REVOLT ON FORMOSA

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 October 1947, Page 6

REVOLT ON FORMOSA

WANGANUI GIRLS ACCOUNT WORK WITH U.N.R.R.A. A vivid description of revolt on the island of Formosa is contained in letters to her parents in Wanganui from Miss Louise Tomsett, who is with an U.N.K.R.A. team carrying on the difficult task of rehabilitation of China. “Although the revolution is now coming to a close,” she wrote in one of her letters, "many are still being shot. Those who are considered as leaders of the revolt are being picked off; also anyone who had connections with the Japanese, which means mdny persons who have some sort ol technical training or skill, including most of the professors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. It any Chinese nas a big enough grudge he can inform on any Taiwanese and that is all there is to it.

"So far, they have closed 11 schools and the university, and have shot over 700 students—that is a known tact as they pushed the bodies overboard at Keeling and some freak of the tide washed them back so they have been fishing them out of the harbour over the last few days." (A small weekly paper sent by the writer gives aetails of the butchery of the students, the killing of Taiwanese. estimated as close on 10,000 and the use of dumdum bullets by the troops.)

"Middle school boys have been shot, and, so t'here would be no complaints from parents, the soldiers went to Tansui and took the headmaster from the Tansui School and shot him too. THE RICH PERISH.

Anyone with money or valuables who had been unlucky enough to be stopped by the soldiery have just been robbed and everything taken and then shot so that they couldn’t tall. A fellow buying rice in Hokuto pulled out a few thousand yen to pay for it and was promptly shot by the soldier next to him and his money taken. Families were beaten up and bayonetted. "We know that when the soldiery first came in they went to every house in a certain district, bashed the door in and the first person who came out or the first one they saw they shot as a warning. The estimates are 10,000 killed and countless wounded. "Of course, the island is subjugated now with 20,000 troops at least. Anything you read about Taiwanese having machine guns and mortars, etc., is definitely untrue. “While the original riots were on, not one of us saw a Taiwanese bearing arms and anything they used after that in Taipei (the supposed raid on the bank was, of course, a put-up job by the Chinese to give an excuse for the business that followed) or in other cities in the island, notably Kerenko, Kagi and Talchu, were arms taken from the police and the barracks. “The other morning we had a kind of raid with covetous glances being sent in the direction of our jeeps—someone shot a rifle off outside my window so close it scared me. Then they mounted a machine-gun on the bend of the road above Sinko and shot off a few rounds for no reason we could see." HIGH PRICED FOOD.

The writer gives details of the exploitation of the Formosans, the high price of the staple food—rice—with none on sale for several days at a time, also the black market, with the ordinary rank and file of people just starving to death." All this caused the predicted trouble to come to pass so suddenly and so violently,” Miss Tomsett writes. “A ship has arrived so off we go today I did not want to go at all at the last as I love Taiwan, but its best to get out.” , , Miss Tomsett is now stationed at Shanghai. , Another former Wanganui girl, who is among New Zealanders now engaged in assisting U.N.R.R.A. in Shanghai, is Miss Patricia Cross, who lived here until her parents moved to Folding She was in the D.I.C. office and later held a position in the Wanganui Harbour Board office.