'Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
—Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1823)
Nothing can take away the joy of those days near Christmas in 2003, but there have been events in the intervening years that have taken me back to the expression on the face in the window. In 2008 President Chen finished his second term and Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT’s candidate, won the election.
I was bewildered by how that could happen to the newest and most vibrant democracy in Asia. Charges of corruption made against former President Chen and, some said, a weaker DPP candidate, allowed the KMT to win. I could hardly believe what I read in the news, but, of course, the KMT was and is one of the wealthiest political parties not just in Taiwan but in the world. It never relinquished control of most of the government while a non-KMT President was in office, and the party controlled much of the electronic and print media on the island. While I was there in 2003, a young KMT official said in response to my presentation, “We are not the same KMT we were when you were here.” “I hope not,” I said. But can a leopard change its spots? I wondered as I walked away.
Invited back to Taiwan in the fall of 2008 to participate in a conference honoring Peng, Hsieh, and Wei on the forty-fourth anniversary of their arrests in 1964—an event many cite as the beginning of the democratization movement in Taiwan—I was asked to speak about my association with the three men. The conference was held in the old Jingmei Military Detention Center, a political prison south of Taipei that was turned into the Taiwan Human Rights Memorial Park in 2007. A Taiwanese student took me on a tour of the prison and explained how it was until martial law ended in 1989. He pointed to the roof where the clothes were routinely hung on a barbed wire fence to dry, making it clearly visible from inside and outside. The pants and shirts were hung upside down as “a signal from those working in the laundry,” my guide explained, “that a prisoner had been executed.” Clothes were often hung upside down, the young man said.
A water fountain and flowers in the stark center of the prison created an image of hope, but the news that the KMT was going to take over the park tarnished that image. Since 2008, the KMT’s Council of Cultural Affairs has begun a campaign to erase this memorial and other unpleasant reminders of their unsavory past. Instead of a museum honoring the victims of the White Terror, the old detention center is now an art center.
Hardly more than a month after returning from Taiwan, I learned that former President Chen Shui-bian was arrested and taken from his home in handcuffs. He was subsequently found guilty of illegally sending money out of the country. The truth of the charges against Chen may never be known because his trial was fraught with irregularities as acknowledged and protested by international legal scholars. Chen’s greatest sin as far as the KMT and Beijing are concerned, and for which I am convinced he received a life sentence, was his unapologetic advocacy for a free and independent Taiwan.
The conviction of Chen and what appears to be the not-so-subtle handing over of Taiwan to Beijing by the current KMT government is not the only surprise I have received since I saw Santa’s smirk in the window on that December night in 2003.
With Ma as President and the KMT in full control of the government again, Dr. Peng is out of a job. At the age of eighty-eight, he is now retired with time to write his memoirs. Since my visit to Taiwan in 2003, Peter and I have stayed in regular contact. He has been kind enough to read and comment on this manuscript.
When drafting the account of the Abe affair that resulted in our arrest, Peter and I discussed at length whether it had been a setup by the KMT or a plan by supporters of Taiwanese independence outside to send Hsieh potassium chlorate that was discovered by authorities. I discounted the latter possibility because I couldn’t believe that supporters of Taiwan independence would send me the material without mine or Hsieh’s consent.
One person who might have known was Yén Gen-ch’ang, head of the printers’ union and with whom Abe left the “gift” for us, but Yén had died three years before. As we talked, Peter suggested that one man might know: Munakata Takayuki. He was on the Japanese WUFI (World United Formosans for Independence) staff and worked with us to get Peter out of the country. Since I speak no Japanese and Munakata speaks no English, I had not considered asking him, even when I met him in Taiwan in 2003 and in 2008. Peter agreed that if the WUFI was involved in such a plan, Munakata would likely know. I made up a list of questions that Peter translated into Japanese and faxed to Munakata.
Peter didn’t hear from Munakata until June 4. He translated Munakata’s letter and sent it to me. The words were on the screen in front of me, but my mind refused to process what Peter had written. Munakata wrote that he and Peter had hatched the plan. Munakata quoted a letter from Peter dated December 10, 1970, saying, “Please just say give the chemical to Tony through Japanese friend, the details I have already told you.” Concerned about moles in the WUFI, the project was known only to Peng and Munakata.
Munakata confirmed details of sending the potassium chlorate by a courier named Abe. Abe arrived in Taiwan February 16, 1971, and met with Mr. Yén at his home. According to Munakata, Abe had no idea what was in the cake, but he knew that inside was a sealed letter on very thin paper. The letter had a short paragraph in English for me that read,
This package is for Tony from Peter’s Japanese friend; please keep it until Tony needs it.
The rest of the letter was in Japanese and addressed to Tony:
This is potassium chlorate, needs sulfuric acid to make explosives. Can you get sulfuric acid? If not, we can bring it in. We will tell you how to make it later. If you need anything else, tell us through Peter or contact us directly.
The letter was signed, “Munakata.”
Munakata said he had no idea who “Tony” was, only that he was someone who had Peter’s complete trust. Munakata told Abe that if he was in danger of being arrested, he should burn the letter or swallow it.
Abe told Mr. Yén that he had a gift for “Thornberry.” Yen tried to arrange a meeting with me, but because I was unavailable he invited Judith to have lunch and pick up the gift. Mr. Yén had breakfast with Abe at his hotel on the morning of the February 18 and asked him to come for lunch with Judith. Abe was arrested at ten o’clock that morning. When he was interrogated, the officer told him that both Mr. Yén and I had been there and confessed. They gave Abe a knife and had him cut the cake. A substance that looked like sugar poured out. Abe said he didn’t know what the substance was. The officer asked him if he had read the letter that was with the cake. Abe said, “The letter was sealed, so I did not read it.” The officer replied, “It is explosives.”
Munakata confirmed that Abe was released on Wednesday, March 3 (while we were under house arrest) and sent back to Japan. The “explosives” was a chemical easily available at any drug store in Japan, so the Japanese authorities decided that Abe had not broken any Japanese law. They took his statement and filed it.
At the end of the translation of Munakata’s letter, Peter added this note:
Could you imagine my shock and surprise to discover that I myself was actually one of the culprits! I draw total blank and have not a faintest recollection of what Munakata is talking about. But since he said so, it must be so, and I owe you infinite apologies for what happened to you and Judy.
There has been voluminous correspondence between me and Munakata before and after my escape in 1970. All of them are kept in Japan and in Portland. I will search through them when I get back to Portland.
I am trying to recall what the thinking of mine and others who were involved in the independence movement was at that time. It is true at that time there was unanimous consensus that some kind of violent incidents must happen to shake up the Taiwanese people and KMT to prove that not everything is alright in Taiwan.
Though unbelievable as it may sou
nd, it is quite possible that I was involved in some kind of violent plot. It is hard to explain the mentality or feelings of those who were fighting, at risk of their freedom or life, against the KMT of that time and their hatred of the regime.
As I said I have absolutely no recollection of this matter, but it must be the truth Munakata is telling. After I go through those correspondences of 40 years ago, I hope I can give you more details of the “plot”.
Again please forgive me for all the trouble inflected on you and Judy.
After receiving Munakata’s letter, Peter reviewed the correspondence and found that he had written what Munakata said.
The revelation in Munakata’s letter was a complete surprise to me, and apparently no less of one to Peter. A voice within me, perhaps the voice of a child, cried out in hurt and anger because I had not been consulted about my willingness to participate in such a plan. That voice also cries out in protest because Tony, who was also not consulted, suffered in ways that scarred his body and spirit for the rest of his life.
Overshadowing the question of why I was not asked about my willingness to participate was a larger one. What would I have said had I been asked? Would I have been willing to pass on materials that someone else could use to make explosives? I had always been clear that I would not be party to violence that would cause innocent people to suffer. But if Peter, the person I trusted more than any other about the reality in Taiwan, had asked me, it would be disingenuous for me to say that I know I would have refused. After all these years, there is no way to know what I would have said.
But there was never a question about forgiving my old friend. Peter didn’t have to contact Munakata for me, and he certainly could have edited Munakata’s response knowing I would never know the difference. But Peter contacted him as I requested; he faithfully translated Munakata’s answers to my questions; he verified them by searching through his own letters; and after we learned what happened, he insisted that I write the truth. In advancing age, I find others’ memory lapses more understandable and certainly forgivable. Peter’s acknowledgement of responsibility upon hearing from Munakata, whose account he trusted even before he verified the account in his own correspondence, was evidence of the great man he is.
On March 27, 1964, I was in Boston preparing to go to Taiwan. I had read the story of the murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese two weeks earlier outside her home in Queens, New York.[26] The reason a murder in New York was news in Boston was that she had been stabbed repeatedly for thirty minutes while she screamed for help. She had been heard by many of her neighbors, but only after the killer had left in his car and returned ten minutes later to finish the job did one person call the police. It became a national story of shame for those who heard and done nothing. The “bystander effect” or the “Genovese syndrome” became the name for the social psychological phenomenon in which individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.
New to the urban northeast, it was easy for me to blame the neighbors in Queens; but my own conscience warned, they could be me. I was haunted by the picture of Kitty Genovese’s face. Indeed, I wondered if I was the “they” by leaving the United States in the midst of the struggle for civil rights and the beginning of the antiwar movement. My course had been set and I didn’t change it, but I carried Kitty Genovese’s image with me. In the reality I encountered in Taiwan, I couldn’t understand how so many missionaries, American students, U.S. military, and embassy personnel who heard the cries of the Taiwanese people could rationalize their inaction in ways not so dissimilar from the neighbors of Kitty Genovese.
When President Nixon and Henry Kissinger met with Chou En-lai in 1973, it wasn’t as if they didn’t know about the human rights abuses or the corruption of the government in Taiwan. Kissinger and Peng had been in seminars together at Harvard. The president and secretary of state’s justification for disregarding the legitimate interests of the Taiwanese people was what they considered the “greater good” for the interests of the United States by establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. I had long supported establishing relations with China, but never at the expense of the Taiwanese people.
The Shanghai Communiqué was a case study in Reinhold Niebuhr’s principle stating that institutions by their nature do not have the capacity to act morally—to do the right thing when it conflicts with self-interest.[27] In the United States and its allies’ desire to accommodate the People’s Republic, the de facto independence of Taiwan is once again threatened by self-interest masked as the “greater good.”
Individuals, argued Niebuhr, have the capability to act morally—to do the right thing even if it conflicts with their own self-interest. I might have relegated that principle to the bone pile of idealistic but unrealistic theories had I not seen it lived out by my closest Taiwanese friends—Peng Ming-min, Wei T’ing-chao, and Hsieh Tsung-min. Although not ostensibly religious, their actions demonstrated the ideals of justice and mercy I associated with Christian life. They were living examples of the core Christian teaching I learned as a child as expressed in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (or the Good Neighbor).[28] What I had seen in the failure to act by the neighbors of Kitty Genovese was the antithesis of that teaching.
“You are a guest in another country,” was the oft-quoted dictum to justify not getting involved in the political affairs of a country not your own. The principle has some merit in international relations, but it is a principle that serves the status quo. As desirable as that may be in the world of nations, the principle may also be an immoral rationalization. In Taiwan, a brutal and corrupt government was enabled to stay in power due in no small measure to the support it received from the United States. I love my country and I loved the work the church had sent me to Taiwan to do, but my conscience didn’t allow the luxury of being politically uninvolved. By doing nothing, I believed I was putting my stamp of approval on what the U.S. government was doing there. As an act of faith, I chose otherwise.
Acknowledgments
If you’ve read this far you know that this is a book I never thought I would write. For over thirty years I didn’t dare because I didn’t want to endanger the Taiwanese with whom I collaborated and who were still in Taiwan. Over the years, my kids – Liz, Richard, and Katy – pestered me to write the story down, if not for publication, for them. Katy, the youngest and the only one not born in Taiwan, was the more persistent. At a sports bar in Atlanta in 2001, she made her strongest pitch, and for the first time I agreed to write something for their eyes only. Sixteen letters later, I had written an account that became the first draft for this work. Their mother, Judith Thomas, from whom I have been divorced for over twenty five years, graciously read the chapters as they were being written and commented. She remembered some things that I didn’t.
Even after my first trip back to Taiwan in 2003 as a guest of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy when the role Judith and I played in Dr. Peng’s escape was first made public, I wasn’t sure that I would write a book. Only in 2008, during a second trip to speak at a human rights conference commemorating Peng Ming-min, Hsieh Tsung-min, and Wei Ting-chao’s 1964 publication of the “Manifesto” that landed them in prison, did I decide that the time had come.
Historian and journalist, James Wang, was also one of the presenters at the conference. He encouraged me to write the story and offered to help gather material from the National Archives in Washington D.C near where he lives. His efforts provided me with a treasure trove of declassified State Department documents. In Taiwan, journalist Sean Lu sifted through newspaper accounts of bombings in Taiwan in 1970 and 1971.
Dr. Peng encouraged me from the start as did Hsieh. They both read the manuscript and made suggestions throughout. Hsieh provided numerous documents, both about his imprisonment and torture, as well as material on current realities in Taiwan. Chang Hsin-yi interviewed Wei’s wife, Chiang Ching-hui, for me. She provided important information about Wei’s life
after 1971.
These friends graciously read the manuscript, corrected spelling and grammatical errors, and made suggestions for content revision: Chuck and Jan Halligan, Frank and Lorraine Zachary, Jim Campbell, Ken Krieg, Phyllis Stuewig, and Richard Kagan. More than proof readers, they were cheer leaders for the project.
From start to finish my greatest cheer leader was my wife Connie. Approaching precarious surgery and in considerable discomfort as I completed the umpteenth draft of the whole book last spring, she insisted on completing her job as the last editor until a publisher took over. She could, and did, tell me things my friends were more reluctant to point out; but most of all, she believed in me and was determined that when we turned it over to a publisher it would be the best we could make it.
Convinced that the story was worth telling and getting out quickly, Lawrence Knorr of Sunbury Press, Inc. became my publisher. Artist Alecia Nye took a rough idea for a cover and created something that made me run around the house exclaiming, “That’s it! That’s it!” Editor Susan Hills has done what all good editors do; make the author say, “That’s exactly what I meant. Why didn’t I say it that way in the first place?” And she did it in record time. Marketing and Publicity’s Christina Steffy and David Reimer have had the task of getting this book before the right audiences. The Sunbury staff probably does this for every book project, but they’ve made me feel that getting this book out was their top priority.
For all those whose labors have made this work possible, I am deeply grateful.
- Milo Thornberry
February 3, 2001
Bend, Oregon
Bibliography
American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches. Kennedy, John F. “Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association” delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX. Accessed February 15, 2009. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html
Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Page 20