Taiwan Commemorates a Violent Nationalist Episode, 70 Years Later

A shuttered tailor’s shop, a nondescript bank, a former radio station.

Often lost in the busy hum of today’s Taipei, this is the time of year when these buildings reverberate with violent echoes from 70 years ago, when Taiwan’s modern identity was born.

The “2/28 Incident,” as it has come to be known, was an uprising that flared on Feb. 28, 1947. It soon spread to other parts of the island and was crushed in the massacre of up to 28,000 Taiwanese by the troops of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader of China. The revolt was followed by four decades of martial law and divisions between Taiwanese whose roots on the island predated the Nationalists’ arrival in 1945 and the Chinese mainlanders who came after.