study and integrate all the relevant issues and master the SFPT system before we claim our legitimate rights and correct these injustices. revised on 20120229