Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror

by Milo Thornberry

  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 23rd, 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 for until a year, later when they were tried in a secret military court.

  Torture was routine for extracting confessions, a calculated assault on a prisoner’s mind, body, and human dignity, was routine for extracting confessions. “We have eighteen kinds of techniques,” an agent boasted to Tony. “I want information—, true and false.”

  Tony was not allowed sleep on on the 23the night of his arrestrd, or on any of the following next eight nights. Instead, , while he was hung in mid-air and with his wrists handcuffed togetherwith , oone arm stretched over his shoulder and the other under. In the 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 that Peng had left on a U.S. military plane from the Ching Chuan Kang (CCK) Air Force Bbase near Taichung, which was used by the United States Air Force .S.A.F. 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 and my involvement in the escape. Apparently, we were not suspects in that.

  Since the story he made up to tell them 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 the 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 offensedone either.

  The questions, asked during intermittent torture, were now about my and Judith’s Judith’s and my 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. Over and over 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 Yen Mr. Yén had and we told him thate 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 the 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—, with 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. The Tony’s sister had been present when the police came to get Tonyhim. When they searched his room, Tony feared they would discover the $1,000 USthousand 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 $1,000thousand dollars. According to Don Shapiro, a stringer for the New York Times, who visited the sister after seeing the ad, her protest embarrassed the authorities. They had been caught off guard by the ad—a news item would have been caught by the censors—and after no little small haggling 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 not only didn’twere unaware of know what was happening to Tony and Matthew, we also didn’t know 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 Thomas Shoesmith for a visit from the GRC Ambassador Chow in Washington on March 4, while we were still under house arrest, the head of the East Asia Department

  The sentence was a mistake. Say, “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.”

  Green

  s

  Substitute “Shoesmith”

  aid that they had checked with some Foreign Service oOffices who that knew us and they everyone all agreed that we were “actively engaged in encouraging and supporting Taiwan independence activities, although their remarks do not suggest they believe the Thornberry’s would have gone as far as GRC evidence suggests.,” Such evidence that was not shared with the U.S.

  The problem, Green said, was that the stories in the Washington Post and New York Times were playing 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 “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 “will 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: “T…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 stiffe
ning of our relations with the GRC.”

  To contain Congressional criticism, Green suggested that the unofficial charges be shared with rRepresentatives and sSenators. 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 to pass judgment on the charges. This caveat notwithstanding, the American aAmbassador said that the GRC claimed to have “incontrovertible evidence” for theof charges 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 suggesteds is 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 Nall’s’ 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 bBoard of mMissions as the truth, not with even the caveats that the American aAmbassador 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;”: one was the formal administration and, the other was the prisoner’s’ 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 often also often from other prisons around the island.

  Now confined under greater security than the first time, 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 inside 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 “Dear 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 of 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.

  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. A long time writer for The New Yorker, 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, but . Tthe presence of 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 tells 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 the our first year after we came 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 black listed 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 violencet action, 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 once and burned anotheron 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 Ccongressman 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 the Formosa Magazine when the magazine called for a demonstration in Kaohsiung on “Human Rights Day,” on December 10, 1979. The non-violent 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.

  Chiang 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 that was the usual lot of families of political prisoners faced, conditions that Wei spent much of his life chronicling from inside 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. In 1991 asAs a DPP candidate, Chiang Ching-hui was elected to the National Assembly in 1991. In 1997 Wei published Taiwan Human Rights Report, 1949-1996.