Taiwanese girls at work on the Chiayi airbase, 1958.
Railway vendors selling snacks to passengers, Fenchihu railway station, 1960s.
The Post-mortem photo of Taiwanese painter Chen Cheng-Po (陳澄波) who was murdered as a result of the February 28 Incident -- a 1947 popular uprising in Taiwan which was brutally repressed by the Kuomintang (KMT).
When the 228 incident broke out, some of the fiercest fighting between civilians and government troops took place in Chiayi. On March 11, 1947, after a nine-day standoff between the military in the airport and armed civilians, Chen Cheng-Po and several other representatives entered the airport in an attempt to negotiate with the government for a peaceful solution.
The military instead arrested four of the representatives, including Chen, and publicly execute them in front of Chiayi train station without any trial on March 25. Chen’s dead body lay on the streets of Chiayi for three whole days until his wife finally ventured out and collected the corpse in person. At that time, she also hired a photographer to take picture of the corpse, and this specific photograph had been carefully hidden by his family at the back of Chen’s ancestral tablet for several decades.
Alishan Forestry Railway Chiayi Station, Taiwan, 1974.
Night Market at Chiayi, Taiwan, 1958.
photo: John Dominis