Those with an interest in history quickly learn it’s no coincidence that the word is made from two others: ‘his’ and ‘story’. The story of humanity’s progress and setbacks is an interpretation, a perspective, and it is frequently one-sided.
Some historical events are also well known, many others less so.
Much of Taiwan’s history is not well known. A great deal has been forgotten, and often deliberately. Much of it is complicated. Some of it is disputed, and open to manipulation. The roots of Taiwan’s relationship with China are especially complex for example, as are its relations with Japan. The 228 Incident in 1947, when many were killed in domestic clashes, and the decades long White Terror that followed have not received extensive international coverage.
History is always complicated, of course, though it’s especially complicated and full of contradictions here. Consider, for a moment, those who were born in Taiwan a century ago, in the 1920s. A small number of these people are still alive today.
When they were born, Taiwan had been a colony of Japan for 30 years. They were brought up as Japanese subjects. They grew up speaking Japanese, reading Japanese newspapers. The brightest went to work, or to university, in Japan.
When the second Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, and the Second World War followed shortly after, many Taiwanese joined, or were drafted into, the Imperial Japanese Army. Tens of thousands died fighting for Japan.
Even today, and even on the island, many people know little of all this. Some Taiwanese still believe that the bombing of Taipei at the end of the Second World War was done by the Japanese, when it was actually done by the Allies.
At the end of the Second World War, in 1945, amid great turmoil and uncertainty, the Japanese were forced to leave the island, and there was a brief hiatus. The Allies wanted to hand Taiwan to China, which had administered much of the island before ceding it to Japan at the end of the 19th century. But the China that existed then, in the closing years of the Qing Dynasty, was no more. China was by then in the midst of a civil war. So no formal declaration for the handover by Japan was signed at the time. It was signed much later.
In the intervening years, China’s KMT nationalist army as well as several million Chinese people retreated to Taiwan, initially intending to stay for a short time. They took over administrative control of the island and changed the calendar and the names of the towns. People were forbidden from talking Japanese. They were now part of the Republic of China (as opposed to the People‘s Republic of China, which had been established on the mainland) and must talk Chinese. Many hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese, who had fought for the Japanese, were suddenly regarded as traitors and collaborators.
It’s hard to imagine their plight, how they must have felt about this change in their fate. Across the island, the experiences of millions of people quickly became taboo. Their stories were suppressed or lost, those born into one culture and now living their lives in another. All those confused and uncertain tales were mostly air-brushed from history.
Their stories have not been forgotten entirely, however. A film about the people of that generation, The Day the War Ended, was released in 2026. It explores the experiences and emotions of half a dozen of those who still survive.
They offer unusually valuable insights into life, and into history.
There is much that the rest of the world can learn from the stories of these people, especially now, at a time of rising international instability and grave environmental uncertainty. They offer a rare opportunity to learn about silence and re-integration, about coping with sorrow, and hopes that are dashed in multiple ways within a few years. Those who are interested can learn about how others have dealt with suppressed ambition, humiliation and guilt, and how to cope with dramatic and unanticipated change.
More broadly, Taiwan’s history over the last hundred and fifty years offers a valuable guide to anyone trying to understand upheaval and discontinuity, for those wanting to know how to live through trauma, to heal wounds and bring divided peoples together again. It provides a unique perspective for those seeking to escape chaos and rebuild prosperity, for those keen to understand the complexity of human history.
Taiwan’s history deserves much greater coverage.