This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.87.235.159 (talk) at 22:22, 3 September 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 22:22, 3 September 2004 by 24.87.235.159 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The "Wushe Incident" (Japanese: 霧社事件 Musha Jiken) was the biggest and the last rebelion agaist Japanese colonial force in Taiwan which resulted in massacre of Taiwanese native group, Atayal.
The background of rebelion was Japanese policy toward Taiwanese native. Taiwanese tribal native were classified as "aboliginal" separate from Komin, Japanese (colnial) citizen. Forced resetlement, denail of tribal practice as well as forced labour and exploitation by Japanese police force fermented much of hostility toward Japanese especially Japanese police force.
The preleude of the incident occur in 1930, Oct 7th. A police officer named Katuhiko Yoshimura was patroling the area and he came accross a tribal wedding ceremony. Attendants of the ceremony invited the officer, however, according to the testimony of the officer "in an attempt to free myself from those unhyginic hands" he "accidentally" hit a tribal member twice by stick. The attendannts who felt insulted by the officer, in turn, severely beat up the officer.
The incident is said to have occured to preempt the retaliation by the police force. Before dawn the Atayal Chief Rudao Bai had assembled a group of 1200 tribal members and assulted an athletic festival held in Wushe (Musyaji) Primary School attended by many Japanese nationals. 134 Japanese nationals were killed, two Taiwanese, and 215 Japanese nationals were injured. They further raids on the police outposts, the postal stations and other colonial offices to aquired firearms and ammunition for an uprising.
The retaliation of Japanese was swift. Police as well as military deployed modern military arsenal and used rival Atayal tribes to to root out rebel Atayal. Tear gas was extensively used and in mid November the Japanese started using poison gas canisters dropped from aircraft on the lightly armed Atayal. On December 1, 1930 Chief Rudao Bai commited suicide. The uprising continued for another three weeks , lasting a total of 50 days.
According to Japanese record, 700 Atayal were killed or committed sucide, 500 surrendered. The next stage of massacre was attack on surrendered Atayal by rival Atayal who fought on Japanese side, which is widely considered to be guided by Japanese police force. About 200 were said to be killed. In the end, the remaining suvivors were rellocated to small reservation and were forced to live under strict supervision by the police. The police suppression on the participatns continue through out and many have disappear after being taken away by the police.
The area where the rebellion occured was supposed to be the shining example of implementation of Japane aboliginal policy and the rebellion shocked the Japanese colonial government. Soon, the policy toward native were revised. The designation of native Taiwanese was upgraded from Abologinal (蕃人 banjin) to ethinc tribes (高砂族) and classifed in rank with other colonial ethinics groups. This in turn proved to be mixed blessing. Once the Nationalist took over, the native tribes were considered to be sympathetic to the previous colonial power and the new rulers has instituted strict re-education campaine.