Formosa Betrayed
A courageous American diplomat, Mr. George H. Kerr, who worked at the US Consulate in Taipei at the time of the Feb. 28, 1947 massacre, observed many atrocities in person. He later on set out to write down his observations and research on the situation in Formosa beginning in the mid-1940's. This volume was published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin as Formosa Betrayed, and republished in 1992 by the Taiwan Publishing Co. in Irvine, Calif.
See further biographical information at George H. Kerr.
Taiwan Status: Secrets of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Book Review
Formosa Betrayed is not just a masterpiece on the tragic incident of 2-28-1947, it is the US military blueprint of the undefined status of Taiwan under a peace treaty in 1952. Moreover, the secrets of the Taiwan Relations Act can be unlocked by carefully reviewing this book. Few readers may realize that Lt. George Kerr was a US Naval Civil Affairs Officer during the World War and how he has singlehandedly established the credible evidence of the Nationalist Chinese illegal seizure of Taiwan territory before the Japanese had even surrendered the island in the 1952 treaty.
George Kerr was a US Naval specialist on the Laws of Occupation while the Formosans were still legally under Japanese rule. In addition to this piece of authoritative legal history, he edited over 1300 pages of a US Navy Civil Affairs report for the proposed Taiwan invasion which General MacArthur stopped in favor of retaking the Philippines. In the end, these unused US military volumes of area studies and economic knowledge were used by the Chinese Nationalists to effectively dismantle the vast Japanese industrial base in just a few years prior to 1949. It seems that the Japanese had actually developed the Taiwan island economy far beyond anything comparable on the China mainland in 1945. (This puts into dispute Chinese claims regarding their own contributions as being the success secret of the Taiwanese economic miracle.) The ROC destroyed most of what they saw, shipped it to China, and then had to start over from stratch in 1949. It seems that Kerr's Formosa Betrayed offers substantial
insights for those island natives seeking to reclaim their stolen property as "Japanese nationals" prior to 1952. However, they must dig deeply into the US Army Field Manuals for Civil Affairs (eg. FM 27-10, FM 41-10, etc), and Formosa Betrayed will clearly explain the historical context of the belligerent occupational authority period of 1945-52 for this very purpose.
Under General Order No. 1 surrender was to the Allies, and the United States was the legal occupier. The thieving Nationalists were still officially subject to the supreme authority of General MacArthur, who was the Commander in Chief of United States Armed Forces in the Far East. It was the United States Military Government whom was legally occupying Japan and her territorial dependencies like Formosa. Taiwan will never be the same once interested readers grasp the historical significance of their unalienable legal rights under the Laws of Occupation, which must be understood within the framework of the FM 27-10 "The Law of Land Warfare" and the San Francisco Peace Treaty (SFPT). Formosa Betrayed is unquestionably the foremost legal and historical authority for supporting these claims made under necessary civil affairs expertise embedded deeply into the book.
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Chapter 3 covers the period from mid-August to late October 1945.
An annotated version of Chapter 3 is provided here for reference --
Chapter 3, Formosa Betrayed
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