戰後臺灣公產管理審議委員會的組成與運作（民國38年11月－42年9月）

Abstract

After the War, in order to investigate whether the transactions of the properties during the Japanese rule were still valid, the Council of Public Property Investigation was formed as part of the Japanese Property Administration Office. The council was initially established at the stage between May 1947 and Nov. 1949, but as there were no laws regarding the set-up of the council, no investigation could proceed. It was in November 1949 after the establishment of Taiwan Provincial Office of Public Property Administration, the Council was officially formed. The Council was in charge of investigating the transaction cases sent from the Japanese Property Administration Office. It was demanded that only after a transaction had been examined and approved could the property right be settled. In other words, whether the transaction was valid or not depended on the result of the investigation by the Council. This paper discovered that the functions of Japanese Property Administration Office were not clear enough to handle the situations(What situation?). It had been re-organized many times in the first few years after the War. Each version dealing with some of the problems at the time. The Council of Public Property Investigation during the period of 1949-1953 were mainly in charge of the cases of transactions in which Taiwanese purchased properties both public and private from the Japanese in October 1945. The Council not only ascertained the validity of many transactions in order to protect people's rights, but also turned the invalid cases to the Nationalist government and drew a distinctive line between public and private properties, putting an end to disputes concerning the transactions. After the investigation, any transaction could then be registered officially, and could further be sold or transferred. We can summarize the criteria for the judgment of the validity of any transaction as follows: 1. If the purchase was done before the deadline forbidding any transaction and with evidence of transaction, then it was valid. 2. If a contract had been drawn and was forced to be canceled because the government demanded it or because the seller and the buyer agreed to cancel it, the transaction would be judged as invalid. In this case, there was no issue of property right. But if the contract was canceled by official administration without the agreement of the seller and the buyer, then it remained valid. 3. On condition that the contract was signed before the War, and if the seller agreed that the buyer paid by installments, and yet the payment was not completed, then the case remained valid. 4. The Japanese laws and decrees concerning the matter were still applicable as a measure to protect the property rights of the Taiwanese people. For example, shrines and the lands sold by the Japanese government must be examined on the basis of Japanese laws and decrees. That is, if the Japanese government actually agreed to sell them, then the transactions would remain valid. As the Japanese forbid foreigners to purchase any land in Taiwan, any transaction of this kind would be invalid. Another example concerns the selling and the leasing of governmental forests and wilds. To sum up, in addition to setting up new laws concerning the investigation of any transaction, the Nationalist government also kept some of the original laws and decrees of the Japanese government. In other words, history is always continuous and inseparable. Whoever takes power must follow the footsteps of his predecessors.