The island of Taiwan lies about 160 miles away from mainland China at a strategic crossing for access to the Pacific — a vital route, during WW II and the years preceding, for rubber, silk and oil. Japan already realized Taiwan’s importance when, at the treaty of Shimoneseki, they forced China to give up rights to the island in perpetuity. While the island’s citizens felt more culturally Chinese, they did enjoy under Japan rapid development and industrialization that lasted until the end of WW II, when a defeated Japan was forced to restore the island back to China.

On this day, October 25, in 1945, control over Taiwan was placed back into China’s hands. But it was no longer the same Taiwan — or the same China.

Under Japanese occupation, Taiwan enjoyed a measure of freedom, even if their own culture was suppressed under Japan’s. Their economy, too, was modernized, compared to China’s agrarianism. The freedoms were eliminated under China’s communist regime, and the specialists of Taiwan were viewed by the Communist Party with distrust. Taiwan’s more Western culture and separation from China proper made it the reluctant seat of the opposition party of China, and the island remained a somewhat separate entity, although nominally still a part of China under the “one country, two systems” rubric.