After supper, sometime after seven or eight o’clock, we heard loud voices outside the house. We recognized Selig Harrison’s voice and tried to open the front door and go out, but a policeman blocked usit. Judith then ran to the dining room window, opened it, and shouted, “Sig, they won’t let us talk to anyone. Please get the word out.” He tried to answer, but at that point was shoved down by one of the policemen. One of the guards inside shouted for me to get Judith away from the window. The guards were pretty angry, especially since they had just told Harrison that we weren’t at home. After the incident, we received a lecture on cooperation with the police during “difficult times.” Probably, Sshoving Selig Harrison around probably got our story onto the front page of the next day’s Washington Post.
After the lecture, we went to the bedroom where, thankfully, they didn’t follow us. At nNearly ten o’clock, we heard another commotion outside. Thinking that Harrison had returned, Judith ran into the study and out into the front yard through the entrance that had escaped the notice of the police. The visitor wasn’t Harrison but Dick Bush, a United Methodist missionary colleague. He was arguing loudly with the policeman surrounding him. Policemen, with whom he was arguing loudly, surrounded him. Judith shouted that we were being deported and asked him to contact the eEmbassy. He shouted back that he would.
Back in the house, I received a more severe lecture about Judith’s behavior.
“Your wife is a lao you-tyao [old grease stick]! If you can’t control her, we will take you to jail and you will be separated from your children.”
“Both of us wish to cooperate,” I responded, “but cooperation is a two-way street, and we haven’t seen any cooperation with our request to talk with someone from the U.S. Embassy.”
The large man spun on his heels and walked out the door. Our little heart –to- heart chat may have made some a difference because at almost midnight the cConsul, Fred Beattie, showed up. I told him that I didn’t want U.S. intervention in the case of our deportation— – I didn’t want to be associated with the country’s long history of such intervention in Chinese affairs— – but that I did want information about why we were being treated as criminals and held incommunicado. He admitted that the eEmbassy had some “unofficial” information but that he was not at liberty to share it with us. I would learn later that the eEmbassy felt no hesitation in sharing the “unofficial” charges with Bishop Nall and others about our arrest. The cConsul said we should cooperate in every possible way and leave the country as quietly as possible. What I felt as I talked to him was that he cared not one whit about us., He but was representing a State Department that was closely allied with the Nationalist gGovernment, and that we were an embarrassment to both of them.
He did helped us in two ways. The next day Clyde and Betty Dunn, United Methodist missionaries, were allowed into the house to discuss property and moving matters with us. The guards sat with us to see that we didn’t talk about anything except packing and shipping arrangements. He had also arranged for permission for Judith to be taken to see the obstetrician. AtShe was five months pregnant; considering her with Judith’s history and and now with all of this stress, we were concerned that she might lose the baby. She was taken to MacKay Hospital with two guards— – a man and a woman— -- from those the four who had been staying in the house. Although he probably wondered about having guards stationed outside the examining room, the doctor’s report on Judith and the baby was good.
When Judith and the two of the guards left for her appointment, the other female guard went outside where to join those who surroundeingd the house were. I made coffee for myself and offered a cup to the remaining inside guard. He sat down across the table from me.
“I know that you are not criminals,” he said. “This is really a political matter. You must realize that we are in difficult times here. The enemy is just across the sStraits, and our international position is deteriorating at a rapid rate. At In another time, I do not think you would be expelled for what you have done, and I think you will probably be able to return to Taiwan before very long.”
“Do you really think so?” I saidasked, recalling what one of the other guards had said about concerns that our arrest might cause riots.
“Oh, yes!”
“You know what really worries me ,” I said, “is whether or not your government will give us any problems taking Richard outside the country.,” I said. “He is now a U.S. citizen, but I know that people of the Han born in Taiwan are considered Chinese citizens no matter what passport they carry.”
“What kind of monsters do you think we are?” he saidasked. “We would never do something like that.”
I think he probably believed it. I would not be sure until we had Richard out of the country. It would be this same guard who, against his orders, would allow some of our friends to come to the door on Thursday morning and say good-bye. We made a point of thanking him for this courtesy.
We spent Wednesday evening packing and writing simple instructions for the disposition of our things. The cConsul visited us once more, mainly to tell us that the eEmbassy was unwilling to disclose any of the particulars about why we had been arrested. He did telltold us that we would be leaving on a China Airlines flight to Hong Kong at 1:15 p.m. P.M. Thursday. This was the first word about when we would be deported. With things apparently settled, I had no trouble sleeping Wednesday night. Since I did not know that the story was already big news outside Taiwan, I had no idea of the “new world” I would enter on Thursday.
Last- minute packing and getting Richard and Liz ready to go was the agenda for Thursday morning. The Dunns showed up about an hour before we were to leave. Mary Ella Brentlinger, another Methodist missionary, managed to get into the house with the Dunns and actually got away with it for a while before the guards realized she didn’t belong and ordered her out.
We left the house by car at noon, greatly encouraged by the presence of several friends keeping a vigil of sorts outside the circle of police around the house., keeping a vigil of sorts. When we passed the administration building, many students and faculty members were gathered there, on both sides of the road, to say good-bye. Of course, they made no gestures to wave; they just watched. Their presence there put each of them at considerable risk. I knew I could not wave to them. Into an already emotionally charged atmosphere and knowing that I could not wave at them, I began to cry. There were cars of secret police both in front of and behind us.
Overcome with emotion at the bravery of so many students and faculty daring to stand and watch as we left, I was slow to sense the magnitude of the police operation to get us to the airport. Holding Richard on my lap, I looked across at Elizabeth, her face glued to the other window of the black limousine taking us down the mountain. What I saw out her window as we descended the mountain, passed the Generalissimo’s home in Shih-lin, and moved into Taipei, were “gray suits” stationed on both sides of the road at regular intervals. Rowland Van Es, who had gotten word in Tainan and come by train to witness to whatever happenedour departure, followed our motorcade down the mountain. Soldiers, he said, were posted every ten or twenty10-20 yards along all the five miles to Songshan Airport.[29]
“What the hell are they afraid of—us?” I asked.
“If so, they are crazier than we thought,” Judith replied as she watched the unnumbered sentries flash past.
As we traveled down Minchuan Road to the entrance, the distance between the sentries diminished, and as we entered the circle in front of the airport the “gray suits” were shoulder to shoulder around the entire perimeter.
Our car drove directly to the entrance to the VIP lLounge. Inside were more men and women, some soldiers and some “gray suits.” The large room was so filled withfull of them that it was almost like a Lantern Festival crowd, except that they were all security personnel.
I recognized one of them as the man we had confronted as when he was followeding us with Selig Harrison a week earlier. I addressed him in Chinese,
. “So we meet again,.” I said. He responded with a smile, “Now we are old friends.” It took half an hour for four people to go through our few bags. They went through everything— – jars of cold cream, tubes of toothpaste, and every piece of paper in my briefcase.
A difficulty arose when they found some sermons I had in my briefcase. Since they were written in Rromanized Chinese, no one there could read them. They assumed they were some kind of secret code. So I spent several minutes with one of the men, reading the sermons to him and a couple of others who were looking on. I pointed to the words as I read. Finally, they decided that they were what I said they were and allowed me to put them back into my briefcase. There I felt was a certain irony as I preached to one of my guards that in my last moments in Taiwan I was preaching to one of my guards.
Another difficulty arose when they tried to listen to some of our tape recordings and stumbled onto some Atayal hymns we had recorded. No one there understood the words of that aboriginal language (not a Chinese dialect, but in a part of the Malay-Polynesian language family).
They might have taken more time on the tapes and sermons, but they had already held up this flight well beyond its scheduled departure. Everyone was on the plane but us. The American cConsul, Mr. Beattie, showed up at the last minute. We couldn’t help observe informing to him that he always managed to show up after the time when he might have been usefulwhen he was no longer useful.
We were driven from the terminal to the boarding ramp of the airplane. Only then did we get the first hint of the publicity our departure was receiving. The ramp was surrounded with by photographers reporters filming and taking both still and motion pictures of us. While the mood in the VIP lounge had been quiet and subdued, here we were confronted by a crowd of reporters on both sides of the gangway runway shouting out questions and a sea of flashbulbs going off in our faces.
I had Richard on my back and Judith had Elizabeth by the hand. Unnerved by the noise and lights, Elizabeth froze in front of the steps. In a genuine gesture to help, one of the policemen accompanying us onto the plane, scooped her up and carried her up the steps. Already frightened, and now being seemingly separated from us, Elizabeth began to kick and scream. A film crew from NBC brought in to cover our departure caught it all. The first our parents in Texas and Massachusetts knew of our arrest was when they saw that film clip on television.
Having already seen all After all of the reporters at the airport in Taipei, we weren’t very surprised by the mob of reporters that met our plane in Hong Kong was not so surprising. Somehow Bishop Nall, accompanied by missionaries from some of the Hong Kong missionaries and Chinese pastors, managed to pushed through the crowd promising that we would speak to the press on the next day.
We were put up in a family suite at the YMCA on Waterloo Road. Selig Harrison followed us to Hong Kong and found us at the Ythere. Since we had never held a press conference before, once Richard and Elizabeth were down for the night, Selig Harrison spent several hours in our room advising us about how to conduct ourselves at the next day’s event. We let him know that we would not say anything to further jeopardize the Taiwanese or our missionary colleagues.
Harrison’s most important admonition was not to end any sentence without including whatever qualifications we needed to make. So when we would be asked they asked us about our relationships with dissident Taiwanese, we should were to be careful to say that we were friends with both dissidents and persons who were supporters of the government, which was certainly true. When asked if we were linked to the Taiwanese Independence mMovement for independence,
Keep original wording with caps
we would say that while we knew many who were unhappy with the government and wanted to see an independent Taiwan, but that we were unaware of any organized effort in Taiwan, which was also true. When reporters would asked why we were arrested, we could quite honestly say that we didn’t know beyond “actions unfriendly to the gGovernment of the Republic of China.,” Wand we could also say that in Taiwan, having contact with people who disagreed with government policy would be was construed as “unfriendly actions,” which was true.
What we could have said but didn’t was that the government might have arrested us because of our relationshipinvolvement to 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,. and We were not about to make things more difficult for Matthew and Tony. We did kneow that the government knew about the Japanese visitor with the gift, but we assumed that was a KMT set up. Harrison had heard from the American aAmbassador 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 aArea sSecretary, Ed Fisher, by phone in New York. Ed had learned of our arrest and deportation from The 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 up 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 missionary colleagues in Taiwan, whichthat included the details of our house arrest and the charges we were hearing that the KMT was unofficially releasing:
Dear_______,
Use “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 tha
t 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,
Name
Use “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. From Since the moment we had agreed to be politically active five years before, when we had agreed to be politically active we often discussed with our Taiwanese associates the likelihood of a coming day when they would be made to suffer in ways far more severe than anything meted out to uswe 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,
Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Page 23