TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

Kaohsiung Harbor was, in the late twentieth century, one of the world's busiest ports, but back during the time of the Opium Wars, it was still a rather secluded and hard-to-find place. Based on the somewhat embellished "A Cruise in an Opium Clipper," this is the story of how a British merchant ship carrying chests of opium found its way to Takao -- modern-day Kaohsiung. Today, of course, opium is mostly illegal, but as you'll hear... back then it was quite popular, and considered by many to be no worse than alcohol. So, trim the mainsail, hard to starboard... and another barrel of grog! We're sailing to 'Ta-ku'!

After the Americans introduced baseball to Japan in the late 19th century, Japan took the game John Ross might call "a corruption of cricket" to their new colonial possession, where it became a hit. Surviving -- somewhat surprisingly -- the arrival of the Nationalists in 1949, baseball was officially ignored for the most part, which helped usher in a "Golden Age'' for the game and its rise to the status of "national game." But harnessed for political and material gain, baseball would be tarnished by a series of scandals that left fans unhappy and out of the stands. In the 2020s, however, there are signs of a revival... Could the "Guo Qiu" be making a comeback?

Taiwan lies at the heart of what's called the "first island chain," a boring name for a long line of amazing islands that stretches from Borneo to Russia’s Kuril Islands. The main island of Taiwan's closest neighbor is Yonaguni Island, part of what is today Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Formerly it was part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, itself a vassal state of first Ming China, and then Japan after a 1609 invasion from Kyushu. In 1879, Japan officially annexed the islands into its empire, and then turned their gaze to nearby Taiwan. The connections between Okinawa (the Ryukyus) and Taiwan are not well-documented, but there were many, both in the distant and recent past. Here are a few of those stories. ​

After unifying Japan’s warring states, supreme feudal lord Hideyoshi launched a massive invasion of Korea. In 1593, a year into this Imjin War of 1592-1598, he sent an envoy to Taiwan on a doomed mission to establish formal diplomatic and trade relations. In 1609 and 1616, the Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, hoping to establish indirect trading links with China, sent two larger missions to Taiwan. They were led and manned by Christian samurai from the island of Kyushu, which in the late 1500s had seen amazing success by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in converting the population. Both expeditions to Taiwan were failures to the point of farce, but the many misunderstandings and missteps make for fantastic stories. Get ready for some katana-flavored diplomacy, with generous servings of piracy, abducted envoys, and a lot of seppuku.

April 1997. Taiwan’s crime story of the century starts with the kidnapping and murder of a celebrity’s 12-year-old daughter by a trio of hardened criminals. In the seven-month crime spree that follows, there are more kidnappings, killings, rapes, police manhunts and shoot-outs. The climax comes in November when Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興), the sole survivor of the trio, takes foreign hostages; South African military attaché to the ROC, McGill Alexander and his family are held at gunpoint at their Taipei home for twenty nightmarish hours.

The high number of deaths during the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing season supplied a tragic plotline for books, movies, and documentaries. Taiwanese climbers did not come out of these accounts looking competent -- to say the least -- but the record may need to be corrected. Here's the story of Makalu Gao, who survived a death sentence: an overnight stay at the top of the world -- without food or oxygen -- as well as the tale of numerous heroes who helped save Gao, and others, over those deadly days in May 1996.

How do you get a famous, one-armed democracy activist -- who is under house arrest and being watched 24/7 by the authorities -- off of a well-guarded, militarized island? Hint: A team of brave supporters, some forgery, and a whole lot of chutzpah. Hear the conclusion of the tale of the amazing life of the late Dr. Peng Ming-min.

Dr. Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) was a Taiwanese pro-independence/pro-democracy activist who lived an exceptional life - losing an arm in a WWII US air raid, witnessing the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and being arrested for sedition after returning to Taiwan -- to name just a few of the amazing parts of his life story. In part one of this tale, we delve into his background and take you up to the day of his arrest in Taipei in 1964. ----------- UPDATE: Shortly after recording this episode, it was announced that Dr. Peng had passed away in the early morning hours of April 8th, 2022, at the age of 98. We offer our heartfelt condolences to his family - and may he rest in peace. Whether one agrees with all his political views or not, it's undeniable that Dr. Peng Ming-min was a powerful advocate for and champion of Taiwanese democracy -- the freedoms we enjoy in Taiwan today were fought for by people such as Dr. Peng, for which we are sincerely grateful.

Western-style adoption (as in a couple taking a baby home from an orphanage) has not been and is still not very common in Taiwan. But there are plenty of local ways kids find new homes here, including a now-abandoned, rather shocking "brother-sister/husband-wife" arrangement! And -- for a time -- quite a few girls, in particular, were adopted by American, Australian and European parents, who raised the children back in their home countries. Several of these foreign-raised Taiwan-born girls would become local media sensations when they returned to the island in search of their "mother-land."

In 1622 and then again in 1631, crew members (including foraging parties and shipwreck survivors) from Dutch ships were killed by the aboriginal people on Lamey Island, what is today’s Pingtung County’s Xiao Liuqiu (小琉球). The Dutch East India Company’s regional headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta) sent orders to the Dutch commanders on Taiwan to: “Completely depopulate the island... as a warning to others!” And this, sadly, was done. The Lamey islanders were killed or deported, mostly to Taiwan but some ended up as far afield as Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe. A grisly tale, but one that deserves to be more widely known.

It's 1895 and Formosa has officially become part of the Japanese Empire. Not everyone on the island is super happy about this, and bursts of violent resistance are put down by imperial troops as they march for the rebel capital of the self-declared Republic of Formosa, Tainan. Japan's General Nogi is losing patience. If Tainan doesn't surrender, he might just level the city with artillery. But a group of locals and foreign missionaries embark on a brave quest that would lead to the oldest city in Taiwan not being turned into a heap of rubble.

After the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, nations around the world began thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. Among them was China, then ruled by supreme leader Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan interrupted those early ambitions, but when the PRC successfully detonated a nuclear device in 1964, CKS stepped up efforts to develop nukes. This secret program continued after the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975 and came surprisingly close to success. Taiwan, however, would not end up joining the Atomic Club. Here's the story of how that happened: