Coming soon! The first major book from our new publishing venture Plum Rain Press (English translation): "Three Tribes in Dutch Formosa" by Dr. Chen Yao-chang 陳耀昌.

TAIWAN HISTORY - Formosa Files Episodes

May 9, 2024

S4-E10 - Radio Wars

John recently visited the National Radio Museum in Minxiong Township, Chiayi County. This led to some research on the use of radio for propaganda. Whether harnessed by the imperial Japanese military or the CIA, “Free China” …
Jan. 4, 2024

S3-E39 - Taiwan’s Most Famous Red Light District: Taipei’s Combat Zone

“Blatant sex capital of Asia, where vice is legal and the price is right,” was how one book described Taipei in 1969. Listen as Taipei-based journalist David Frazier takes us through the history of Taipei’s first foreign-ori…
Nov. 9, 2023

S3-E33 - Tales of Tokyo and Taiwan

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!
Nov. 2, 2023

S3-E32 - Hakka Author Wu Zhuoliu (吳濁流), Part 2 - Japan’s Surrender and 2/28

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…
Sept. 14, 2023

S3-E27 - When Taiwan (ROC) Blockaded China (PRC)

After retreating to Taiwan, the ROC government-in-exile ordered a naval blockade of China, which lasted officially until 1979. In the early years, it was much more aggressively enforced than one might imagine. There were int…
Aug. 3, 2023

Bonus Episode: 2-28: A Bad Beginning

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 s…
July 27, 2023

[ENCORE] The Empire's Last Solider (29 Years, 3 Months, and 16 Days)

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 J…
July 6, 2023

S3-E17 – The Wrongful Execution of Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶) and the Death Penalty in Taiwan

Among the too many killings committed in the lawless year of 1997 was the execution of 21-year-old Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶), a soldier convicted of a horrific crime after a forced confession. Chiang went to his death maintaini…
June 6, 2023

[Encore] Mao's Taiwanese Spymaster

The Taiwan News recently did a feature on Formosa Files (link below), and in the article, this episode from 2021 is mentioned. We thought we'd re-release it for any new "Formosa Filers" who missed it the first time around. T…
Nov. 3, 2022

S2-E32 - “Defectors from the PRC to Taiwan, 1960-1989: The Anti-Communist Righteous Warriors” - Part Two

Picking up on last week's conversation between the University of Southern California East Asian Studies Center's Li-ping Chen and author Andrew D. Morris -- a very special collaborative double episode with Formosa Files -- w…
Oct. 27, 2022

S2-E31 - “Defectors from the PRC to Taiwan, 1960-1989: The Anti-Communist Righteous Warriors” - Part One

Formosa Files is delighted to announce a very special episode in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s East Asian Studies Center and the New Books Network! The USC’s Li-ping Chen recently interviewed And…
Oct. 20, 2022

S2-E30 - The Mysterious Death in Taipei of India's Most Controversial Nationalist

Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, fellow Indian pro-independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose advocated taking up arms against the British. WWII presented a golden opportunity for this, and in an "enemy of my enemy" move Bose escaped fro…
Oct. 13, 2022

S2-E29 - The "Most Powerful Witness" to Modern Taiwan's History: Wu Zhuoliu (吳濁流) - Part One

Sadly, the bloodshed and sorrow that began on February 28, 1947 (228) is the foundational story of post-Japanese Taiwan. Wu Zhuo-liu (吳濁流), an ethnically-Hakka poet, writer, and journalist, was born in 1900 and died in 1976,…
June 9, 2022

S2-E15 - "123 Freedom Day" Taiwan's Shadowy Involvement in the Korean War - Part Two

The Korean War would almost certainly have ended much earlier but for the tricky question of what to do with Chinese POWs. The 21,000 Red Chinese soldiers captured were finally given a choice: go home to China...or go to "Fr…
June 2, 2022

S2-E14 - Taiwan's Shadowy Involvement in the Korean War - Part One

It's 1950 and a war-weary world is at it again. Communist China pours fuel on the conflict in Korea by sending in a quarter of a million soldiers. ROC President Chiang Kai-shek has, from the start, offered to send his Nation…