Accidental State Read online

  In the meantime, key officials in the U.S. naval establishment strongly felt that Washington should continue exercising authority as a military occupying force pending the formal assumption of Chinese sovereignty. Along with this rationale, there were some practical questions as to whether the occupation of Taiwan, if carried out, should be an army or a navy responsibility. Eventually, by common consent, the navy accepted the task of preparing for such an undertaking.41 The decision was made despite the fact that there was little precedent for a naval occupation of land.

  In fact, in December 1943, shortly after the Cairo Declaration, training of personnel for the prospective U.S. military government on Taiwan, dubbed “Island X” in related documents, had been secretly launched at Columbia University, New York. A “Formosa Unit,” of which George Kerr was a member, was set up there and began operating in preparation for a possible American occupation and administration of the island.42 The preparation for the island’s administrative takeover was accompanied by military operational planning. In February 1944, three months after the United States launched its first bombardment of Taipei, an intelligence report commissioned by the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, G-2, relentlessly detailed more bombing targets on the island. It specified that harbor facilities and shipping concentrations in Keelung and Takao (Kaohsiung), the two largest port cities in the north and south of the island, and the railroad facilities between Keelung and Taipei, and between Tainan and Kaohsiung, were the priority targets for bombing and air strikes. Other main objectives for Allied operations on the island included the electric power station of Jitsugetsutan (Sun Moon Lake) in central Taiwan, Matsuyama (Songshan) Airport in Taipei, and other industrial infrastructure in Kaohsiung, Hualian, and the large Taichung district.43 These bombardment plans were carried out in November 1944, and again during the first months of 1945, causing enormous damage to the Japanese colonizers as well as to the people of the island.

  By the spring of 1944, while Allied bombing of Taiwan continued incessantly, recommendations regarding U.S. policy toward Taiwan were finalized by the planning-level “Country and Area Committee” within the State Department, together with Washington’s military and intelligence establishments. Both Taiwan and Japanese-controlled Hainan Island off Guangdong province were given significant strategic attention by the personnel of the New York-based “Formosa Unit.”44 While the planning staff strongly suggested Allied military operation and occupation be taken in Taiwan, curiously enough, no similar suggestions were proposed about Hainan at this stage.45 Noticeably, the role of Chiang Kai-shek and his government were largely marginalized in this operational planning. It was thought that to occupy Taiwan after V-J Day, Chinese cooperation in the military government on the island would be helpful and in time would tend to facilitate a smooth handover to China. Nevertheless, considering U.S. postwar overall interest in the Far East, it was also recommended that, while the participation of the Chinese Nationalists as individuals and in an advisory capacity would be welcomed, Washington should not invite Chongqing to partake in this interim administration. Rather, as the planning-level staff posited, decisions on the extent to which Chinese personnel would be included in the administration would have to depend on the extent of the Chinese participation in the military operations for the occupation of Taiwan.46

  THE TAIWAN VERSUS LUZON DEBATE

  No immediate action or top-level decision was undertaken on the in-house recommendations, which were laid aside to await developments in the military situation in the Pacific theatre. In March 1944, General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific area, was directed to prepare for an invasion of the southern Philippines, with February 1945 as a target date for Luzon. Meanwhile, Taiwan would be invaded at the same time, a project that was coded “Causeway Operation.” Around mid-June, the Joint Chiefs of Staff questioned the feasibility of the Luzon attack, while MacArthur, doubtlessly remembering his “I shall return” pledge during the retreat from Corregidor, firmly held that attacking Luzon was essential before military forces could move against Japan. His reasoning was both moral and strategic: American prestige was dependent on its promised return to the Philippines, and Taiwan’s heavy fortifications and its distance from adequate logistical support made an assault on the island particularly hazardous.47 While the Taiwan plan was primarily a naval operation, differences of opinion did not necessarily form along service lines, but rather between Washington strategists and Pacific commanders.

  By early July 1944, MacArthur began to clash directly with Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, who strongly favored the Causeway Operation but with somewhat less tenacity than MacArthur defended the Luzon plan. While Nimitz conceded the importance of land-based air support, such as Luzon would provide for an assault against Taiwan, he maintained the navy’s view that “neutralization” of the Japanese air force there from the southern Philippines, along with naval supremacy in that area, might effectuate the seizure of Taiwan. On the question of whether Taiwan or Luzon should be captured first, Nimitz wavered, believing that future developments would determine which would be more desirable.48

  No final strategic decision was made in Washington, as the debate over whether to seize Taiwan or Luzon continued for another three months.49 During the summer, Nimitz and his cohorts paid great attention to a naval plan for the seizure of only the southern tip of Taiwan and a simultaneous assault against the Chinese coastal port of Amoy in Fujian province. The strategic importance of Amoy was to channel supplies to Allied bases in Central and East China from which bombing missions could be carried out against Japan. However, the war conditions in the China theater in mid-1944 had a pronounced influence on the proposed U.S. invasion of Taiwan. The successive loss of airfields in Southeast China to the Japanese since July 1944 indicated that a U.S. landing on Taiwan or on the China coast would be difficult. Consequently, invading Taiwan became less urgent. By September, as most of Southeast China fell into Japanese hands as a result of Operation Ichigo, the island itself now had little to offer in the way of logistical naval bases that could play a role in dealing with the Japanese-occupied mainland.50

  As evidence mounted against the feasibility of assaulting Taiwan, navy planners, including Admiral Nimitz himself, proposed bypassing it and proceeding northward, thus bringing the navy more in accord with MacArthur’s sentiments. It was these military considerations that finally persuaded the Joint Chiefs of Staff to retreat from the Taiwan plan. Hence, on October 3, 1944, orders were issued to MacArthur to proceed to Luzon. Nimitz was then instructed to prepare for operations against Okinawa.51 The military plan for the conquest of Taiwan was never formally cancelled, but simply left by the wayside due to exigencies of the war.52 Significantly, the likelihood of Allied military operations to capture Taiwan forced the panicked Japanese colonial rulers on the island to allow more Formosans to take part in domestic affairs, and to announce the recognition by law of equal treatment of and rights for the Formosans as compared to the Japanese. These moves, as Washington’s intelligence chiefs perceived, were made to boost the Formosan morale and to strengthen the island’s defense spirit against the Allies.53 In hindsight, these moves also became part of what created a distinct Taiwan history and, to some degree, a distinct identity that would later play a role in Taiwan’s postwar politics.

  In June 1945, when the geostrategic value of Taiwan as a staging area for the final assault on Japan gradually diminished after the Americans captured Okinawa, diplomatic and political issues surrounding Taiwan’s future administrative arrangement resurfaced. According to Joseph W. Ballantine, director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs in the State Department at the time, by early 1945, when the Taiwan plan was fading away, President Roosevelt made up his mind that China was to be given “unconditional” possession of Taiwan should Japan surrender.54 The unequivocal insistence by Chinese Communist leaders, such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, on Japan’s unconditional return of Taiwan and Manchuria
to postwar China might also have played a part in determining Washington’s position on this issue.55

  Notably, with the smooth capture of Okinawa, U.S. military hardliners gradually began to shift their views about an American military occupation of Taiwan. Earlier, in March 1945, a top secret State-Army-Navy Coordinating Committee policy paper still recommended a careful discussion of the advisability of the U.S. armed forces establishing a military administration for civil affairs in Taiwan, and maintaining it until arrangements were made for the restoration of Chinese sovereignty. A prompt analysis of the extent and conditions of participation in the civil affairs administration by the Nationalist government was also favored.56 Because the Japanese might still organize their proposed defense system “area-by-area” and because continued resistance in separate regions of Japan would be likely in the final stage of the war, the American concept of a “military” postwar local and regional administration in the Japanese-occupied areas gained importance.57 In the meantime, both civil and military officials in Washington cautiously urged a careful study of such details as the possible effects of a transfer of Taiwan to China; the authority and responsibility to be exercised by the proposed military government in the island’s civil affairs; and the problems that the civil affairs authorities would encounter vis-à-vis the Chinese Nationalists.58 They particularly foresaw issues regarding how to best deal with the tremendously lucrative Japanese properties on the island. As originally planned by the Coordinating Committee, the United States would play a substantial role in setting up basic rules of international law pertaining to the treatment of public assets and private property; in facilitating an early integration of Taiwan’s economy with that of China; and in supervising “the use of Chinese and Formosan Chinese in the operation of Japanese enterprises on the island.”59

  However, things changed dramatically after the capture of Okinawa in June 1945, when Taiwan’s takeover increasingly became a side issue. Now the consensus in Washington was that only if the island were taken by U.S. forces in the course of combat operations would it be necessary to establish a military government there, and that in such an event, Taiwan should be turned over to the Chinese as soon as this could be arranged without awaiting the formalization by treaty of Chinese sovereignty over the island.60 It was also envisaged that, although some operational plans for secret intelligence penetration of Taiwan might be necessary, if an American military government was not established in consequence of combat operations, the island should be occupied and administered by the Nationalist Chinese from the outset.61 One week after the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, the aforementioned policy papers and action recommendations were rendered moot as, according to Washington, the situation had “been overtaken by events.”62

  This change of stance, wrought by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, proved decisive; before World War II came to an end, some American officials had envisioned or toyed with the idea of some sort of institutional and legal arrangement that would separate Taiwan from the administrative system to be restored on the China mainland. In the end, because of the exigencies and unpredicted factors, the U.S. government embraced a swift takeover of Taiwan by the state organ of Nationalist China. As Taiwan was no longer needed by the Americans to prosecute war with Japan, tides of war in the Pacific would determine Taiwan’s fate as an accidental state. More specifically, the withdrawal of a powerful American involvement in the occupation of Taiwan, including the U.S. role in the takeover and management of the assets left by the Japanese colonial rulers, brought about serious consequences during the Nationalist administration on the island that would become discernable in the following years.

  DEFINING ISLAND-MAINLAND RELATIONS

  To the United States, as shown above, the final decision not to invade Japanese-held Taiwan and govern the island after V-J Day largely resulted from pragmatic military and strategic concerns. Moreover, Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek was not only a close ally of the United States against the Axis powers, but the only Allied claimant to Taiwan during World War II. Washington’s decision therefore was reasonably welcomed and deemed in good faith by the Nationalists. Behind the scenes, however, top Nationalist Chinese leaders’ true intentions toward Taiwan deserve a second look.

  The positive effect of the Cairo Summit on political propaganda, national morale, and regime prestige was surely one important factor prompting Chiang to bring Taiwan into China’s postwar territorial planning. In Chongqing, local mass media brooked no delay in reporting how the anti-Japanese Formosan elites on the Chinese mainland were inspired by the Cairo Declaration, and how grateful they were to the marvelous job the Nationalist government had done.63 Underneath the glamorous political publicity about Taiwan’s return to the motherland, Chiang had a larger picture in mind. He no doubt cast his eyes on the rich colonial resources on the island. With Taiwan’s retrocession now guaranteed by the Allies, his regime felt justified in taking over the island’s rich war materiel, assets, properties, enterprises, and infrastructure, whether publicly run or privately owned, as legal compensation from a defeated Japan for China’s war damage. Strategically, given China’s limited naval capability, using Taiwan as an ideal maritime base for joint naval cooperation between China and the United States would also serve as a very attractive postwar military disposition.64

  This rosy picture, however, did not guarantee comfortable or smooth policy planning for the island’s future governance. In April 1944, the Taiwan Investigation Committee under the ministerial-level Central Planning Bureau was formed in Chongqing, and Chiang Kai-shek named Chen Yi, former governor of Fujian province, to head the committee. The appointment was significant, as it implied that Chen would very likely become the future governor of the island after its recovery. The reasons why Chiang chose Chen merit our attention here. Chen shared a similar background with Chiang: both were natives of Zhejiang Province; both had attended military school in Japan; both were alleged to have Japanese mistresses; and both had been associated with the Shanghai underworld.65 From a political point of view, during wartime the Central Planning Bureau was under the control of the Political Science Clique (Zheng Xue Xi), one of the largest cliques within the KMT party. Because the bureau was mainly responsible for planning postwar China’s territorial and administrative takeover operations, the Political Science Clique was in a favorable position to create its own postwar power base. This fact was not difficult to discern: Xiong Shihui and Chang Kia-ngau, two powerful figures within the clique, were entrusted to take over Manchuria, while Taiwan was made a satrapy of Chen Yi, another core member of the clique.66

  Pragmatically speaking, for over seven years Chen Yi had served as governor of Fujian, a province directly across the strait from Taiwan and the most important Allied base of intelligence and infiltration operations during the war. As one U.S. military intelligence report depicted, in the midst of the war Fujian served as both a useful site for Allied radio and pirate control stations, and an ideal base for anti-Japanese raids and smuggling into Southeast China.67 The geographical proximity between Fujian and Taiwan placed Chen in the best position among his fellow Nationalists to get firsthand information about the island. Before China’s war with Japan, Chen was one of the very few from the Nationalist hierarchy to have personal experience in colonial Taiwan. In 1935, Chen was invited as an honored guest of the Japanese colonial authorities in Taipei, where he attended the ceremonies and the Taiwan Fair celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Japanese rule over the island. Chen’s visit extended as far as Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Sun Moon Lake in the central island. Deeply impressed by the infrastructural and societal progress of the island, Chen publicly congratulated the Formosans on their “fortunate position.” After returning to Fujian, Chen submitted a detailed survey report to Chiang Kai-shek, in which he proposed that Taiwan’s economic development models should be applied to Fujian and other coastal provinces in Southeast China.68 Chen’s knowledge about, and experience in Taiwan were
sufficient to convince top Nationalist leaders that he was not only an old Japan hand, but also a new Taiwan hand.

  From the Nationalist government’s standpoint, handling postwar Taiwan affairs required political sophistication as well. The Taiwan Investigation Committee under Chen Yi included both mainland Chinese officials and a group of Taiwanese leaders who had a history with the KMT. Cooperation with these “half-mountain” elites, who were expected to serve as an important bridge between the island and the central government, became a key facet of Nationalist China’s postwar planning on Taiwan.69 However, when it came to such fundamental issues as Taiwan’s relations with mainland China after the war, reaching a consensus within the committee was not always easy. Right from the outset, the committee members had been struggling to define the island’s future political structure. In general, Nationalist bureaucracy mainlanders tended to regard Taiwan as a newly restored oceanic frontier that needed to be administered differently from provinces on the mainland. Given the island’s colonial experience, this group favored a specialized postwar status for Taiwan, believing that the island should not be treated as a regular province nor as a frontier region like Xinjiang or Mongolia. They argued that Taiwan’s exceptional status was necessary given the political uncertainties Japan’s surrender might bring about. In other words, there might be an American military operation on Taiwan leading up to V-J Day, and the island might be regulated under an Allied military government, preferably run by the Chinese Nationalists, for a transitional period. Under such circumstances, it was unlikely that the island could become a normal province.70