Anderson, Courtney. To the Golden Shore: the Life of Adoniram Judson. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1956.
Arrigo, Linda Gail and Lynn Miles. A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights Through International Networks, 1960-1980. Taipei: Hanyao Color Printing Co, 2008.
Axelbank, Albert. “Chiang Kai-Shek’s Silent Enemies.” Harper’s Magazine, September 1963.
Barnett, A. Doak. Our China Policy: The Need for Change. Headline Series, No. 204. Foreign Policy Association, 1971.
Brandon, S. G. F. Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967.
Chen, Lung-chu Chen, and Harold D. Lasswell. Formosa, China, and the United Nations: Formosa in the World Community. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967.
Durdin, Peggy. “Terror in Taiwan.” The Nation. March 24, 1947
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Friedman, Edward. “Peking and Washington: Is Taiwan the Obstacle?” In China and Ourselves, edited by B. Douglass and Ross Terril. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.
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Hsieh, Tsung-min. “From a Taiwan Prison.” New York Times, April 24, 1972.
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Kahn, E.J., Jr. The China Hands: America’s Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them. New York: Viking Press, 1975.
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, unlike anything I had known. I was now less judgmental about those who chose violence to resist the war in Vietnam, Black Panthers to protect bBlack communities, or Taiwanese to resist Chiang’s oppression. What Jesus might have done in his time mattered to me, but at the end of the summer I had to admit that I was on my own. Ethically, Colin Morris’ counsel to the young man in Africa made sense to me, and the Nationalist regime in Taiwan was no less brutal or intractable than the colonial governments in Africa. Although the innocent were suffering already, I knew I could not be party to violence in which more innocents would suffer. Besides, I couldn’t imagine any such act that would make do a bit of difference for the good. Was my stance shaped in any way by a fear of consequences for me or my family? If that fear had the upper hand, I wouldn’t have done many of the things I had already done. Despite Niebuhr’s dictum that the line between violence and non-violence was not absolute, I sensed a personal chasm between them, one that if I crossed I would no longer be who I thought I was. I was also convinced that my Taiwanese friends—who seemed immune to fear—resisted the use of violence because they didn’t want to increase the suffering of innocent peoples and couldn’t see any positive outcome from of such acts.
I had no idea what lay before us in Taiwan, but as we landed at Taipei International Airport, I had a strong feeling that we would not have spend another three years in Taiwanthere.
Chapter Eighteen: The Closing Net
You have only the power to act;
You do not have power to determine the result;
So act without anticipation of the result;
And not succumb to inaction.
—Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita
As soon as we returned to Taipei in September, I met with the Phillipses to see how the distribution of funds to the families had gone. Carlisle kept careful records of all the money that came in and that they turned over to Hsieh and Wei, who had in turn distributed it. I was pleased to find that the foursome not only worked well together but seemed to have developed genuine affection for each one other. Ruth talked about “the boys” as if they were family.
Although we met with Matthew and Tony regularly, it was always separately. All of us getting together seemed to be an unnecessary risk. Even though the two of them stayed in constant touch with each other, it was frustrating not to be able to talk with both of them at the same time. That wasn’t new. Even before Peter escaped, I don’t recall a tim
e when the three of them were together with us, or a time when Matthew and Tony were together with us. At different times in our relationship, all three had separately acted as my tutors in Chinese, helping me with my history lectures.
Looking at the mail that had accumulated for us in our absence, I could see from the postmark codes that more and more letters were making stops at the Garrison Command before arriving in our mailbox. Within weeks of our getting back, there were new reports that we were being watched. By which agency or for what reasons, we had no idea.
In separate conversations, I asked Matthew and Tony if they thought it wise for them to continue distributing money. Tony answered by describing the great need of prisoners’ families for even the little bits of money he could put in their hands.
“We can distribute the money without the KMT knowing that we are the ones doing it,” Tony said. “The larger problem is finding the families who are always on the move. Getting money to them is critical, and Wei and I are the only ones who can do it.”
Left unsaid by Tony was the danger of families reporting him out of fear. He and Matthew had both encountered people in desperate need but too fearful to accept money. If the government used their usual means to get someone to talk, both Tony and Matthew were at risk.
“What are they going to do to us—, put us in prison?” Matthew responded with a laughed when I asked him the same question. Not easily intimidated, eighteen years earlier when in his second year at Cheng-kong High School in Taipei he refused to join the Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps (known popularly as the China Youth Corps and modeled on the China Youth League in the People’s Republic), quit school, and began tutoring illiterate children who were learning to read. Without a high school diploma, he took the university entrance exam, passed it, and entered the Department of Law at the National University. By late 1970, when we had the conversation, Matthew knew well what prison was like. He had challenged his guards to shoot him and challenged the court that sentenced him to give him the death penalty. He wouldn’t even entertain the question of stopping the distribution.
Carlisle turned his notebook with records of receipts and disbursements over to me. As soon as I got home, I destroyed it. I wanted no paper that could incriminate them, Matthew, or Tony. I also decided that I could no longer afford the luxury of keeping a journal. I did not consider destroying the trunk full of collated and stapled articles that we continued to give to foreign visitors. That would come later.
We quickly settled into a surreal normalcy. The board of missions was moving ahead with its new policy of distancing itself from the Methodist Church in Taiwan, a policy I whole-heartedly endorsed. In addition to teaching my classes and doing my work as rRegistrar, I was also involved in the now- approved major restructuring of the curriculum as well as the being a member of the negotiating team to merge the two seminaries, a merger that was foundering on the rivalry between the northern and southern Presbyterians.
I mused about two questions. First, how was it possible to live and work as a missionary, a seminary teacher and administrator, while at the same time wondering when I would be arrested? I now had some sense of what it is was to live two different lives. Thankfully, there were some missionary friends who knew at least part of my two lives, and when we were together, I didn’t have to pretend to be one or the other.
The second question was why did the government allowed us back into the country after the furlough.? Given what some in the government must have suspected, it is a marvel that they allowed us back into the country. Perhaps the competition between the different security agencies— – the Foreign Affairs Police, the Investigative Bureau, and the Garrison Command— – kept them from sharing what information they had. What I had learned from my Taiwanese friends was that the KMT’s system of fear-inducing brutality exercised through multiple security agencies was at the same time a tangle of corruption that guaranteed inefficiency. The question for me, though, was not if I would ever be found out and arrested, only when.
As I resumed my duties at the seminary, I felt a growing sense of sadness that at some point this would end. I loved teaching and when I arrived in Taiwan in 1965, I could think of no better future than teaching in this place. I knew there was no turning back.
Another part of the sadness, however, had little to do with politics. I knew that as long as the board of missions paid my salary, the seminary didn’t have to hire or train a Taiwanese who could do my teaching job much more effectively than I could. My presence without costing the seminary anything except housing was a barrier to that important step being taken. At the same time I realized that what I had been doing politically were things that only I could do at a relatively minimal risk.
In the midst of this double life were Elizabeth and Richard. When we returned to Taiwan in September, Elizabeth was four and Richard was one. Elizabeth was in Chinese kindergarten at Mu-Ai Tang (Church of the Good Shepherd in Shih-lin). Her best friend was Teddy Loh, who lived across the road from us at the seminary and whose parents were my best friends at the seminary. Elizabeth was fluent in both Taiwanese (from her friends at the seminary) and in Mandarin (from her nursery school). Judith and I spoke only English to her so she wouldn’t have bad models in Mandarin. Richard was so calm inhas
Shouldn’t that be “had”?
such a calm disposition that I regularly put him in a backpack baby seat and did my work in the study. He would sleep there, but if he was awake, he would quietly amuse himself.
Although in the history of parents who adopt children not at all exceptional,
Leave as is
in September we were surprised to learn that Judith was pregnant. We were delighted but fearful because the doctor told us that bearing another child was a considerable health risk. We were not sure that she could carry the baby to term. As fall moved gave way to winter, Judith passed the early critical periods.
One day in the fall, Mr. Yén Yen called and invited us to dinner at a downtown restaurant downtown with him and two guests from Japan. He said he would be grateful if we would helped him entertain them. Except for the Japanese guests, the invitation was not unusual; he often invited us out to eat. Mr. Yén Yen was always entertaining and sometimes a source for news from inside the government.
The evening was unremarkable. We met Yen Mr. Yén and the two men in one of Taipei’s many Japanese restaurants. The men were dressed in suits and ties and looked to be in their thirties or forties. We went through the usual drinking ritual toasting each other with sake. Mr. Yén Yen interpreted the conversation in Japanese to Mandarin for us in Mandarin. The conversation went from the tourist sites they were visiting to the speculation that the U.S. was moving closer to an attempt at establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic. When the tea was served, signaling the end of the evening, we shook hands, caught a taxi, and went home. Only in retrospect several months later would we suspect that the purpose of the meeting might have been more than we imagined.
Tensions within the KMT about Nixon’s overtures to China reached a fevered pitch when, on October 5, 1970, President Nixon was quoted in Time Magazine, regarded as the most pro-KMT magazine in the United States: “"If there is anything I want to do before I die, it is to go to China.”" To the Chiangs, Nixon was groveling in order to get an invitation to visit China. A week later on October 12, the library at the U.S.I.S.
Use “United States Information Agency”
library in Tainan was bombed. No one was hurt and little damage to the building was done. News reports in Taiwan suggested that it was the result of widespread unhappiness with the United States. When we read the story, we laughed. The only “widespread unhappiness” with the U.S. in Taiwan we could see was the near hysteria within the government. We assumed that the bombing had been staged by the KMT. When the Bank of America was bombed in Taipei on February 5, 1971, we made the same assumption.
On Thursday, February 18, 1971, we received a call from Mr. YénYen, member of th
e National Assembly and head of the Taipei pPrinter’s’ uUnion. He said that one of the two Japanese men we had helped him entertain, a man named Abe, was back in town and had a gift for us. Since we had only been guests at a dinner with them and had not discussed any of our activities, we couldn’t imagine why one would be bringing us a gift. We speculated that they might be part of the independence movement based in Japan and perhaps had been part of facilitating the Japanese end of Peng’s escape a year earlier. We didn’t know that, nor did we know whether Peng had sent them to us. We assumed that this was merely an act of Asian hospitality, albeit from folks who knew where our political sympathies lay.
Because I was tied up at the seminary with exams and meetings, we agreed that Judith would meet Mr. Yén Yen and Abe for lunch. In the afternoon whenWhen she got back to the house that afternoon, she had quite a story to tell. When she arrived at Yen’s Mr. Yén’s apartment, he told her that although the guest had called earlier in the morning saying he would be there for lunch, he hadn’t arrived. Judith waited for an hour. Mr. Yén Yen called the man’s hotel room and reported to Judith that someone sounding like the police had answered. Yen Mr. Yén hung up, reported to Judith, and she left for home.
Judith was concerned about the failure of the friend to appear, as was YenMr. Yén. As she came out of the narrow alley that led to his apartment, she saw that a woman was following her. Instead of taking a taxi right away, she walked down the street, stopping to look in the windows of shops. Whenever she stopped, the woman behind her stopped. She continued down the street for a couple of blocks until she was certain that the woman was in fact following her. She hailed a cab but didn’t come directly home. She changed cabs several times before finally coming up the mountain to the seminary.
Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Page 21