What we could have said but didn’t was that the government might have arrested us because of our involvement with Peter and his escape, but we were pretty sure that they didn’t know it. We might have said that we were engaged in aiding families of political prisoners, but we didn’t know if they knew that, either. We were not about to make things more difficult for Matthew and Tony. We knew that the government knew about the Japanese visitor with the gift, but we assumed that was a KMT setup. Harrison had heard from the American ambassador that we were importing explosives, but he didn’t believe him. We simply told him we weren’t. He said not to mention it unless asked directly. It wasn’t and we didn’t.
I don’t know why Harrison took the time to help us. Certainly he had access to us that no other reporters had, but he didn’t use any of the material we discussed that night in our room. We were deeply grateful for his counsel.
During the next two days, we held a press conference, had a series of interviews with journalists, and talked with our area secretary, Ed Fisher, by phone in New York. Ed had learned of our arrest and deportation from the New York Times. Within days of our arrival in Hong Kong, Bishop Nall and his wife returned to Taiwan. The bishop was anxious to see what havoc our expulsion had created among the Methodist faithful. The Nalls graciously allowed us to stay in their rented house on a mountain on Hong Kong Island overlooking the harbor and Kowloon. We had a few days to rest while the bishop and our area secretary decided what to do with us.
On March 9 we wrote a lengthy letter to our colleagues in Taiwan, which included the details of our house arrest and the charges we were hearing that the KMT was unofficially releasing:
Dear Friends,
We do not know what our expulsion will mean for you in Taiwan—whether it marks the beginning of a new level of pressure on the church or whether ours is a special case. Either way, you have the right to ask us what grounds the government had for expelling us. The government in Taiwan has chosen so far not to make any formal charges, but it has released several suggestions through “unofficial government sources.”
We would like to begin by making two negative statements: (1) We have never been in contact with or in the employ of any agency of the United States government. A local Hong Kong pro-Nationalist newspaper (Kuai Pao) charged in an editorial that we were agents of the CIA and were forcing Nixon’s two-China policy on Taiwan. (2) We have not participated in any acts of violence nor have we been party to any conspiracy to use violence. Again, through “unofficial government sources” this charge has been made.
Having said this, we want to make clear to you that we have done things that the government in Taiwan would consider “unfriendly,” the term that they used to us. We did not restrict our friendships to those people who supported the government or to those who were apolitical. Most of our friends would fall in those two categories, but we also had friends who were in various ways opposed to the government. The Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong all played up our supposed relation to the independence movement. At the press conference the question was put to us directly. Our response was that as far as we know, there is no independence movement as such existing in Taiwan. We believe there are probably many small, unrelated groups in Taiwan, often with quite differing views about what the island’s future should be and how it should be achieved. They are united only in the fact that all are opposed to the present government of Taiwan. That some of our friends were related to such groups is quite possible, although we never had any direct contact with or knowledge of such groups. Having friends who were regarded as anti-government, however, would certainly be considered an unfriendly act by the Nationalist government.
From the time we first arrived on Taiwan we felt that any ministry we had to its people demanded such wide contacts as we made. We are proud of our friends there, whatever their political positions. We tried neither to censor them for their views nor to lead them into other ideas. Most of you were, of course, well aware of our feelings about these contacts. We felt that we had to act as we did, and are willing to accept the consequences of our acts, even if these included false charges. We do regret, however, any pressure you who are still in Taiwan may receive as a result of our actions. We can only hope that such pressure will not materialize. But we are living in a period of great uncertainty in regard to Taiwan and its international relationships. Because the American government is so deeply involved in all that affects Taiwan, it is very likely that Americans living there will increasingly find themselves under pressures of one kind or another. Please know that our prayers and thoughts will be with all of you; we wish we could be with you in body as well as in spirit.
Closing,
Judith and Milo
We didn’t say anything in the letter that wasn’t true, but there was much that we didn’t say. Our first priority in talking about our arrest and deportation was not to make the situation of our Taiwanese friends any more difficult than it already was. Since the moment we had agreed to be politically active five years before, we often discussed with our Taiwanese associates the likelihood of a day when they would be made to suffer in ways far more severe than we would. Although we wouldn’t know the details for over a year, on February 23 that day had arrived for Hsieh and Wei.
Chapter Twenty
Some Not Fireproof
The Inquisitor manages every thing;
caprice regulates much, hope corrupts them,
so that in the straits in which they are placed,
there is but little room left for truth.
—Cicero (1st Century B.C.)
Hsieh T’sung-min, who we called “Tony,” was arrested on Tuesday, February 23, 1971. It was the day after Bud, Judith, and I met him in a coffee shop across the street from MacKay Hospital, where Bud passed a thousand dollars in U.S. currency to him for the families of political prisoners. Wei T’ing-chao, who we called “Matthew,” was arrested the same day. Like thousands before them, there was no announcement of the arrest, and there wouldn’t be for months. No charges were filed, and they wouldn’t be until a year, later when they were tried in a secret military court.
Torture, a calculated assault on a prisoner’s mind, body, and dignity, was routine for extracting confessions. “We have eighteen techniques,” an agent boasted to Tony. “I want information—true and false.”
Tony was not allowed sleep on the night of his arrest or on any of the following eight nights. Instead, he was hung in midair and handcuffed with one arm stretched over his shoulder. In a letter he wrote after he was able to slip out of prison months later, he described those first weeks:
They attacked me and kept me sleepless from February 23 to March 2, and from March 8 to March 13. Hysterically they screamed and howled… They handcuffed my hands on my back, knocked at my ears, kicked my stomach, blow my legs and beat my ribs fiercely. A jet of brown vomit flowed from my mouth. I felt a piercing pain in my chest, and was unable to walk for a week.
The inquisitor’s first questions were about Peng’s escape. How had Hsieh communicated with Ambassador McConnaughy for the American government to get Peng out of the country? They said they knew Peng had left on a U.S. military plane from the Ching Chuan Kang (CCK) Air Base near Taichung, which was used by the United States Air Force to support the war in Southeast Asia. They said they also knew that Peng had stopped in Japan and met with Yasuhiro Nakasone, head of the Agency of Defense.
Not only had Tony never had any contact with anyone from the U.S. Embassy, he didn’t know how Peng had gotten out of the country. In planning Peng’s escape, we had decided that we couldn’t involve Matthew or Tony. The risk to them was too great if the plan failed. The fact that it was successful didn’t remove them from suspicion. What his inquisitors didn’t ask him about was my and Judith’s involvement in the escape. Apparently, we were not suspects.
Since the story he made up about Peng’s escape didn’t make sense, the inquisitors moved to the bombing of the USIS in Tainan the previous October and the more
recent the bombing of Bank of America in Taipei on February 5. They told him to write down a story of how both incidents happened. He made up a story and gave it to them. The next day they came back, saying that they had given it to Chiang Ching-kuo, and he said that Hsieh hadn’t committed either offense.
The questions, asked during intermittent torture, were now about my and Judith’s involvement with him. They told Tony they knew all about Abe and the attempt to bring in potassium chlorate inside the Japanese cake. They said knew that the cake was to be delivered to me and then passed on to someone else. Hsieh said over and over that he didn’t know anything about explosive-making material to be delivered to him. All he knew was what we and Mr. Yén had told him that after Abe had been arrested. Tony had not been asked to receive and make explosives and neither had we.
The inquisitors quickly abandoned the Abe affair and turned to the bombing of Bank of America three weeks earlier. They said that it was probably done by an American businessman because many of them did business with that bank, and they suspected me. Tony said that I wasn’t a businessman but a teacher and never left the seminary. He said that Judith was pregnant and wouldn’t be able to plant a bomb. They insisted that Tony write another story— this one involving us. On the day or two before we were arrested on March 2, he wrote one that had Judith placing the bomb in the bank. For that he was rewarded with a week without torture.
On March 8, the inquisitors returned and said that his story about us was false. No one at the bank had ever seen the pictures they showed them of Judith. They would have remembered a pregnant woman, they said. The torture began again and continued without interruption until mid-March. On March 15, a local Chinese newspaper ran an ad taken out by Tony’s sister. In large type, like a headline, it said that Hsieh had been arrested on February 23 because of his relationship with Peng. Tony’s sister had been present when the police came to get him. When they searched his room, Tony feared they would discover the thousand dollars, so he turned it over to them with his other personal possessions. The arresting officers refused to give her a receipt. In the ad she demanded a receipt for the thousand dollars. According to Don Shapiro, a stringer for the New York Times who visited the sister after seeing the ad, her protest embarrassed authorities. They had been caught off guard by the ad—a news item would have been caught by the censors—and after no small resistence gave her a receipt. They warned her to keep quiet. One of them told her that the money had come from “Reverend Thornberry.”
From our safe haven in Hong Kong, we were unaware of what was happening to Tony and Matthew and the ripples our arrest and deportation were causing in relations between Taiwan and the U.S. Years later, when some State Department materials were declassified, the picture became clearer.
In a memo preparing the head of the U.S. State Department's East Asia section for a visit from GRC Ambassador Chow in Washington on March 4, Director, Office of Republic of China Affairs, Thomas P. Shoesmith said that the GRC “claimed to have evidence, including tapes of conversations Thornberry allegedly has had with Taiwanese over the past year, that Thornberry had been actively encouraging Taiwanese to engage in violent action against the government and other subversive activities. In one taped conversation Thornberry allegedly offered to assist in obtaining explosives.”
Shoesmith said that they had checked with some Foreign Service offices that knew us and everyone agreed that we were “actively engaged in encouraging and supporting Taiwan independence activities, although their remarks do not suggest they believe the Thornberrys would have gone as far as GRC evidence suggests.” Such evidence was not shared with the U.S.
The problem, Green said, was that the stories in the Washington Post and New York Times were portraying the story “as an expression of GRC dissatisfaction with the U.S.’s China policy…” Although the U.S. was urging the GRC to clarify the basis of its actions in arresting us, the only response was that “we did not conform to the laws prescribed for the conduct of foreigners residing in China.” If the GRC refused to release more specific charges, Green said, the incident “would evoke strong adverse public and Congressional criticism of the GRC.”
In a memo on March 9, Shoesmith reported on the meeting with Ambassador Chow. Chow had threatened “serious consequences,” suggesting anti-American demonstrations or actions against American personnel and property in response to any other “subversive activities” by Americans. Our case, lamented Shoesmith, could “seriously damage relations at a particularly inopportune time.” He worried that there would be other incidents: “There is no shortage of American graduate students, missionaries et al. with both ardent views on Taiwanese independence and a willingness to conduct themselves as if they were fireproof moths.” Shoesmith concluded that the U.S. was in for “a period of general stiffening of our relations with the GRC.”
To contain Congressional criticism, Green suggested that the unofficial charges be shared with representatives and senators. He also said that the nature of the charges should be “disclosed to his parent organization, the United Methodist Church.”
On March 11, while we were staying in their house in Hong Kong, Bishop Nall met with his old friend Ambassador McConnaughy in Taipei. The Ambassador emphasized that the information he was providing was on a “very confidential basis and not for publication.” He also said that the U.S. State Department was in no position to evaluate the evidence, which they had not seen, and thus could not pass judgment on the charges. This caveat notwithstanding, the American ambassador said that the GRC claimed to have “incontrovertible evidence” of sedition and violence against the GRC. He said that I had been “in secret contact with Peng Ming-min both before and after his escape and had served as a channel for clandestine messages between Peng and his friends and relatives on Taiwan.” This charge was true. What the absence of any reference to my role Peng’s escape suggested was that neither the GRC nor the U.S. suspected such involvement.
McConnaughy mentioned the cake incident, saying that I “apparently was involved in some way in an effort by Abe to bring potassium chlorate into Taiwan” and that Abe had confessed that he was “bringing the potassium chlorate and letter to Thornberry.”
Then, the ambassador said that the GRC had told him that they had taped conversations in which I made incriminating statements about how I spent four hours a day with Taiwanese students urging them to overthrow the GRC, how I advocated sabotage against military and police vehicles, and how on January 16 I told “listeners that the situation was favorable for an uprising” and that if dynamite was needed from abroad, I could get it. Of course, neither Ambassador McConnaughy nor any U.S. personnel were allowed to hear any tapes.
McConnaughy closed by saying that “the evidence was sufficient to bring Thornberry to trial on charges carrying a severe penalty,” but the decision not to do so was taken out of regard for U.S.-GRC relations.
Although we were staying in the Nalls’ house in Hong Kong while this interview took place, I would not have an opportunity to discuss the charges with Bishop Nall. We were called back to the U.S. before the Nalls returned to Hong Kong. The bishop believed the charges and passed them on to the board of missions as the truth, not with even the caveats that the American ambassador had made. I have been and will be forever grateful that our area secretary, Edwin Fisher, and the leadership of the General Board of Global Ministries chose to believe us and not Bishop Nall.
Ed Fisher was ready to appoint us for work in another part of East Asia. He considered not bringing us back to the U.S. but simply assigning us somewhere else in the area. Chung Chi College in Hong Kong invited me to teach there. Unfortunately, before the Hong Kong government could act on our request for visas, they informed the board that the U.S. State Department had requested that Hong Kong not grant us visas. The board had little choice but to bring us back to the United States.
Almost thirteen months after they had been arrested, Hsieh and Wei were secretly tried and sentenced, Hsieh to fifteen years and
Wei to twelve. In prison, as Hsieh put it, there were “two societies”: the formal administration and the prisoners’ underground. Prisoners who distributed food and cleaned the prison cells provided some of the opportunities for communication with other prisoners. Hsieh arranged for the working prisoners to sweep up small notes from the floor and deposit them in other cells. Floor sweepings were returned to their cells with information on the cases of other prisoners. Hsieh and Wei not only gathered information about hundreds of their fellow prisoners’ families, they also managed to get the lists out to us to send to Amnesty International. Through that underground, the information they were able to gather was not only from the political prison they were in but also often from other prisons around the island.
Now confined under greater security than before, Hsieh still tried to get the word out about what was happening to him and others. Months went by and he couldn’t find a way to get a message out. The prisoner in the next cell was a Japanese citizen named Kobayashi, who had written a book about Taiwanese independence and made the mistake of visiting the island. The man was imprisoned for about four months. When he was released and sent back to Japan, he carried a letter from Hsieh in English on shreds of thin paper hidden in his clothing.
On March 29, 1972, an anonymous “friend” in Japan sent a copy of the letter to me with a cover letter addressed to the “Editor.” The friend had typed the letter but had also sent a copy of Hsieh’s hand-written original. A hand-written note scribbled in red ink on a torn piece of paper said that the original letter would be sent later. I never received the original, but from the copy I could see that the handwriting looked like Hsieh’s, and the content left no doubt in my mind that he had written it. It confirmed my fears about the horrors that Hsieh and Wei had been enduring in the thirteen months since their arrests. But the letter also confirmed that at least Hsieh was still alive.
Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Page 18