The Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese cannot have experienced #WW2 more differently. When Japan was ransacking China, Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire, with some people actually enlisting in the Imperial Army on a voluntary basis.
If the modern Taiwanese are well-informed about the Japanese atrocities that took place in mainland China, it's only because the Nationalist regime that fled from the mainland after they lost the civil war to the Communists tried to drill those memories into our heads.
To the Taiwanese, however, the 228 incident, during which the incoming Nationalist regime massacred the locals, simply feels closer to home than the Nanjing Massacre, something that happened in a time when Taiwan was still part of the Japanese Empire.
Historically, Taiwan was never really part of China. The Chinese dynasties only had remote interest in Taiwan. Some mainlanders used Taiwan as a military base. The Japanese actually were the first group of people who tried to build Taiwan systematically.
So there's really no reason for the Taiwanese to hate Japan. The sort of anti-Japanese sentiment periodically inflamed in China simply does not work on the Taiwanese. If anything, the Taiwanese tend to think of Japan rather favorably and China rather unfavorably.
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