The February 28 Incident at Kaohsiung High

On March 14 this year, at Kaohsiung High School in southern Taiwan, there occurred an incident of sharp political conflict which has been christened the "March 14 Incident." From the point of view of members of the school, it is the "Kao-hsiung High Incident."

The New Kuomintang Alliance of that time, whose members have now become the founders of the Chinese New Party, were stopped outside the school's gate. The main objection of the protesters was the Alliance's choice of Kaohsiung High, one of the main centers of conflict in the February 28 Incident, as the place to announce its political platform.

After the Kaohsiung High Incident had occurred, the first victim of the conflict was the school's mainlander principal, Shih Wei-hsia. Some people held that it was only because she was a mainlander herself that she could let the mainlanders use the school's stadium; moreover, the New Kuomintang Alliance was considered provocative by rallying in such a sensitive place. In this way, the usually blurred barriers between people of different provincial backgrounds were widened out. Normally the people of Kaohsiung are proud of the pupils of Kaohsiung High without making any provincial distinctions: they see them as the children of Kaohsiung. After the March 14 Incident, however, some pupils with mainland backgrounds but fluent in the Taiwanese dialect wondered: "Can it really be that now we are no longer Kaohsiung people?"

The February 28 Incident is already a past event of more than 40 years ago. Abundant source materials are streaming out and victims are still around, but the truth about the incident often gets distorted for the sake of politics.

Students practiced Kendo during the period of Japanese occupation, soccer after retrocession to China, and today they are crazy about baseball. The times might change, but the spirit is the same. （Reprint from 1931 graduation album supplied by Cheng Shui-ping）

Lack of information:

In Taipei in 1947, the incorrect handling of investigations by the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau into the private selling of tobacco led to the eruption of the island-wide February 28 Incident, the number of victims of which is still not clear today.

In recent years there has been much research into historical materials on the February 28 Incident, but there are still some gaps in the record. On the whole, one has had to rely heavily on word-of-mouth reports from people who lived through the incident to arrive at any kind of comprehensive understanding. This is true of Kaohsiung High's role in the incident. As yet nobody has made a special inquiry into this. Most information that has come down so far has been by word of mouth, such as that contained in the collection of materials compiled by the Historical Research Commission of Taiwan Province, which includes some accounts from survivors of the incident. It is from this collection that testimonies such as those of Hsu Cheng-chang and Ho Chin-pang, which follow below, are taken.

On March 2, 1947, a conflict began between a people's defense brigade and government troops. The brigade's headquarters were in Kaohsiung High, and Tu Kuang-ming was responsible for directing the student corps. According to Ko Chi-hua, a well-known English teacher who graduated from Kaohsiung High in 1946, there could have been around 100 or 200 pupils at the school.

The scars on the concrete of the old stadium wall are said to be bulletmarks left over from the February 28 Incident.

Kaohsiung High organizes a resistance corps:

According to the memoirs of Peng Meng-chi, the commander in Kaohsiung at the time who gave the order to attack Kaohsiung High, it was on March 7 that he ordered two battalions to attack the school's playing field with mortars. When the soldiers entered the school, they discovered that apart from a few mainlanders the crowds and students had already left. So no fighting broke out.

But Hsu Cheng-chang, who was born in 1911 and was a teacher at Kaohsiung High when the February 28 Incident occurred, says that at that time there was a mainlander civics teacher by the name of Feng who was beaten to death while on an outing to Alishan mountain. There were no casualties among the other teachers. But because the student defense corps opposed the army, many casualties were produced.

Ho Chin-pang, who was studying at Kaohsiung High at the time, remembers that when news of the events in Taipei reached Kaohsiung in early March, the shooting started. Native Taiwanese opposed the army outside the railway station, and intense fighting ensued.

The situation in Kaohsiung was chaotic. Some of the mainlander students from Kaohsiung High began to escape to mainland China, and when it was all over they did not come back to the school to study. "At that time there was a native Taiwanese keeping guard over the school's entrance. Inside were provisions, army blankets, tents and a congregation of Taiwan University and Cheng Kung University students discussing national affairs, reports of the fighting and the organizing of a self government council." Ho Chin-pang remembers that later on a number of students occupied the police station and got hold of 70 guns, then attacked the troops at the railway station. They had too few bullets and were beaten back. The teacher leading them was killed and the students escaped back to the school.

Did the March 14 Incident at Kaohsiung High stir up the provincial complex in the school?

How many sacrificed?

Su Shih-chieh, who graduated from Kaohsiung High four years ago, says that many of the students have heard a teacher there tell the story of how he managed to pass the examination into the school. It seems that this mainlander teacher always loved to joke that originally it was impossible to get into Kaohsiung High on merit alone, but because so many students were killed in the February 28 Incident, he managed to get in as a "replacement." The dubious authenticity of this kind of joke often makes the truth even more blurred.

Ko Chi-hua, who was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment after being labelled a "rebel," recalls that when the February 28 Incident broke out in Taipei the school carried on lessons as normal for the first few days. Later, after the establishment of a "revolutionary headquarters," government troops began to surround the school. Sporadic fighting broke out, but there were no casualties. Later on, Yen Tsai-tse, a student who had passed the examinations for the English department of Taiwan Normal University just the year before but had not yet gone to register, took over as leader of the student corps. In broad daylight he led students in an attempt to attack government troops at the railway station. He was killed before they had even attacked their target, and the students were scattered. A section who had hidden in a nearby hotel were killed by the pursuing soldiers. "This was one of the battles in which many Kaohsiung High students were killed. The numbers are not clear, but not as high as the several hundred rumored," says Ko Chi-hua.

No investigation or punishment:

Ko Chi-hua says that the Kaohsiung High students who were involved in the February 28 Incident did not seem to have been investigated and punished, and all eventually returned to their studies. "It is said that the Minister of Defense at the time, Pai Tsung-hsi, ordered that the students involved in the incident should not be investigated and punished, so nothing happened to them."

Wang Chia-chi, who replaced Lin I-ho as the principal in 1948, says th

at he did not receive any instructions or demands at the time that he must pay special attention to students who had been involved in the incident.

However, although the students were not investigated and punished, in the ten days after lessons were resumed, troops would carry out one or two public executions daily in front of the railway station. The students' bags were searched and there was a threatening air to it all.

Do the scars remain?

Within the campus of Kaohsiung High, the old stadium left over from the Japanese occupation is still preserved intact. At the time, if served as a base camp for the resistance army. It is said that on the walls there are still traces left by the bullets of the February 28 Incident. Yet interested students who have gone to look for the marks over the years have not found much. Some people say that when the incident was over, the principal hurriedly replaced the bullet-marked bricks. Yet Wang Chia-chi, who took over as principal, maintains, "I never came across those walls."

There are also those who say that the bullet marks were covered over with cement. The old stadium wall which faces the railway station does actually have some old cement marks now. Are they actually old marks left by patching up the ageing bricks, or are they the scars of war? Nobody really knows.

Just graduated from Kaohsiung High this year and smoothly passing the university entrance examination, Chuan Kuan-chang is one of the few people who have actually gone to look for the traces of the February 28 Incident at the school. But the confused information and rumors have left him baffled. He points at some old bricks with radiating marks and says, "I have heard that these are bullet traces." But he is not too certain. Most people do not even know that there are suspected bullet marks on the wall.

The truth still awaits verification:

In 1991, to get to the historical background of the February 28 Incident, Kaohsiung High asked Li Hsiao-feng, a teacher at The World College of Journalism and Communications who has carried out special research on this period of history, to give a lecture. In the meeting many students who were interested in the period asked questions. However, in their general import, most of the questions revolved around problems such as why the February 28 Incident happened and who was responsible for it. As for what really happened that year in the school, it was not too clear.

Graduating into the history department of National Tsing Hua University this year, Su Shih-chieh of Kaohsiung High says of her deep feelings" "That year when I heard about the huge sacrifices made by the former students of Kaohsiung High at the time of the February 28 Incident, I was actually extremely angry." However, aside from her anger, Su Shih-chieh recognizes that she must maintain her academic ideals. With her great interest in history, although she is a native Taiwanese, her feelings mean that she does not dare make Taiwan history her special area of research. "That would make me lose my objectivity," she says.

Speaking of the students of Kaohsiung High today, most of them do know that 40 years ago their predecessors opposed the government army on the campus. But perhaps it is just too long ago! More people do not particularly try to trace back the events of the past. In the end, the joint university examination is the most important thing. Is it not?

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The scars on the concrete of the old stadium wall are said to be bulletmarks left over from the February 28 Incident.

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Did the March 14 Incident at Kaohsiung High stir up the provincial complex in the school?