Special Sessions

-State Violence and Trauma

“In the Shadow of Empires:

“Foreign” Victims of ’s 1947 February 28 Incident and their Journey toward Justice and Reconciliation”

Yoshihisa Amae1 [, Chang Jung Christian University Associate Professor ]

1 The author is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chang Jung Christian University. Email: [email protected] 1

Introduction

The February 28 Incident of 1947 (hereafter simply “2/28”) had long been taboo in Taiwan under martial law. However, following the lifting of martial law in 1987, it has gradually gained publicity. In 1995, President Lee Teng-hui offered an apology to the victims and their families for their losses, and his government made measures to bring justice to the victims, including reparation and restoration of the victims’ reputation. The literature on 2/28 is vast, especially in the Chinese language. Few, but important, works exist in the English and Japanese literature as well (Kerr 1965; Lai, Myers, and Wei 1991; He 2003). Yet almost all of them focus on the victimhood of the native Taiwanese and the brutality of the Chinese perpetrators. Little is mentioned of the foreign victims, namely the Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans. This is understandable for their existence has been unknown until quite recently (in 2015 Aoyama Esaki became the first foreign victim to be recognized by the Taiwanese government) and the numbers are small. As of August 2020, there are only three foreigners (two Japanese and one Korean) who have been officially recognized as “victims” and consequently received reparations from the Taiwanese government. Three other families from Okinawa had applied for reparations but their attempt has been so far unsuccessful. A study by an Okinawan scholar suggests that the number of Okinawan victims may be as large as thirty people (Matayoshi 2018: 348). There were also Korean victims: three men killed and one woman injured. Moreover, among the 1,461 names in the latest lists of possible 2/28 victims released by the Memorial Foundation of 228 between October 2018 and February 2020, eight of them have Japanese names (The Memorial Foundation of 228 2020). These numbers are very small compared to the numbers of alleged Taiwanese dead, which varies from several hundreds to a hundred thousand.2 While the number of deaths, together with other figures such as the duration of the incident and the percentage of casualties among the total population, does speak of the magnitude of the political tragedy, human lives cannot be reduced to sheer numbers: every single life matters. Each victim—mostly men in the case of 2/28—is somebody’s son, father, husband and friend. Their absence has left a lasting impact in those people’s lives. This impact can be larger for the remaining family if the person was the head of the household and the breadwinner, and larger for aliens than nationals due to the former’s precarious social and political status. Having said that, I believe tragedies cannot be

2 It is widely believed that 18,000 to 28,000 people perished in the 2/28 Incident as a consequence of the government crackdown. This figure was presented by the task force set up by the government to investigate the truth of the 2/28 Incident in 1992. However, in more recent research, scholars suggest the number of dead was much smaller. They estimate the number to be between 1,304 and 1,512 (Tang 2017). 2 compared. The pain and trauma caused by any tragedy is purely subjective and it is not the purpose of this paper to make any generalization on suffering. The main purpose of the paper is twofold. First, it attempts to investigate the foreign victims of 2/28: Who are they? How did they get involved? How did the families suffer from the loss of a family member? How did they deal with the trauma? I will try to narrate their personal stories. Such narratives are important, not just as history, but in terms of taking the discussion on 2/28 beyond the hitherto dualism that fixates on native Taiwanese as victims and Mainlanders as perpetrators. I hope to show that among the so called “poor victims” there is a subtle hierarchy. For example, often times in the discussion on 2/28 victims, a great focus is given to the social and political elite, and not to ordinary citizens.3 Victims with a Mainland Chinese background are often overlooked, if not ignored, simply because they are equated with the state apparatus and its agents that exercised violence. And foreigners are neglected. The foreign victims of 2/28 are thus arguably marginalized within the narratives of 2/28. Unlike the native Taiwanese victims, who eventually had their voices heard due to the backing of the native Democratic Progressive Party, foreign victims remained voiceless and endured a subaltern-like status, even after political liberalization in the 1990s. Their marginality is most evident in the politics of remembering: non-ROC citizens were, until 2016, excluded from seeking retributive justice. The irony of this practice is that while the state apparatus and the violence it exercised did not discriminate, the government (a democratic one!) and the justice it is reattributing are. The second purpose of this paper is to contemplate the “Japanese factor” in the 2/28 Incident: that is to think of the suffering that Japanese imperialism had inflicted on the parties concerned, including those foreign subjects (Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans) who were killed. One should be reminded, however, that less than two years prior to 2/28, they weren’t “foreign” to their Taiwanese counterparts; they were all subjects of the Japanese empire and one nation, in which Okinawans were seen as the elder brother, Koreans as the younger brother, and Taiwanese as the youngest brother (Matayoshi 2018: 111).4 Okinawans and Koreans were present in Taiwan as a result of political annexation and national integration orchestrated by the Japanese empire. Differently put, their presence, which was magnified through the tragic event of 2/28, reveals the issue that had long been submerged in face of the brutal state violence and the drama that unfolded in the confrontation between the native Taiwanese and the Mainlanders and the ensuing political and national trauma. To be sure, the Japanese state and its agents were not present in the Incident: the Japanese authorities in Taiwan surrendered to the Chinese Nationalists (KMT) on October 25, 1945, and by April 1946, most Japanese nationals had been

3 A good example of this is a work by Lee (1990). 4 The Yamato race or naichijin, extending this metaphor, is the father and mother figure. Japan annexed Okinawa in 1879, acquired Taiwan as a colony in 1895 as the result of its victory against Qing , and annexed Korea in 1910 by imperial Japan. 3 repatriated to their homeland. Yet their influence lasted beyond their physical presence. Between the lines of the 2/28 narratives, be it the “pro-Chinese” or “pro-Taiwanese,” appear traces of Japanese imperialism, such as the KMT accusation that being “poisoned with (or enslaved by) the Japanese education” or the fact that Japanese language was used by the Taiwanese rioters to distinguish themselves from the “enemy.”5 In sum, the presence of foreign 2/28 victims not only reminds one of the past Japanese imperial ambitions, but also invokes their colonial responsibility, which is often neglected in the dominant postwar narrative of Japan being a peace-loving nation.

A Genealogy of Foreign 2/28 victims

It is unknown to the Taiwanese that one of the first victims of 2/28 was a Japanese, Kimura Toshio, a staff of the Committee of Overseas Japanese6 who was shot dead in front of the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office on February 28 during the mass protest over police violence against an illicit cigarette vendor on the previous night. It is unclear as to why Kimura took the risk of being there. It may have been that he was on a mission to gather information on the situation, or he may have been at the site out of pure curiosity. What we know is that nobody had imagined that the security guards would have opened fire on peaceful protesters, killing several and wounding many (Kerr 1966: 256). The government wasted no time in offering an apology to the victim’s family and the Japanese community, as well as compensating 200,000 Old Taiwan dollars for the loss (Kawahara 1997: 44). However, that was not the case for several other Japanese nationals killed, arrested, or who remain missing in 2/28. There appear to be two other Japanese nationals involved in the 2/28 Incident, according to the official report sent by Chen Yi to Chiang Kai-shek on March 13, 1947: Horiuchi Kinjyo and Uesaki Torazaburo. Their names appear in the appendix of the report, together with 18 Taiwanese, including people like Chen Xin and Lin Mao-sheng (Institute of Modern History 1992: 177). The report does not confirm their death but other materials confirmed that all the people on the list were later executed as “rebels.” According to the information given on the list, Horiuchi and Uesaki were both labelled as “underground agents” and accused of assisting the rebellion and the killing of Chinese Mainlanders (waishengren). Little is known about Uesaki’s whereabouts. However, materials remain regarding Horiuchi.

5 At times, the suspicious ones were asked to sing , the Japanese anthem. 6 This was a semi-official agency consisting of staffs of the former Office of the Governor-in-General to manage the affairs of the near 8,000 Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and academics and their families who were retained by the KMT government (Wu 2005).

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According to the government archive declassified in 2016, Horiuchi was detained by the authorities after he conspired with a Taiwanese by employing dozens of gangsters to occupy a chemical factory in . The Japanese report, which confirms his arrest, reveals a total of five Japanese (three in and two in ) detained during 2/28, but all except for Horiuchi had been released and presumably repatriated to Japan in due course. Yokota Shigeru, Horiuchi’s colleague in Taiwan Nitrogen (formerly Nihon Nitrogen), recalls that after the took over the factory, seven of them were ordered to remain in Taiwan as engineers. All of them, except for Horiuchi, left the island in December 1946, despite the government’s request to extend their stay. Yokota reveals that Horiuchi decided to stay in Taiwan for he feared arrest by the General Headquarters (GHQ) as a war criminal due to his role in manufacturing explosives during WWII (Yokota 1977: 38). It is not clear as to how exactly Horiuchi got involved in the Incident. Ōse Takamitsu, a professor of the Medical School at the National Taiwan University, testifies that Horiuchi was arrested after being secretly informed that he had assisted the “rebels” by taking them to places where the explosives were stored. Yet Masao Egami, another employee of Taiwan Nitrogen, contends that Horiuchi was threatened by a group of Taiwanese men at gunpoint to unlock the warehouse that stored the explosives (Egami 1977: 46). Yokota recalls that he was approached by some Taiwanese to help them expel the Chinese from Taiwan. He was also asked to teach them how to make grenades, to which he unenthusiastically replied that, since there was no iron available, the only way was to stuff gun powder into an ink bottle (Yokota 1977: 38). Horiuchi seems to have been executed immediately after his arrest. In April 2019, Horiuchi was recognized by the state as a victim of 2/28, which enabled the surviving family members to claim six million New Taiwan dollars as reparation (NHK 2019).

Aoyama Keishō: Pioneering Victimhood for Foreigners

The Taiwanese government begun to offer reparations for the victims in 1995. As of July 1, 2020, 867 families have received reparations from the government for the loss of their family members (Memorial Foundation of 228, 2020). In February 2016, Aoyama Esaki became the first foreigner to be recognized by the Taiwanese government as a 2/28 victim after the Taipei High Court ruled in favor of Aoyama, represented by his son Keishō, who sued the Memorial Foundation of 228 for denying his application. Keishō first applied for reparations in 2013, but his application was rejected on the grounds that he was not an ROC citizen. The court verdict opened the door for non-ROC victims of 2/28 to seek justice, and in 2017, Park Sun-jong, a Korean, became the second foreigner to be recognized as a 2/28 victim (Lin 2017). Horiuchi became the third in April 2019.

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According to the materials Aoyama Keishō submitted to the Memorial Foundation of 228, his father, a native of Amami Ōshima, Kagoshima Prefecture, moved to in 1933 and worked on a fishing vessel. He married a woman from Okinawa in 1942, and Keishō was born in the next year. Esaki was conscripted by the Japanese Navy in August 1943, three months after the birth of his son, and was sent off to Hainan Island. The family did not hear from him during the war, and then in February 1946, they received a postcard from Saigon, French Indochina, indicating that he was well and alive. They were not sure as to why he was in Saigon, but Esaki was later repatriated to Sasebo, Kyushu, in May and stayed with his relative in Kagoshima. He sent his second postcard to his family in Keelung, in which he wrote: “I began working here and have no plan to return [to Taiwan], so I wish the whole family can come over soon (Aoyama 1946).” Meanwhile the family members in Taiwan were patiently waiting to be repatriated. Repatriation of Japanese nationals in Taiwan started in April 1946 and finished in June the same year, but Okinawans had to wait until December to be repatriated. In the meantime, Esaki decided to smuggle his way back to Taiwan. He got on a ship in February 1947, first headed to his relative’s house in Ishigaki Island. Then from there, he got on the ship and headed to Taiwan. According to the testimony of a survivor, the ship, which arrived in Keelung on March 8, was meet by gunfire from KMT soldiers. The crew all ran toward the mountain to save themselves, but Esaki and the son of the captain of the ship later decided to return to the ship to pick up things they had left on it (it is not clear what they were). The rest of the crew saw that the two were put on the truck and taken away by the soldiers (Nagoshi 2015: 4-5). Meanwhile, Keishō and his mother had safely arrived in Sasebo on December 23, 1946, and by the time they arrived at the relative’s house in Kagoshima it was already the end of February, only to find out that Esaki had left for Taiwan (Nagoshi 2015: 4). Keishō and his mother waited for Esaki’s return, but after two and a half years they decided to move back to the mother’s hometown in Okinawa. Not so long after that, they received a message from the relative in Ishigaki that Esaki may have got himself involved in the “Taiwan Uprising.” Keishō, who was already six at the time, remembers that many people came to console them, but the mother was so devastated that she stayed in bed for a week (Nagoshi 2015: 5). The loss of the breadwinner was a huge blow to the family. Keishō recalls: “I lost my father and my grandfather was old in age. My mother could not work in the field, so we barely made a living through the earnings she made through sewing. We were very poor. My mother lamented that people who lost their family member in war have compensation from the government, but we didn’t because dad was not killed in war… I spent a lonely childhood without a father… (Nagoshi 2015: 5-6).” It was not until much later in the late 1980s that Keishō learned about the “2/28 Incident.” When the news on 2/28 was broadcast in Okinawa, he immediately connected his

6 father’s death to 2/28. He decided to take action. First, he had to persuade his mother to agree on filing his father’s death to the local court. They had not done so previously, for the mother believed her husband was still alive after being told by a medium (yuta) that he was alive in Hong Kong or . The family suffered tremendously with the loss of a husband and a father. Keishō’s mother suffered a great psychological damage which forced her to be in and out of the mental hospital essentially for the rest of her life. In 1994, Keishō was finally able to file his father’s death to the court. It was approved. He was then, through the help of an Okinawan scholar, able to attend the official 2/28 commemoration service in Taipei in 2007. Still, it was not until 2011 that he received information about reparations. According to Keishō, it appeared in the beginning that the 2/28 Foundation was very positive about his application, but the Foundation’s internal decision to compensate him was rejected by the Ministry of Interior, which appealed to the principle of equality and mutual benefit: the Japanese government has not compensated for the comfort women and the Taiwanese men conscripted in the Japanese military during WWII, therefore, neither shall we. Keishō told me that while he can agree with the view that Japanese government’s reparation for WWII victims is not sufficient, he at the time felt it should not be used as the reason to turn down his application (Aoyama 2018). In court, he and his lawyers claimed that human rights have no borders, and the Taiwanese government should not react in “retaliation.”

Other 2/28 victims from Okinawa

There are three other families that had applied for compensation to the 2/28 Foundation. Unfortunately, unlike the Aoyama family, their applications were rejected by the Foundation on the reason of insufficient proof. Two are from Yonaguni Island and one from Ishigaki Island, Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa prefecture, which are within 300km east of Taiwan. Under the Japanese colonial rule, there was close interaction and trade between the people in the Yaeyama Islands and Taiwan, and this had continued into the transitional and chaotic early years of the post-WWII period, despite the separation of the two regions into different sovereignties. Okinawa, ruined by the US invasion in WWII, suffered from a shortage of food and other materials, while Taiwan, spared from the invasion, had bountiful supplies. The situation compelled the islanders to get involved in smuggling. The activity in the beginning was with less risk and high return, but eventually died out as the US occupied forces in Okinawa implemented tighter control of the border after the Korean War erupted in June 1950 (Yakabi 2005: 50). Onaga Genchu was born in Ishigaki in 1916. He moved to Taiwan when he was about 10 years old and later worked in the station as a janitor while attending a night school to get

7 education. Onaga’s hard work paid off: he was given a higher, better-paid position in the station. He married a woman from Ishigaki and had three children. But in 1944, he was conscripted in the imperial army while working as an assistant in Shinhokutō station, Northern Taipei, though was fortunate to be deployed to a battalion stationed in the same area. After the war, the family decided to leave Taiwan for Okinawa, as they felt life was getting more difficult under the KMT rule. The father and mother worked in the field but since life was tough, the mother suggested that she open a clothes repair shop. It was then that the father decided to return to Taiwan to bring back the sewing machine they had left with a friend there. He never came back. His son recalls that his mother went to the pier every day to look for her husband, but to no avail. The family suffered much after the father’s disappearance. The mother passed away at age 51 due to overwork and stress. All three children could only study up to middle school due to financial difficulties (Ōseki 2015). Nakatake Minoru and Ishisoko Kane, both from Yonaguni Island, were killed when their ship entered Keelung to purchase repair parts needed for the ship in March 1947. The detail of the tragedy, however, is still unknown. Ishisoko’s daughter, Michie, who was 5 years old at the time of the Incident, does not remember much of what had happened back then. Her mother never discussed with her about the father. She believes that is because she refused to accept the fact. When her mother passed away in 2010 at age 98, she told her “Don’t forget 2/28, your father’s anniversary (Ryūkyū Simpō 2017).” Her mother suffered the most by the loss, raising four children on her own. Her trauma has yet to be healed; in an interview with the local media, Michie confesses: “I get tearful talking about my father because it reminds me of my mother who suffered so much for us (Ryūkyū Simpō 2017).” Yet, in the same article she did not forget to ask the Taiwanese government to recognize responsibility over her father’s death. Personal tragedy cannot be compared, because for each person affected by the loss of a family member, his or her pain is entirely subjective and thus absolute and never relative. Having said so, the story of Hatsuko, Nakatake’s daughter, sounds especially miserable. Hatsuko was only 10 when her father disappeared. Yet losing her father, which is a tragedy in itself, was the mere beginning of the tragedy for her. The loss of her father also meant the loss of her mother, as the relatives all blamed the mother for the tragedy. She had previously suggested to her husband to start a business in Taiwan. Eventually she was forced to leave the house, leaving behind Hatsuko and her brother, six years younger. At the time Hatsuko was simply heartbroken and angry at her mother for abandoning them. The two were later adopted by their aunt. Since the loss of their parents, the two constantly suffered from the social prejudice that children without parents were prone to be delinquent. They were prey to bullying at school and at home. Once, her brother was blamed for missing money in the house. He was tied up and was not given food to eat. It later turned out that the money had simply been misplaced by the owner. Still, the

8 brother received no apologies. The loss of her parents deprived Hatsuko of her opportunity to receive an education. She was forced to work in the field and thus given no time to attend school. The suffering continued. She was forced to marry the brother-in-law of her aunt, so that she remained in the house to serve her. When she refused this arrangement, she was tied to a beam and threatened never to leave the house. Hatsuko recalls the pain: “I can never forget the pain I received at the time. I was surprised to find out that one can still have a baby even when there is no love between the two (Aoyama 2016: 125).”

Healing through the process of truth seeking

Justice is yet to arrive for the three Okinawan families, but to some healing has begun in the process of truth seeking. For instance, the investigation into their father led Hatsuko and her family to discover that her mother had been secretly returning to the neighborhood to check on the kids on numerous occasions. Hatsuko felt that her anger and bitterness toward her mother had dwindled down from “ten to five” after hearing such testimonies (Aoyama 2016: 124). Both the Ishisokos and the Nakatakes are members of the Okinawan Association for Truth Seeking on Taiwan’s 2/28 Incident (OATS), a non-profit group led by Aoyama Keishō. The families knew that the death of their family members was linked to the “Taiwan Uprising” of 1947, but it was not until quite recently that they learned about the details of the Incident. Aoyama states: “Even for myself it was not until 20 years ago that I learned about the detail of the incident. People like Hatsuko were too preoccupied making a living and had no time for such things.” Hatsuko learned about 228 through her daughter, who one day read in the local newspaper that people were searching for 2/28 victims. Hatsuko, in an interview, states: “If it were not for Mr. Aoyama, I may still have had no clue about the 2/28 Incident. I can never thank him enough (Aoyama 2016: 126-7).”

Public Commemoration and Pilgrimage to the Sites of Memory

The OATS has been making an annual trip to Taiwan at the end of February since 2014. Its main purpose is to participate in the official commemoration service at the 2/28 Park in Taipei. Michie and Hatsuko, dressed in black, sat next to each other, each holding a photo portrait of their father on their knees as they attended the ceremony in 2017. Besides being a strategy to attract public and media attention, the act can be seen as a form of protest against the unjust killing as well as the government’s decision to not accept the fact. Another site of pilgrimage is Hepingdao (formerly called Sharyōtō under Japanese rule), Keelung City, where the members perform a public commemoration service at a small Taiwanese temple dedicated to the

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“unknown dead.” Hepingdao, located on the northern tip of Keelung, was home to 350 Okinawan settlers in the 1930s and some of them remained in the area even in the postwar period (Matayoshi 2018: 345-348). It is believed that the remains of the Okinawan victims were cremated and deified in this temple, together with many other unidentified bodies found in the area before and after the 2/28 Incident. Thus, Hepingdao, borrowing from Pierre Nora, is a lieu de mémoire, where the place invokes the memory of the visitors (Nora 1989). The family of the victims wish to verify whether or not the remains belong to them through DNA testing but so far the temple side has shown reluctance to agree with such scientific research, based on the belief that such action might offend the ghost/deity. Unlike the official commemoration in which visitors from Okinawa are forced to assume the role of passive guests, at Hepingdao they are in charge of the commemoration service from beginning to end, arranging all the procedures and rituals. After Aoyama explains the history of the temple and introduces its Taiwanese manager to the group and presents him with a gift, families and friends of the victims set up the altar by placing the offerings (food and drink) they brought from Okinawa, such as sata andagi (Okinawan doughnuts) and awamori (rice-based distilled liquor). Then, they burn the incense sticks (these too brought from Okinawa) and pray to the dead. The highlight of the ceremony is when Hatsuko sings Tubaraama, a Yaeyama folk song, in front of the altar. This song has no set lyrics. Along the traditional rhythm, she sings her original song in Yaeyama dialect, which goes as follows:

Looking at the mountain and the sea reminds one of his home Since you have left us, I have now surpassed your age But, I am sure you have not forgotten the mountain and the sea of your home [translation is mine].

The short song lasts only about 30 seconds. Yet it has the magic to unite the hearts of the visitors as one. Hatsuko offers this song every time she visits this place. A personal song dedicated to her father has turned into a requiem for the Okinawan 2/28 dead. Besides holding the commemorative service at the temple in Hepingdao and attending the official 2/28 commemoration at the 2/28 Park in Taipei, Aoyama’s group makes a protocol visit to the Ama in Taipei.7 The museum, which opened in 2016, is dedicated to the “comfort women” in the Japanese military during WWII. What do the 2/28 Incident and comfort women have in common? What ties the two is the rejection of Aoyama’s application. In 2013, Aoyama was told that he was not qualified because: 1) he was not a ROC citizen; and 2) the Japanese government refused to take responsibility to compensate former Taiwanese enlisted in

7 Ama, in Chinese, means “grandma,” equivalent to halmoni in Korean. 10 the Japanese military and comfort women. At the time, the KMT government, led by President Ma Ying-jeou, argued that, based on the principle of equality and mutual benefit, the government was not obliged to compensate for the Japanese victims of 2/28 since the Japanese government has failed to do so with the Taiwanese victims of WWII. This line of reasoning, as mentioned earlier, was not upheld by the High Court, which appealed to the universal nature of human rights. Aoyama, who is left-leaning and sympathetic to the cause of comfort women, feels that it is his obligation to care for the women whose dignity had been trampled by Japanese imperialism.

Korean Victims of 2/28

Nearly 400 Koreans remained in Taiwan in the postwar period. Some by choice, others by chance (Amae 2020). The majority of them resided in Keelung, and like the Okinawans, most men worked on fishing vessels as ship crews. Park Sun-jong was one of them. Park, born in Geomundo (known as Port Arthur in the West) in 1913, arrived in Keelung with his family in 1942, after working in Kyushu for nearly a decade. Originally the family had a plan to return to Korea after the war ended. However, they were unable to board the ship destined to Korea, which left Taiwan in April 1946. The ship came once and never again. The tragedy occurred while the family was waiting to be repatriated. On March 11, 1947, Park left the house in the morning bound for the fish market, to purchase fresh fish in celebration of his third son’s first birthday. He never returned home. When family and friends went searching, they learned that Park had been taken away on a truck by Chinese soldiers. But why? Some say that he was stopped by the soldiers and when searched, they found a knife in his pocket. According to Park’s daughter, Yeon-sim, it was the type of small knife that men on fishing boats carry to cut nets and strings. The loss of the father was a huge blow to the family. Park Yeon-sim remembers her mother taking her to go in search for her father on the beach after her mother saw a dream of her husband by the seashore. She recalls many dead bodies floating in the sea. Her pregnant mother gave birth to a child not so long after the Incident but she was too crushed and mentally disturbed to even take care of herself. The infant died after 20 days. Meanwhile, the death of the father forced Seong-tae, the eldest son, who was 14, to quit school and take his father’s position on the ship. It also forced the family to give up their plan to return to Korea, as a woman who lost her husband is seen as a curse in the traditional Korean community. The mother later remarried and had three more children before passing away in 1977 (Amae 2011). When the government announced compensation for the 2/28 victims, the Parks gathered all materials for their application. Yet when they were told that non-ROC citizens did not

11 qualify for compensation, they gave up. It was not until they learned about the court ruling handed to Aoyama in 2016 that they decided to apply again. This time it worked. On February 2017, the Memorial Foundation of 228 acknowledged Park Sun-jong as victim of the 2/28 Incident, becoming the second foreigner of the kind. Park Yeon-sim, once visiting the 228 Museum in the 228 Park, lamented to me as we passed in front of the exhibits with the names of all 2/28 victims listed by the city of their residence. Pointing to Keelung City, she told me: “What I want is not money, but recognition. My father was also killed in the 2/28 Incident and thus his name should also be here. I want the government to acknowledge that there was also a Korean victim!” Presumably, Park Sun-jong is not the only Korean victim of the 2/28 Incident. According to a report written by the president of the Korean Association in Taiwan, there were at least four Korean causalitie