Unable to be reappointed outside the country, I was granted study leave to complete my dissertation. The letter came to me while I was collecting data at the Missionary Research Library at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. I shared the letter with Eleanor Kahn, who was doing research at the library at the same time. Judith and I had introduced her and her husband E. J. to Hsieh when they came to Taiwan a couple of years earlier. E. J., a long-time writer for The New Yorker, asked only if I could vouch for the authenticity of the letter. On April 24, the letter was published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times. He described his torture in the first weeks and the cases of others in the prison. He concluded his letter with these words:
We are confined separately in solitaire. A sound proof room with a close circuit television transmitter. There is no window or picture in the room. We are not permitted to “walk about” under the sunshine. We are unable to do anything without being watched by some guards. We are taken as a real active hostile threat to the KMT. I consider it is my moral duty to take the matter to you and let it not be buried in the dark room as the other cases were. At least it will bring me peace of mind.
The response in Taiwan was immediate. Although his captors said they wanted to kill him because of the bad publicity his letter generated, the torture stopped until the next time he tried to get a letter out. This one he got as far as the U.S. Navy Post at the American Navy Medical Study Center behind the hospital at Taiwan University. U.S. Naval Security intercepted Hsieh’s letter and saw that it was from a political prisoner. They turned the letter over to General Lo, Chief of the General Staff of the GRC, who ordered that the Hsieh be forced to reveal how he got the letter out. Hsieh got so sick from the torture that he had to be hospitalized. Amnesty International sent a doctor into the country to see Hsieh, but the doctor was not allowed to examine him. The doctor’s presence, however, seemed to be sufficient for the authorities to put Hsieh in the Taiwan University Hospital, where he was treated and then returned to prison. Years later, in his paper on the White Terror, Hsieh told this story to remind his readers “that the U.S. Navy not only patrolled the Taiwan Straight for Taiwanese security, but also defended Chiang Kai-shek’s martial law rule.”
Our youngest daughter, Katy, was born two months after we returned to the States. Her Chinese name was “Mei Sheng” (born in America). In our first year back, we met with Taiwanese groups wherever we traveled, wrote articles about Taiwan, and spoke wherever invited, including a Taiwanese rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 1972. Increasingly, however, we needed to find lives that weren’t based in Taiwan, a place we never expected to see again.
There was another reason why we pulled back from our Taiwan activities. When the board of missions tried to appoint us to teach at the Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines and learned that the government there would not give us a visa because our State Department had asked them not to allow us into the country, our sense that we had been blacklisted by our government was confirmed. We learned that the FBI was questioning all of my former students who had come to America to study. They asked the students if I was prone to violence, if I was a “bomb thrower.” I concluded that I was a liability not only to friends in Taiwan but also to the Taiwanese in the United States.
While I was finding another life, Hsieh and Wei remained in prison. On September 25, 1975, several months after the death of Chiang Kai-shek, Hsieh and Wei’s sentences were reduced to eight years and six months. They were released in 1976. Hsieh left Taiwan and sought sanctuary in the United States. Even there he wasn’t safe. His home in California was bombed and burned on separate occasions. The FBI, he said, suspected the KMT. Only in 1987, when martial law was lifted in Taiwan, did Hsieh return to Taiwan. Although forever scarred by his torture in prison, as a Congressman and private citizen Hsieh has worked tirelessly for reparations for political prisoners.
Wei, about whose experience in prison I know almost nothing, was also released in 1976. He married a high school teacher, Chang Ching-hui, the next year and they started a family. Wei was an editor of Formosa Magazine when the magazine called for a demonstration in Kaohsiung on Human Rights Day, December 10, 1979. The nonviolent demonstration gave the government an excuse to arrest the leaders. Wei was arrested three days later and imprisoned for another seven and a half years.
Chang Ching-hui and their two children were again without a husband and father. The principal of the high school where she taught protected her from the usual kind of harassment families of political prisoners faced, conditions that Wei spent much of his life chronicling from prison. He was released in 1987 and immediately became active in the still illegal Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). He was also elected to head the Taiwan Political Prisoners Association. As a DPP candidate, Chiang Ching-hui was elected to the National Assembly in 1991. In 1997 Wei published Taiwan Human Rights Report, 1949-1996.
In the fall of 1990, I applied for the renewal of my passport, which had expired sometime in the seventies. Not being able to take another assignment overseas, I hadn’t bothered trying to renew it. When I planned a trip with Katy and Liz to spend Christmas with Richard in London, it didn’t occur to me that there might be a problem. It had, after all, been nineteen years since my arrest and deportation. Weeks went by after I should have received the new passport. After repeated calls to the agency I finally spoke to someone, who told me my request was denied.
Donald Stewart, a former U.S. senator from Alabama who served on the advisory board for the Mission Resource Center at Emory University, where I was the director, enlisted the support of senators Howell Heflin of Alabama and Wyche Fowler and Sam Nunn of Georgia. The next day, an aide from Fowler’s office called me and asked, “What did you do in Taiwan?” Her tone was not reprimanding but incredulous. “There are so many ‘top secret’ flags on your file that I’m not sure the senator can help you.” I thought that was the end of the matter, but Stewart didn’t give up. Apparently, the combined efforts of the three senators made a difference. Sam Nunn’s heading the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations probably didn’t hurt their efforts.
No one else contacted me, so I had already given up on getting the passport. On the day Katy and Liz were to leave for London without me, a black limo pulled up in front of my house in Atlanta. True to the stereotype, two men in trench coats, hats, and dark glasses knocked at my door. One flashed some kind of government ID—I know, I should have looked more closely, but I didn’t—and asked to see my driver’s license. I fumbled at getting the laminated document out of my billfold because it was stuck to the plastic window. His impatience was palpable. “Let me just see the billfold,” he said. He showed it to his colleague and handed me a brown manila envelope. Saying nothing more, the two men turned around and left. Inside the package was a new passport, good for ten years. I packed my bags and made the evening flight with Katy and Liz.
I passed through Heathrow customs without incident. Maybe Taiwan was behind me now, I thought.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Best Christmas Gift
You were my father’s friend. I have heard about you from the time I was born.
— Wei Hsin-ch’i (2003)
“Someone named Michael Fonte who said he knew you in Taiwan called while you were in the meeting upstairs,” Jeni Earls called after me as I ran through the office on my way to the hospital to be with a church member before surgery. “He said he would contact you at home,” I heard her shout as the door closed behind me. It was September 25, 2003, some thirty-two years after we had been deported.
On the way to the hospital, I remembered. Michael was a Roman Catholic Maryknoll missionary in Taiwan while I was there. We had only been acquaintances in the sixties. I knew little more than that (at the time) his political sympathies had been similar to mine. When I got home, I read an e-mail inviting me to return to Taiwan to be recognized for my human rights activities three decade
s earlier. Other foreigners who had been blacklisted by the KMT for their human rights activities were also invited.
Sixty-nine days later, I was on my way to the “home” that in my wildest imaginations I had never expected to see again. Judith and her husband Jerry were also en route, as indeed were Liz, Katy, and Richard. As the plane made its descent into Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, I thought back to the day I left thirty-two years earlier. How and by whom would I be received? I knew Michael Fonte would be there (but I couldn’t imagine who else), and I wouldn’t be left to my own devices.
Michael’s was the first familiar face I saw as I cleared customs. He looked older than I remembered. How many times would I say that over the next week, and how many would think the same thing when they saw me? I heard my name called and turned to the mass of people around me. I didn’t see the face, but when I heard his laugh I knew it could only be Hsieh Tsung-min. We embraced and re-embraced so many times and so hard that I thought we might crack each others’ ribs.
“Come quickly!” he said, “There are others here to meet you.”
When we exchanged cards, I saw that Hsieh was the national policy advisor to the president. Hsieh drove to another terminal and waved to a young man standing inside. “This is Mr. Wei’s son,” Hsieh said as we got out of the car. I had no idea that I would see any of Wei’s family. Only in recent days had I learned that I would not be seeing Matthew. On December 28, 1999, during his usual early morning jog on the playground at Hsing-kuo elementary school in Chung-li, Wei T’ing-chao’s great heart stopped beating.
Round faced with gold-rimmed glasses and broad shoulders, he looked like his father. We had never seen each other, and he didn’t know my English name, but when Hsieh said, “This is T’ang P’ei-Li,” Wei’s eyes lit up.
“You were my father’s friend,” were the first words out of his mouth. “I have heard about you from the time I was born.”
I told him how sorry I was to learn of his father’s death and that he was one of the bravest men I had ever known. A dam of emotion broke and in a torrent of tears, I began to tell him of the times when his father came to the house, played with Liz and Richard, and helped me with my lectures.
Hsieh told me that Wei’s widow, Chang Ching-hui, was back in the arrival area, where she was meeting the flight carrying Judith, Jerry, and Liz. Through the large windows, I could see her escorting them past the customs desks and then to where we were waiting. Standing beside her son, she looked tall. I could not see any identification badge, but she was obviously had some authority in the airport. Hsieh later explained that she was chair of the Board of the Taoyuan International Airport Services.
Although it was late and there were no passengers around, our hosts didn’t rush to get us on our way to the hotel. It was a moment to be savored. Ching-hui arranged for an airport staff member to collect our cameras and take group pictures. I didn’t know when or if I would see Wei’s family again, and there was so much I wanted to know about what had happened to Matthew.
“Wei was in prison for much of the time that you were married and when your children were growing up,” I said as an opening, inviting Ching-hui to respond.
“The children and I are very proud of Wei,” she said. “If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” she smiled, “I will gladly marry him again.”
Hsieh delivered me to the Ambassador Hotel and reminded me that I would meet Dr. Peng Ming-min at lunch the next day. Peter hosted a lunch for Judith, our families, and colleagues I had not seen for thirty years—Don Wilson, Dick Kagan, and Wendell Karsen. As soon as I shook hands with Dick, he reached into his coat pocket and handed me some folded paper.
“I thought you might like to see this,” he said.
I opened it and saw that it was a recently declassified verbatim account of the Nixon and Kissinger meeting with Chou En-lai in 1972.
Since “lunch” was a twenty-five course Taiwanese banquet and I was seated next to Peng, there was time to talk. I had been a little nervous about meeting Peng again after all of these years. He insisted that we sit together, and as it must be with old friends, no matter how long the physical separation, the warmth of the friendship we enjoyed years before seemed to pick up where we had left it. When we addressed him as Dr. Peng, he asked that we call him Peter, the name we had given him when it was not wise to refer to him by his real name. Hsieh sat on the other side of me. The three of us talked with ease.
That evening we attended a banquet hosted by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a nonprofit organization established in 2003 during the exhilarating first months of democracy. The TFD was dedicated to the promotion of democracy and human rights in Taiwan and abroad, the first foundation of its kind in Asia. What we had been told would be a small party was a Taiwanese version of a surprise party, an awards dinner with over two hundred in attendance, including the heads of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, and the Legislature, as well as members of the Democratic Progressive Party.
The thirty of us foreign guests were presented with plaques recognizing our contributions to the struggle for human rights in Taiwan. The presenters were men and women who had been political prisoners during the White Terror. After the name of a foreign honoree was announced, the name of the presenting former prisoner, along with the years he or she served in prison, was announced. The two then approached the stage for the presentation. Some of the former prisoners still looked gaunt, though all of them had been released from prison by 1988 or 1989, when martial law ended. A number of these came to our table to greet us personally. One old man showed me needle marks in the tops of his hands where, during the torture sessions, he had been injected with a substance he still couldn’t identify. Each announcement—“[Name] who was in prison for [number of years]”—was like the tolling of a bell for the real heroes in the movement to bring democracy to Taiwan. Peter made the presentations to Judith and me.
On December 8 we had a meeting with another former political prisoner; this one was the first democratically elected president in the history of Taiwan. Chen Shui-bian had been imprisoned in 1985 for pro-democracy writings. While out on bail, he ran for magistrate in Tainan. He lost as most non-KMT candidates still did. After a post-election rally to thank his supporters, Chen’s wife, Wu Shu-chen, was run over twice by a truck and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The KMT said that it was an accident, but most Taiwanese believed that it was an attempt to intimidate Chen. If that was what it was, it didn’t work. Chen lost his appeal and went back to prison, but even though paralyzed, his wife ran and was elected to the Legislative Yuan. After the end of martial law, Chen was elected to the Legislative Yuan and later elected mayor of Taipei. In 2000 he was the DPP candidate for president, and because of a split in the KMT, 39 percent of the vote was enough for Chen to win the election. Although Chen was a democratically elected president, the KMT did not relinquish control of the legislature, the judiciary, or the huge bureaucracies.
Peter, who had returned from exile to Taiwan in 1991 and run unsuccessfully for president in 1996, was Chen’s senior advisor. Peter received Judith and me in his office before we went to meet President Chen and took us to a large parlor, where the rest of our group had gathered along with eight television crews. Judith and I started to take seats with our children in seats arranged in a semicircle, but we were directed to seats facing our group at the front. The president spoke about Taiwan’s road to democracy and freedom. He spoke interspersing Mandarin with Taiwanese, a practice we had noted in others. One of the Taiwanese members of our group, who had also been in exile, said that he saw the practice as linguistic evidence of an evolving Taiwanese cultural identity without the constraints of the one imposed by the Mainlander-dominated KMT.
President Chen thanked our group for the contributions we had made. Then, speaking directly to our three children and two others who had accompanied their parents, he said, “What your parents did for human rights in Taiwan took time away from you and changed your lives, a
nd so I thank you for your sacrifice as well as theirs.”
I realized that the remarks were scripted and what any good politician who had been well briefed on his audience might say, but I was deeply moved. Few children have the opportunity to be thanked by the president of a country for what their parents contributed to human rights.
As we started to leave, President Chen stopped me, took my hand and said, “I’m sorry for what your efforts on our behalf cost you in your own country.” We bowed and I went out the door, after which we were led back to Peter’s office. Peter said that he had not told Chen about my being blacklisted in the United States and didn’t know how he knew.
Exhausted but exhilarated and grateful beyond words, I opened the door to my room at the Ambassador. At the window, the face of the balloon Santa outside stared at me. You old rascal! I thought. What I received this evening was the best Christmas gift ever!
I turned out the lamp beside the bed and pulled up the covers. The only light was from the street as it highlighted the Santa bouncing in the wind. Then I saw it again—the downturn at the corner of the mouth, probably caused by a slip of the artist’s brush, but that turned the kindly smile into a sneer. Instead of comfort, I felt like the face was mocking me. I wondered if it was an omen, if the wonder of these days would be sobered by a reality as yet unseen. You’re only a damn balloon! I thought as I turned away from the window and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Surprises Still
Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Page 19