Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The following letter of April 14, 1947 was written by K.W. Dowie at the request of George William Mackay to Mackay's daughter Margaret in Canada. Mackay (the son of famed missionary George Leslie MacKay) wanted to get out news of what was happening in Taiwan after 2/28. Dowie had been a missionary in Taiwan 1913~1924 and was the architect of Tamsui Middle School; he was visiting Taiwan in the service of the US Navy after World War II. Not wanting to risk censorship Dowie wrote and mailed the letter after he left Taiwan. It is another first hand account of the murders after 2/28 and another reason why the name of Democracy Memorial Hall should never be changed back to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The letter follows.

The director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), Wang Yi, has given Taiwan the jitters by suggesting the opening up of the Taiwan Strait median line. Such discussions had always been held behind closed doors and bringing it out into the open challenges the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) policy of avoiding discussion of unification, independence or armed conflict.

The KMT has only itself to blame because it has taken satisfaction in its ability to maintain cross-strait peace since it returned to power last year and it feels it should receive full credit for the international acclaim over the detente across the Taiwan Strait.