(E-mail to OCTA Webmaster from Jeff Geer)
Dear Sir:
Jeff Geer 2/13/02
Cloaked in the
mantle of strategic ambiguity, the cession of Taiwan by peace treaty has been
silently retained in a limbo status. As the final political status of the Taiwan
territory is between the ROC and PRC, the retention of Taiwan under treaty
status during ongoing interim of these negotiations is legally as the
"secret colony" of the Pentagon under TRA. Is this illegal under the international laws of war?
Is this
protectorate status of Taiwan territory under the SFPT considered to be
constitutional? Read the book report: http://www.taip.org.tw/declaration/020107.htm
"Formosa Betrayed" By George Kerr, US Navy Civil Affairs Officer
/Foreign Area Officer to Rep. of China, c.1945. Read
the Book Online: http://serv.formosa.org/betrayed/
Following the official surrender of Imperialist Japan on the USS
Missouri in September 1945, the ensuing chaotic weeks following the taking of
the Japanese troop surrender in East Asia were being significantly compounded by
the Soviet looting of factories in the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo in
Northeast China. In the power vacuum left by the Japanese military surrender and
the late Soviet entrance into the Far East theatre, the Chinese Communist Party
was able to broadly widen their growing peasant revolution with Comrade Stalin's
blessings during the looming turmoil of Chinese civil war.
On October 25, 1945, George Kerr, US Naval Attaché to China (ROC)
was flown from the KMT wartime capitol of Chongqing to the Japanese colony of
Formosa. The Japanese colonial administrators, having their seat of government
in Taipei, had been preparing for the formal surrender of the island territory
since early September. Prior to late October, however, no Allied troops arriving
in Formosa had been duly authorized to deal with the Japanese government on
behalf of the US Commander-in-Chief, until the belated arrival of George Kerr
and the ROC entourage.
George Kerr was the son of a missionary family whom grew up to speak
both Chinese and Japanese during his youth in the Far East. Later he joined the
US Navy Reserve where he was trained in Military Civil Affairs and edited
volumes of CA regulations. He edited and compiled a voluminous naval area study,
which was a sheer encyclopedia of economic and cultural knowledge about Formosa
during the war in the Pacific. This task had been done in order to aid the
American occupation of Formosa and other Japanese territorial dependencies upon
the eventual surrender of Tokyo. The corrupt KMT officials of the ROC soon
discovered this American gift of 1200 pages embodying the area studies of
Formosa, paid for by the US taxpayer, to be far more informative and more
extensive than anything ever published in the Chinese language on the topic of
Formosa. In fact, it literally became their blue print for very efficiently
looting the Japanese industrial base of Formosa which was completely
unparalleled in comparison to anything existing on the China mainland at the
time.
On October 25, 1945, "Governor" Chen Yi of the ROC paraded
into Taipei proclaiming that Chinese liberation of Formosans had occurred and
the official retrocession of the Taiwan territory to China had been achieved on
that very inauspicious day. However, in the Chinese translation of the Japanese
Instrument of Surrender of Formosa, the ROC retrocession or
"reoccupation" of Taiwan, failed to note the joint occupational role
of the USA. It was US Naval Attaché George Kerr whom took note of this
illegal seizure and major discrepancy by the ROC. Thus he had the lawful role of
the US inserted into the English translation, which is also the more authoritative version in the
event of international dispute.
Under the Laws of War, the hostile occupation of Formosa had
unceremoniously begun under the joint authority of the ROC/USA. While the ROC
officials began looting the prosperous island of its economic treasures prior to
this day in October, the Japanese surrender being signed had not yet ended this
joint, foreign occupation of Formosa. In deed, it had only just legally started
on paper and the occupational status would remain a point of contention between
the Allies even long after the Korean War.
The Japanese government eventually signed a formal peace treaty in
September 1952 and it came into legal effect with the ratification of the US
Senate on April 28, 1952. It is extremely noteworthy that the Senate
ratification process of the peace treaty was also concurrently conducted under
the international laws of warfare with the USA being the paramount commanding
authority of the Allied Powers and "principal occupational authority"
of Formosa. As the "undetermined" cession of Formosa and the
immediately adjacent Pescadores Islands came under Article 2 cession of the
Japanese dependencies, the joint occupational authority of these island areas
did not cease. This SFPT cession also included the former US Trust Territory of
the Pacific. While the USA and UK signed the treaty, neither the Republic of
China nor People's Republic of China was ever allowed to sign the multilateral
treaty of 49 signatories. To this day, the laws of occupation have made the ROC
on Taiwan as the continuing defacto government of Taiwan without any legitimate
sovereign claims under peace treaty. The SFPT intentionally designates China
(ROC) as a subjugated administering authority of the Allied Powers. This limbo
status of Taiwan territory under the SFPT was the most enduring legal treaty
status of the George Kerr's "joint occupation" of 1945. This Kerr
policy legacy has been indefinitely continuing on long after he had left the
military service in 1945 to join the US foreign service. It is also the
constitutional legacy of the SFPT cession by which he most lawfully left the
people of Taiwan in "limbo" and such is still the bane of the China
policy for today's American policy makers as the "strategic ambiguity"
of Taiwan status.
To better understand the role of civil affair regulations like FM 27-10
Laws of Land Warfare and the Taiwan cession of San Francisco Peace Treaty, one
will find George Kerr's "Formosa Betrayed" to become indispensable to
fulfilling what the US Constitution expects from us. Such duties are not a
footnote of history as treaties are the supreme laws of the land for the legal
framework of Shanghai Communiqués, a legal status of
"mini-treaties", and Taiwan Relations Act. Paragraph 353 and 354 of FM
27-10 Laws of Land Warfare (e.g. Laws of Occupation) will clearly explain the
significance of the "limbo cession" of SFPT. Then US Naval Attaché
George Kerr's authoritative narration of historic events places these pieces of
the policy framework puzzle into their correct context of the laws of customary
warfare.
Your final military legal analysis might startle you to understand the
treaty and policy actions of George Kerr. Such closer examinations of FM 27-10
will better explain the aggressive posturing of the People's Liberation Army
over our "illegal intrusions" into the international airspace of the
Taiwan Straits and South China Sea as well as the increasing frequency of the
Chinese naval encroachments upon those "unclaimed" Spratly Island
cessions of the SFPT.
Regards,
Jeff Geer (E-mail:
[email protected])
http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/02/28/story/0000075546
P.S. Please widely and
liberally distribute this copyrighted and historically accurate email text to
other pertinent online Taiwanese guanxi networks. There are civil rights of
Taiwan status under the TRA because of the customary laws of war.
And Just Say, "No to Holbrooke and Fourth Communiqués!"