The first (350 Chinese characters in length) was written by the contemporary Minister of Defence, who argued that the incident was caused by the people’s hatred of the KMT government. This hatred was first encouraged by the Japanese government during its colonisation of Taiwan, and later was further enflamed by the Communists, who fabricated rumours to vilify the KMT government. The author intentionally used many emotionally charged expressions to manipulate the readers’ emotional responses (e.g. ‘their behaviours were extremely bigoted and brutal . . .’).