894A.00/1–1849
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Allison)
During the course of an interview on another matter Mr. Daridan25 raised the question of the future status of Formosa in the event that all of China became Communist-dominated. He expressed the opinion that if China should become Communist he could not see why Formosa should necessarily remain Chinese. He said that according to information he had received a Formosan Emancipation League had recently published a pamphlet in Tokyo looking toward an autonomous movement in Formosa, and he wondered whether or not we had any definite information regarding this matter. I told him that we did know of the existence of this so-called Formosan Emancipation League in Japan, but that we did not have any great detail regarding it. Mr. Daridan stated that the problem of Formosa raised many complicated legal and practical problems and he himself had been toying with the possibility of the creation at an appropriate time of an independent [Page 270] Formosa. I merely agreed with him that the problem of Formosa was complicated and that obviously the nations concerned would have to give considerable thought to it, but stated that so far as I was personally concerned I did not see exactly what the solution might be.
- Jean Daridan, Counselor of the French Embassy.↩