Word: formosae
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Everywhere the Japanese scattered sugar mills, pineapple canneries and factories to produce textiles, chemicals, paper and industrial alcohol. At Kaohsiung and Hualien they built plants which produced about 10% of the Japanese Empire's alumina and aluminum. By the beginning of World War II, Formosa was exporting more than Turkey or Yugoslavia, returning a yearly net profit of $100 million to Japanese investors and the Japanese government, had an export balance in trade with both China and Japan...
World War II shattered Formosan's secure and, by Oriental standards, abundant life. U.S. bombers hit all of the island's 42 sugar mills, put almost all of the rest of its industry out of commission. The bombers won the U.S. great face in Formosa by leaving the Japanese quarter of Taipei in rubble, damaging the Formosan section of town far less...
Wreckage & Reconstruction. At war's end Formosa was placed under Chinese control with the understanding that China would get final possession of the island when the war with Japan was officially ended. (No peace treaty with Japan has been signed.) Formosans, stumbling about in the wreckage of their economy, found themselves in the hands of a despotic and inefficient Chinese governor, Chen Yi. After he had provoked a brief, bloody rebellion Chen Yi was removed. As the faltering Nationalist government fled from South China, Formosa became the refuge of nearly 2,000,000 mainland Chinese. Formosans complained bitterly that...
...last two years Formosans have grown more contented. Nationalist authorities have done a good job of economic reconstruction. Formosa's overall production this year will be up to 75% of what it was in good prewar years. Formosan tenant farmers, who under the Japanese paid as much as 70% of their crops in rent, now pay only 37% to the landlord. Formosans have also been mollified by the improved morale of 500,000 Nationalist troops largely trained by V.M.I.-educated General...
...Formosa's 160,000 remaining aborigines are happier, too. They do little work. Some of them sublimate their head-hunting desires by taking monkey skulls; others make a play for the tourist trade with performances of native dances. And now that the harsh days of the Japanese Guard Line are gone, the aborigines are free to wander down to Taipei for an occasional glimpse of civilization...