CHAPTER 1, 1945: The  Imperial Withdrawal

Beginning in late May 1945, Formosa began to slowly drift away from the command structure of Tokyo. Communications with the mainland were restricted under the pretense of security concerns, and officers loyal to central command were reassigned, dismissed, or simply disappeared. A secret planning bureau, Unit Hozen (Unit Preservation), was established within the Governor-General’s Office, responsible for drawing up the logistics of resource stockpiling and plans of long-term self-sufficiency. While the rest of the Empire burned, Formosa rapidly transformed into a fortress. Existing infrastructure was expanded or reoriented: mountain tunnels, colonial railways, and even pre-1895 fortifications were rebuilt or repurposed. Entire hillsides were hollowed out for fuel and ammunition depots. Subterranean caches of weapons, medical supplies, and rations were sealed in concrete bunkers, designed to last a generation.

When the atomic bombs fell in August 1945 and the Emperor’s surrender was announced, Andō was, to say the least, surprised. He expected that Japan would fight to the bitter end, which would allow him to accumulate more resources while the mainland burned. This, however, did not stop him from activating the final phase of Shukkin-Go. He refused the surrender order, labeling it a psychological decoy by the Allies. In the following weeks, many other armies surrendered, but some part of it also decided to disobey central command. From Korea, China, and even Manchuria, battered remnants of the once-expansive Japanese war machine began making their way to Formosa through somewhat controlled waters where allied ships didn’t dare to sail. These evacuations were carried out under the cover of the chaotic situation in Asia post-surrender. Some ships, rather than returning to Japan, diverted their routes to smuggle elite officers and their families to the island. Others traveled via fishing boats (often operated by Chinese civilians) across the Formosan Strait, while select fighter pilots decided to make the risky journey using their planes (44 of them were successful).

Over the course of several weeks, nearly 120,000 individuals made the journey before the island got naval blockaded and effectively quarantined in November 1945. These included loyal soldiers, military police, colonial administrators, engineers, doctors, and civilians from Korea fanatically devoted to the empire, or fearing the allied occupation. They brought with them as much military equipment, medicine, and food as they could carry: Type 38 rifles, machine guns, crates of ammunition, radios, printing presses, and canned food. The island had already been transformed into a Fortress, and the arriving “refugees” were swiftly integrated into the state that no longer claimed to serve Tokyo.

In the chaos of the surrender and occupation of mainland Japan, the refusal to surrender of the Imperial military in various parts of Asia, the onset of the Cold War, and the need to manage Communist incursions in China, neutralizing Formosa was simply not a priority. Intelligence analysts dismissed the few reports of larger-scale movements or mass evacuations as rumors. By the time the Allies finally managed to eradicate the prolonged resistance of Japanese troops in other parts of Asia, Formosa had already sealed itself off. Its ports were fortified, its radio signals silenced, and its forces ready for the final battle. The allies couldn’t do anything without further spilling of blood except sealing the island until it, as they thought, collapses from within.

CHAPTER 2, 1946-1971: Assimilation and Annihilation

After the dust had settled, Formosa, under the leadership of Governor-General Rikichi Andō, witnessed not a political reorganization, but a catastrophic, systematized campaign of what modern-day historians call “assimilation or annihilation”. The imperial regime-in-exile, desperate and ultra-nationalist, saw the non-Japanese population of Formosa (Han Chinese, Hakka, Hoklo, and indigenous Austronesian groups) not as civilians to govern but as contaminants to be eradicated or assimilated.

What ensued was less of an assimilation campaign and more of a cold, meticulous genocide disguised as said assimilation. The earliest phase was executed with brutal efficiency. Suspected anti-Japanese civilians, KMT sympathizers, and traditional Chinese community leaders were either shot on mass or disappeared into hastily constructed internment camps hidden in the deep tropical forests located inland. Entire aboriginal villages were burned to the ground, elders and cultural leaders executed publicly to demonstrate the fate of “disloyalty to the empire”. Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, and other tribal languages were banned. Speaking them in public could result in beatings, arrest, or death. The Kempeitai, reconstituted as the main policing force, operated under absolute authority, empowered to detain, torture, and kill without oversight.

Identity registries were implemented, with residents forced to obtain a small document used for identification, called a “Loyalty Card”. The information in the document included: name (or for some a new, adopted Japanese name), place and date of birth (if known), and a small place for stamps, where each citizen had to annually confirm possession of said document. Those who lost this document (and didn’t notify the authorities before the annual inspection) or resisted obtaining it were marked for “re-education”, which often meant deportation to labor camps, where starvation, disease, and ideological torture were common. Official censuses ceased recognizing ethnic distinction, classifying everyone as Japanese, rewriting history so thoroughly that the post-war generations grew up never knowing their families had once spoken different languages, prayed to different gods, or carried different names. Indigenous belief systems were cannibalized and absorbed into Japanese folklore, rebranded as obscure kami worship, erasing their original significance. Citizens were forced to wear Japanese attire, and denounce any remaining Chinese heritage, with family shrines being razed, and ancestral grave sites either destroyed completely or forcibly converted into state-approved Shinto memorials.

Between 1946 and 1952, an estimated 1,100,000 people were killed, disappeared, or died from repression. By the late 1950s, as the regime sought stability, direct mass killings were replaced by slower suffocation of identity. State-run education indoctrinated children from birth in myths of the old Empire and how “one day the mainland shall be reclaimed from the claws of the western imperialists”. Children were taught to snitch on their parents if they suspect them of “disloyalty to the empire”, often given state-issued rewards to students that did so. In 1953, a youth organization called “Little Kempeitai” sought to indoctrinate children, blending after-school activities with propaganda. Sending kids to these technically wasn’t mandatory, but families who refused were often subjugated to smaller food rations and closer surveillance.

Agricultural conditions, already tenuous due to the loss of fertilizers and fuel-dependent machinery, entered total collapse by 1966. The regime, in its desperation, attempted to impose archaic farming techniques, but the knowledge was fragmentary, poorly taught, and unsuited to the varied microclimates of Formosa’s mountainous terrain. Land failed to yield crops. Rivers were diverted disastrously, leading to floods. A pair of such between 1966 and 1968 annihilated rice fields on the island. The regime refused to declare a famine, but classified documents described “caloric attrition rates beyond sustainable thresholds”. People began eating boiled tree bark, fermented leather, and household pets. There were even cases of cannibalism.

During this period, what limited food and medical rations remained were distributed unequally. Despite technically not recognizing other ethnicities, the pre-war hierarchy silently survived. Ethnically Japanese citizens were prioritized in all major resource allocations, receiving first access to rice, preserved fish, dried vegetables, and scarce medical supplies. In contrast, communities composed primarily of Han Chinese and indigenous Formosans were systematically deprived, left to starve slowly in increasingly desolate regions. In many places, death came not with bullets, but with months of deliberate starvation, untreated disease, and forced labor under collapsing infrastructure. An estimated 3,200,000 people died between 1965 and 1970.

CHAPTER 3, 1971-1976: New Paths Through Old Ways

The younger, disillusioned generation, many born on Formosa or in their teens during the surrender, that had grown up amid famine, propaganda, and fear, no longer dreamed of returning to Tokyo, but of change. It was within this atmosphere of quiet desperation that a group of mid-ranking military officers and bureaucrats began plotting to overthrow the regime. On the 12th of October 1971, under cover of a routine military exercise, these officers launched a swift, but bloody coup. Governor-General Ōta Sadamichi and several senior officials were arrested before dawn, put under military court, and executed for “treason”. In the following weeks, similar fate found mid-ranking officers that were suspected of sympathising with the old regime got their homes raided and executed on sight, often alongside their families. By the end of the year, the last living architects of the original Shukkin-Go plan had been removed from power, and in their place, the coup leaders established the Council of Spiritual Rehabilitation, a new ruling body that claimed not merely political authority, but medium casting the wishes of the gods over the nation. The Council adopted a new, radical, national doctrine in January 1972 called Ikikata No Hana (Way of Living Bloom). ← You can read more about Ikikata No Hana on the last pages of this doc.

In the years immediately following the coup, sweeping changes were implemented across every level of society. The centralized, militarized state was broken into a web of semi-independent agricultural communes, each overseen by appointed “moral custodians”. These were expected to become self-sufficient, relying on hand tools, crop rotation, and other old techniques. Heavy industry was further dismantled and its remnants repurposed or relocated. Old factories were stripped from machinery and turned into “Agrarian Academies”, teaching the locals on how to effectively manage the crops.  The only semi-industrialized places that remained were the cities of Taihoku and Takao. Factories that remained were nationalized, operating only for the production of farming tools, medicine, and basic textiles. Military conscription remained, but was largely symbolic, focusing less on military training and more on patrolling the coast and guarding the newly established Zones of Exclusion.

By 1975, the fruits of these changes could already be seen. The citizens, finally not starving and no longer living in fear, already fell in love with the new ruling body, actually believing it must have been an intervention from the gods.

The incident galvanized internal unity. State media declared it a “divine test”, a moment when the “sacred path” had been tested and found righteous. Declaring the war “Over in physical, but not spiritual realms.”, in the eyes of its people, the council's legitimacy soared, and had become eternal, despite foreign recognition remaining non-existent.