US Consular Report on Events in Taiwan after 2.28

Though I haven’t read much on the events surrounding the 2.28 violence in Taiwan in 1947, it generated a lot of paperwork for the state department which I am coming across as I look through the microfilms of their documents from that year.

For those who might be interested in reading about the event, from the perspective of a US diplomat at the time, I have uploaded a memorandum from April, 1947 written by Vice Consul George H. Kerr summarizing the events before, during and in the weeks after 2.28. Kerr later published a book about the event, called Formosa Betrayed, but this shorter background report was written much closer to the events at hand.

You can download a copy of the report “Memorandum for the Ambassador on the Situation in Taiwan” in the Frog in a Well Library.

11 Comments

  1. This is incredible. I’m sure I’m not alone in greatly appreciating the work you are doing uploading these documents for the rest of us to share.

    Andrew Leonard

  2. See also the “Memorandum on the Situation in Taiwan” in the 1949 China White Paper: _United States Relations with China, With Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949_ (Washington: U.S>Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 923-938.

  3. Also online, see “Reports on the situation in Formosa (Taiwan), particularly respecting Formosan dissatisfaction with administrative policies of the Chinese government”, pp. 423-480 of _Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947. The Far East: China_. (URL: )

    Joe

  4. Thanks for this! Great post and an incredibly useful upload. Let me add another website offering the media angle on this slice of Taiwan’s history, The 228 Massacre As Documented in the U.S. Media located at this URL: http://228.lomaji.com/

    The first graf on the intro page: ‘This website presents a series of English language news articles from 1947 on the so-called ‘228 Incident’ in Taiwan (then commonly known as Formosa). They were published between March and November in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, The Nation , and through the United Press and the Associated Press, other news media as well. They are presented as unedited full texts, though original photographs and figures are omitted in this on-line edition.’

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