TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

This was a breakout year for Formosa Files, for which we thank our highly intelligent, "people of quality" listeners and supporters. John and Eryk wrap up the year with a "bits & pieces/Xmas hotpot" episode that includes everything from a …

Harold and Alice Focht. He was an educator, she came along to keep him away from the geishas (well, some said). Hear how two middle-aged Americans saw Taiwan at, arguably, the peak of the Japanese colonial era. Lots of civilizing …

This forgotten father of Taiwan democracy sacrificed his comfortable life (he came from a rich family and had a PhD from the US in Chemical Engineering) to fight for Taiwanese independence in the post-WW2 decades. In 1956 he was elected …

Japanese princes, Taiwanese activists, a Korean martyr, American generals and presidents, Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. It’s an action-packed episode with an amazing cast of characters. These little-known Taiwan-related assassination attempts and plots will surprise you. And, we …

It’s January 1944 and the tide of WWII has changed. Though it will be a long hard grind, victory is on the horizon. To “better inform the American public,” about the situation in the Pacific, NBC creates a series of …

Drawing on an account never before told in English, we visit Taiwan in the company of French war correspondent Reginald Kann. Upon his arrival in Taihoku (Taipei), he hurries down to the city of Chiayi to investigate the aftermath of …

This week we're looking at Tokyo, and telling a few tales that connect events in that major world city to people, places, and things in Taiwan. ポッドキャストをお楽しみください!

Writer Wu Zhuoliu 吳濁流 (1900-1976), sadly, never saw Taiwan blossom into a democracy. But he left us with some of the most important works ever written about 20th-century Taiwan. Among these is the autobiography “The Fig Tree”, whose early chapters …

Hear the tale of Japanese colonial officials discovering golf as the "new cool thing for elites" -- and ordering a course built in just a few hours. Plus, the story of Lu Liang-huan (呂良煥), a man from a poor family …

Here's something we bet you didn't know: in 1938, Soviet pilots in Soviet planes (disguised to look like ROC Air Force planes) bombed the main airfield in Taihoku (now the Songshan Airport 臺北松山機場 in Taipei City). We've got that story …

Remember those two Polish cargo ships and one oil tanker from the USSR seized by the ROC Navy in the 1950s? Well, the story has one highly interesting extra element we didn't have time to get to in the last …

In this special episode, we hear Eryk reading from chapter five of John’s “Taiwan in 100 Books.” The topic is 2-28, an event named after a date: February 28, 1947. It’s usually referred to as the February 28 incident, but …

The last Japanese "holdout" of World War II was an Indigenous Amis Taiwanese named Attun Palalin, but in Japanese Formosa, he was Nakamura Teruo (中村 輝夫). Palalin was one of a group of Indigenous Taiwanese who served in the Japanese …

Now that we're well into Formosa Files season three, your co-hosts add some background to stories we've told, try to clear up misconceptions about the ROC’s exit from the United Nations, make some “controversial” comments on Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and …

The SS President Hoover was a ship ahead of its time, with innovative engine designs, air conditioning in all cabins, and space for almost a thousand passengers. But just seven years after being commissioned, the ship ran aground just off …