In Taiwan, Charles Cooke surely had business other than selling fertilizer. Chiang Kai-shek and Cooke were old acquaintances. In early 1946, when Cooke took command of the Seventh Fleet, he maintained very close working relationships with top Nationalist leaders such as Chiang and his spymaster Dai Li. Cooke was also a keen advocate of establishing an American naval advisory group in China to counteract Soviet influence in postwar East Asia.14 Toward the last months of 1948, when the Nationalists looked like they were losing the civil war, Cooke remained keen to maintain a U.S. naval presence on the Chinese mainland, urging that American military assistance be given to Chiang’s regime at all costs. His strong pro-KMT tendencies got him into trouble with other U.S. military chiefs like George Marshall.15
Cooke won Chiang Kai-shek’s confidence soon after arriving in Taiwan in February 1950. This is understandable, because during that time Chiang found it almost impossible to trust any of his own military and political subordinates. Shortly after Chiang resumed the presidency in Taipei, Cooke was invited to attend regular, top-level military conferences in the president’s office.16 Apparently, Chiang hoped anew for military aid from the United States or elsewhere through back channels associated with Cooke’s personal network.
7.1 Charles M. Cooke (second from left) meets with a group of Nationalist Chinese military officials, ca. 1950. (Courtesy Jane Engert, Charles M. Cooke Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)
Charles Cooke’s first priority was to revive the plan of dispatching a U.S. military advisory group to Taiwan, whether in an official or unofficial capacity. Cooke’s ally William Pawley had tried but failed to secure final approval from Washington for this much-discussed plan, but now the retired admiral wanted to revive it. In March 1950, Cooke worked out a draft contract, in which he proposed the formation of a “Special Technician Program” (STP) nominally under the supervision of the New York-based Commerce International China, Inc. (CIC), a subsidiary of the World Commerce Corporation chaired by S. G. Fassoulis, another powerful figure in the China lobby.17 The World Commerce Corporation was an enigma. It was a commercial firm backed by leading American capitalists like Nelson Rockefeller, but was also covertly supported by former intelligence chiefs like William Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services. The CIC’s complex pedigree thus imbued the STP with political intrigue from its inception.18 As Cooke admitted later in a congressional hearing in October 1951, he never received any governmental authorization for the STP, nor for any of the several related underground activities undertaken through these ostensibly commercial firms.19
Chiang Kai-shek embraced Charles Cooke’s proposal without hesitation. It should be mentioned, however, that during the first months of 1950, Cooke was not the sole figure seeking to render “technical assistance” to the “abandoned” Nationalists in Taiwan. In a top-secret memorandum to Cooke, Chiang revealed that, since late 1949, around 5,000 Americans had applied at the Nationalist Chinese Embassy in Washington and other Chinese government agencies to volunteer their services in fighting the Chinese Communists. Noticeably, a retired colonel named Irving Short, who claimed to have strong connections with core members of the China lobby like Alfred Kohlberg and Senator William Knowland, was particularly eager to form a volunteer group to assist Chiang’s anti-Communist cause. Short informed Taipei that a survey group of up to five veteran U.S. naval and military officers would soon visit Taiwan. Once a satisfactory survey was concluded, an American volunteer group would be established. Funded by American contributors, it would provide the Nationalists with moral support and military and technical advice.20
Before visiting Taipei, Irving Short met with S. G. Fassoulis in New York and was introduced to a group of Chiang Kai-shek’s staunch supporters. According to Short, his proposal of organizing a volunteer group was met with favor not only among Chiang’s American supporters, but also among prominent military figures such as General Hoyt Vandenberg. In New York, Fassoulis invited Short to join the CIC’s secret activities in Taiwan. But back in Taiwan, Charles Cooke apparently saw Short as a potential competitor to his own newly launched cause. During his stay in Taipei in early April 1950, Short was treated coldly by Cooke and his associates, who not only bad-mouthed him, but also refused to cover his travel expenses (as promised by Fassoulis). After Short returned to the United States, he retaliated by revealing the CIC’s secret business in Taiwan to the State Department, but it stirred no response from Washington’s diplomatic bureaucrats.21
On behalf of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government, General Jiang Biao and the Board of Supplies of the Executive Yuan under him served as the key liaisons for Cooke’s highly sensitive program. On April 4, 1950, Jiang and Cooke reached a consensus on the STP: Thirty-one American “special technicians,” including one “coordinator,” would be recruited to serve in Taiwan. The annual budget for the special technicians was set at $396,000. Meanwhile, Cooke was authorized to use the money that the Nationalist government had deposited in an unidentified “joint account revolving fund” in Los Angeles to defray all the STP’s expenses.22 A week later, the Board of Supplies and the CIC signed a further agreement in Taipei, which would be renewed every six months.
The STP’s inception marked the start of a new phase of Nationalist military reconfiguration on Taiwan. On Chiang Kai-shek’s instructions, new “offices of technical advisors” were duly established in the Nationalist army, navy, and air force headquarters. These technicians, who started arriving in Taiwan in mid-March, began to advise, if not supervise, the demoralized Nationalist troops’ training, reforming, and other related activities on the island. Their responsibilities also included evaluating the capabilities of higher-ranking Nationalist military officers, and reporting these to Chiang.23 As the coordinator of the STP, and now fully entrusted by Chiang, Cooke became so powerful and influential a figure that, before long, many leading Nationalist military chiefs began to take a hostile attitude toward him.
With the STP on the way, Charles Cooke seemed momentarily to have demonstrated his ability to improve the Nationalists’ military and security position. On the same day that the STP contract was signed in Taipei, Cooke, in his dual capacity as a retired admiral and a U.S. news correspondent in Taiwan, wrote to Senator William Knowland asking that a substantial portion of the U.S. military surplus allocated to the Philippines be transferred to Taiwan. He argued that the Nationalists were in urgent need of at least 300 planes to secure their air superiority in the Taiwan Strait and defend the islands still under their control. Cooke claimed that providing these planes would go a long way toward saving America’s deteriorating position in the Far East.24
As a matter of fact, in March 1950, before the China lobby could assist in helping to transfer the aforementioned military surplus to Taiwan, Cooke and the CIC had surreptitiously purchased a considerable amount of munitions from the Philippines on behalf of the Nationalists. The items purchased included aircraft spare parts valued at $8 million, 300 cases of radar equipment, and 100 tracked landing vehicles (LVT). At Cooke’s request, a large portion of the ammunition was assigned to supplement General Sun Liren’s divisions.25 Rumor also had it that CIC agents in Manila were meanwhile purchasing an additional 426 surplus tanks to be shipped to Taiwan.26 The Nationalists’ acquisition of such a huge number of surplus tanks disturbed politicians at both the State Department and the British Foreign Office, who worried that these heavy weapons could fall into the hands of the Chinese Communists should Taiwan be captured, thus posing a threat to the West. In the end, the alleged 426 surplus tanks never made it to Taiwan.27
In the meantime, Cooke also managed to purchase at least 70,400 barrels of gasoline on behalf of the Nationalist government from agents in San Francisco and elsewhere in the United States. The lack of sufficient gasoline had gravely threatened Nationalist military defense operations. However, the gasoline deal alarmed Washington considerably. In an internally circulated memorandum, Defense Department officials expressed concern that “third par
ties” were ordering gasoline for the Chinese Nationalists. Although no actions were taken to stop the deal, the defense chiefs argued that the U.S. security interest “lies in making sure it [gasoline] reaches its proper destination.”28
In early April 1950, Cooke helped Taiwan obtain 23,000 rounds of shells from Yokosuka, a U.S. naval base in Japan, at a time when the Nationalists desperately needed ammunition to defend their precarious offshore bases. Cooke exercised his influence in Washington and Tokyo to acquire this timely batch of surplus ammunition at a preferential price.29 Later on, he continued his venture for the Nationalists and the CIC. In late April 1950, Cooke wrote to senior officials in Washington’s military establishment, including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Forrest Sherman, urging them to transfer twenty-seven frigate boats and landing ship tanks (LST) at Yokosuka, all of which were considered postwar surplus, to the Nationalist government under a provision of the 1947 Public Law 512, which authorized the transfer of vessels to the Chinese Navy not to exceed 271 in number.30 At one point, before the Korean War was declared, the STP in Taiwan went to such an extent that anything relating to possible aid to the Nationalist regime would automatically be associated with Cooke. One such incredible example took place in May 1950, when rumors were circulating that, with Cooke’s assistance, an international air brigade consisting of volunteers from the United States and Israel would soon be formed in Taiwan.31
7.2 Charles M. Cooke (right) with General Sun Liren (middle) at a military base in southern Taiwan, ca. 1950. (Courtesy Jane Engert, Charles M. Cooke Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)
The idea of an international air brigade could well have been floated by Cooke, despite the fact that his expertise and priority was the navy, not the air force. In mid-June, an energetic Cooke flew to Japan to try to persuade the SCAP authorities to release to the Nationalist government at least a dozen of these twenty-seven vessels and to equip them with ammunition. This time Cooke was rebuffed; although naval officials like Forrest Sherman shared Cooke’s view, public opinion around the world went against SCAP releasing these ships to the Nationalists, who had within the preceding fortnight lost the Zhoushan Islands off Zhejiang Province, and Hainan Island at the south end of China.32
Chiang Kai-shek’s deep reliance on Cooke even allowed the retired admiral to change the Nationalists’ secret ammunition procurement program in the United States. In early June 1950, Chiang’s military mission in Washington was trying to spend the $1.8 million remaining in the Chinese Military Aid Fund on 160,000 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition and one million rounds of 0.45 caliber ammunition. On hearing this, Cooke and his STP staff immediately advised Chiang to instruct his mission to purchase .30- and .50-caliber ammunition instead, as well as 3-inch ammunition for the Navy, which Cooke believed was more urgently required for Taiwan’s military defense.33 Chiang agreed, but his military staff in Washington initially refused to cooperate with the CIC. Before long, it transpired that the Nationalist military mission in Washington was incapable of procuring any munitions whatsoever without the help of the CIC.34
PRIVATE INFLUENCE ON NATIONALIST STATE POLICY
One of Charles Cooke’s defining roles on Taiwan was privatizing the Nationalist government’s military and security policies in a critical period surrounding the Korean War. On April 27, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek brought Cooke with him to conduct a risk-loaded inspection tour on the Zhoushan Islands. Chiang and most of his senior military advisors had long held that Zhoushan was strategically vital to the defense of Taiwan. A Nationalist military presence on the islands not only posed a threat to the Communists around Shanghai, but might also deter the PLA from moving southward by sea. Since the spring of 1949, Chiang’s loyal officers had spent money and energy fortifying Zhoushan. A new airfield had recently been built, and infrastructure such as radio masts were being completed.35 To demonstrate the Nationalist determination to hold Zhoushan, a huge number of troops were being deployed on the islands; by April 1950, about 130,000 troops were stationed on the 502-square-kilometer islands, and further reinforcements were being considered.36
7.3 Dinghai, the administrative center of Zhoushan, before the Nationalists withdrew from the islands, ca. April 1950. (Courtesy Jane Engert, Charles M. Cooke Papers, Hoover Institution Archives)
After inspecting Zhoushan, Cooke made a bold suggestion: Withdraw the Nationalist troops and abandon the islands altogether. His rationale was straightforward: The latest intelligence report indicated that the Communists’ airfields in the Shanghai-Hangzhou military region had been fitted with radar and modern antiaircraft batteries; Soviet jet planes flown by Soviet pilots were operating there. The Nationalists had only two airfields on the Zhoushan Islands, with inadequate radar equipment and no antiaircraft batteries.37 To Cooke, the Communist sea and air superiority in the Zhoushan area was very evident. Consequently, the islands could no longer function as a base for Nationalist air operations, leaving no reason for the Nationalists to retain the islands. Cooke further warned that despite the adverse affect on the Nationalists’ morale, they should withdraw immediately and not later than June 1, 1950, by which time good weather would allow the PLA to mobilize their air power.38 In the meantime, rumor had it that Cooke not only recommended the Nationalists withdraw from Zhoushan, but he also pledged that the U.S. Seventh Fleet would patrol the Taiwan Strait thereafter.39
Predictably, Chiang’s military advisors unanimously opposed the abandonment of Zhoushan. They argued that the loss of the islands would damage Taiwan’s defense capability in the north, and strike a decisive blow to Nationalist morale and prestige.40 Chiang’s military chiefs were so outraged by Cooke’s proposal that they frequently lost their tempers, turning bitterly hostile against Cooke when he was present in military meetings. They also privately directed their fury at Chiang, criticizing him for being taken in by a foreigner, and accusing him of cowardice for wanting to withdraw from the vicinity of the Yangtze Delta without any shots being fired.41 Despite such vehement opposition from his military staff, Chiang decided to take Cooke’s advice, and, on the morning of May 10, he ordered the retreat of the Nationalist forces. On Cooke’s suggestion, Chiang assigned a reluctant Admiral Gui Yongqing, then commander in chief of the Nationalist Navy, to make the journey to Zhoushan, which was considered exceptionally dangerous, and to coordinate the evacuation on site, lest turmoil and disorder ensue. On May 16, 150,000 Nationalist troops and civilians, along with a large quantity of munitions and materiel, safely reached Keelung without encountering Communist forces.42
Charles Cooke played a somewhat different but equally crucial role in the Nationalist final retreat from the Hainan Island. In early March 1950, without much resistance, the Hainan Nationalists withdrew their naval forces from a small yet strategic isle west of the Leizhou Peninsula in the Tonkin Gulf called Weizhou Island. The abandonment did not invite much attention. Given Weizhou’s useful location for monitoring the Communists in southern Guangdong, however, the loss of this isle was not a good omen for Hainan’s defense.43 In mid-April 1950, shortly after the Communists’ rudimentary success in landing on northern Hainan, Governor Chen Jitang hastily flew to Taipei to discuss the island’s last defense with Chiang. Chiang made it plain that he would not use extra resources to strengthen the Hainan forces.44 Taipei’s decision deeply irritated the Hainan Nationalists. On April 25, three days after the Communists captured Haikou, an Associated Press news release quoted local authorities as saying that Chiang Kai-shek had no intention to defend Hainan for fear that local military leaders would grow stronger and turn their backs on him.45 The news greatly enraged Chiang, who fretted that such messages could only further damage the Nationalist government’s public image.46
In the midst of tension between the two Nationalist authorities on their respective island realms, Chiang sent Cooke to Hainan to verify the situation. Cooke reached Haikou on April 20, only to witness the fall of this important stronghold. According to his subsequent confidential report to General MacArthur, t
he Nationalist troops on Hainan under General Xue Yue were “thrown in piecemeal and defeated in piecemeal.” When Cooke arrived in Haikou, Xue first informed him that about 4,000 Communists had surrendered to him at the beachhead, but he had decided not to annihilate them. Yet Cooke had reason to believe that the Communists were actually waiting for reinforcements and supplies; unwittingly, Xue had granted them this respite. General Xue refused to believe this, but Cooke proved to be right: When fighting resumed later that evening, the Nationalists were roundly defeated.47
The loss of Haikou triggered the eventual abandonment of Hainan. Immediately after returning to Taipei, on April 23 Cooke prepared a memorandum for Chiang Kai-shek. Based on his personal experience on the island, Cooke argued that the Communists had established strong batteries on the southern tip of Leizhou Peninsula well before the invasion of Hainan. These batteries appeared to be radar-controlled, manned by expert gunners, and fitted with influence (proximity) fuses, a U.S. Navy development not available to any other country until the end of World War II. Cooke posited that the Soviets were manufacturing these fuses and supplying them to the Chinese Communists for use in antiaircraft batteries. He concluded that, as the Communists now occupied the northern coast of Hainan Island, the Nationalist naval forces could no longer control the Leizhou Strait, nor could they keep the Communists from moving southward.48 Cooke’s memorandum was the last straw: Chiang gave the order to evacuate Hainan. On May 2, about 50,000 troops safely retreated with their ammunition and materiel to Taiwan, now the Nationalist government’s sole territorial base.
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