00:01What you saw wasn't just a reenactment.
00:05It's a window into one of Taiwan's darkest hours.
00:08This is a moment from the 228 incident,
00:11an anti-government uprising and violent crackdown that took place between February 28th and March 21st, 1947.
00:20Thousands of people were killed, according to estimates,
00:23but to this day, the exact number is still unknown.
00:27February 28th is now a national holiday in Taiwan.
00:31But to understand this deadly incident, we need to go back to 1945.
00:35World War II had just ended, along with Japan's 50-year rule of Taiwan.
00:41As the Japanese moved out, Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China came in.
00:45Many in Taiwan were excited for the new government.
00:48Banners lined the streets to welcome nationalist soldiers from China.
00:52But as history teacher Weston Wong Cooper, whose grandfather survived the tragedy, says,
00:58Chinese nationalist rule was not what they had hoped for.
01:02When it came to Taiwan, a lot of horrible things happened on both sides,
01:06like local Taiwanese looted businesses as well as Chinese soldiers.
01:12But the rule of law basically collapsed.
01:15All of this infrastructure, all of this discipline, and all of this wealth that was built up by the Japanese
01:21vanished within the two years.
01:24The government's monopoly on goods like cigarettes, combined with a high rate of unemployment,
01:29drove many Taiwanese to sell contraband products.
01:32People like Ling Chiang Mai, whose assault by nationalist officials, set off the series of events now known as 228.
01:40In these official records, you can see that they talk about it as,
01:45hey, these police officers were looking for contraband cigarettes,
01:52and local hoodlums gathered around them and pelted them with rocks,
01:58and the rocks hurt Ling Chiang Mai in the head, accidentally.
02:03Which then, one of the police officers was forced to open fire in self-defense,
02:09and accidentally injured a pedestrian.
02:13Without mentioning the fact that this was a 20-year-old college student standing in front of his house,
02:18and that he died.
02:20Nowadays, 228 is just a day off for some.
02:23But for many others, it's a painful reminder of three weeks of random arrests, killings, and executions.
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02:33When the police chairman said,
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