Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror Read online

  Fireproof Moth

  A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror

  by

  Milo Thornberry

  Fireproof Moth - A Missionary in Taiwan's White Terror

  Copyright © 2011, by Milo Thornberry.

  Cover Copyright © 2011 Sunbury Press. Front cover image designed by the Alecia Nye.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  FIRST SUNBURY PRESS EDITION

  Printed in the United States of America

  February 2011

  ISBN 978-1-934597-32-3

  Published by:

  Sunbury Press

  Camp Hill, PA

  www.sunburypress.com

  For

  Peter, Matthew, and Tony

  wWho tired of talking and decided to do something

  “There is no shortage of American graduate students, missionaries… with both ardent views on Taiwanese independence and a willingness to conduct themselves as if they were fireproof moths.”

  — Thomas P. Shoesmith, cCountry dDirector, of the Office of the Republic of China Affairs, U.S. Department of State, in a communiqué to Deputy Chief of Mission Oscar Armstrong, Deputy Chief of Missionat the, American Embassy, Taipei, on March 9, 1971.

  Preface

  Other foreigners have written about their lives in Taiwan and their discovery of the repression, murders, executions, and slaughter of the Taiwanese by the Nationalist government.

  Few of them had known about Taiwan’s history before arriving. The Nationalist government under the Kuomintang (KMT) had carried out a massacre of Taiwanese in 1947, which resulted in martial law in Taiwan for the next forty years. United States government policy at the time complemented the imposed silence and censorship of this regime by keeping Americans living in Taiwan under surveillance as well. The recent film Formosa Betrayed portrays the viciousness of both the KMT regime and the complexity of America’s foreign policy throughout the era of martial law.

  The title of Milo’s book is a quote taken from the derisive remark of an American State Department official one week after Milo and his family were deported from the island. The full text of the remark is provided on the first page of the memoir:

  “There is no shortage of American graduate students, missionaries . . . with both ardent views on Taiwanese Independence and a willingness to conduct themselves as if they were fireproof moths.”

  For almost twenty years, Milo was denied a passport and not allowed to leave the U.S.

  Though now divorced for over thirty years, Judith read and commented on Milo’s memoirs as he wrote them. The book reveals how he and Judith successfully and secretly organized the escape of Peng Ming-min from Taiwan. Peng’s importance in the Taiwan Independence movement is seen on the island as a struggle similar to that of South African political prisoner Nelson Mandela. The Thornberrys were Peng’s closest foreign friends, and they met regularly with him and other dissidents. When they discovered that his life was in danger, they spirited him out of the country, which created an international incident.

  Their role in this episode is now fully revealed in this book. It is a stunning and tense narrative of his and Judith's lives, and the risks they took living in Taiwan under martial law.

  But Milo’s memoir is much more than the story of personal danger involving secretive escape and loss of the freedom to travel out of America to foreign shores. Like a Graham Greene novel, the plot is a vehicle for a philosophical and spiritual journey.

  The first third of Milo’s book reveals how his pursuit of spirituality led him into a surprising life of missionary work. His appointment to serve in Taiwan was as unexpected as his knowledge of Taiwan was incomplete.

  The book could have been called The Spiritual Education of Milo Thornberry. Milo’s journey through Taiwan’s political labyrinth made him aware of the suppression the local Taiwanese population suffered under Chiang Kai-shek’s martial law. Internationally, the Cold War focused American support on the anti-communist regime in Taiwan. The Methodist Church supported both the Mainlander Chinese who ruled Taiwan and America’s foreign policy goals. Consequently, Milo slowly and painfully began asking questions about the ethical and moral role of a missionary who was dedicated to Jesus’ commitment to humanity.

  Throughout his multiple lives as a representative of the Methodist church, a teacher in two of the island’s seminaries, and a father of two children, Milo was also deeply involved in secret meetings with radical political leaders who represented the then illegal goals of Taiwan independence.

  It is important to remember that the sixties and seventies were dominated by the ideas of liberation theology. Those calls to Christian action and sacrifice were suffused with Marxist theories of the human condition that required liberation over spirituality. Milo struggled to find a theological justification for protest based firmly in the tradition of Jesus’ opposition to Roman rule.

  In the 1960s Taiwan was alight with arguments regarding efficacy and justification for violence. The effects of the massive killings by KMT troops in 1947 as well as the consequent White Terror drove many to consider retaliation. There were still internal political refugees hiding in the mountains. Some of the abused were considering violent uprisings. Others were peacefully advocating human rights. The government severely punished anyone who discussed the events of 1947 or government repression. Foreigners’ mail was regularly opened and read by government monitors.

  Milo and Judith sought out reliable friends in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States to get them through their moral morass—abiding by church and government regulations and yet supporting the suffering Taiwanese community. The book is filled with thoughtful conversations and debates with both Taiwanese and foreigners.

  Milo writes in detail of his search for direction and meaning. He orders books from abroad to his home in Taipei always aware of the looming threat of censorship. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr had been important to Milo in seminary and even more so in Taiwan. Two other authors became especially important for him in Taiwan: Colin Morris, a fellow Methodist missionary in Zambia, and S.G.F. Brandon, an English New Testament background scholar.

  The major issue in the works of Morris and Brandon was the justification of violence. And for Milo, the answer lay in asking what Jesus would do. But the message was not simple: “I no longer assumed that Jesus had to be a pacifist. . . . Despite Niebuhr’s dictum that the line between violence and nonviolence was not absolute, I personally sensed a chasm between them, one that if I crossed I would no longer be who I thought I was.”

  As they became more involved with the Taiwan Independence movement, the Thornberrys entered into the dark realm of subversive culture that including money drops, false identities, and devious behavior.

  Their greatest coup was the successful escape of Peng Ming-min, and though they were never discovered for this act of political sabotage and heroism, they were eventually accused and expelled for actions they never committed. It took them many years to know the cause of their arrest and expulsion. The answer to this is the surprise the reader will find at the end of the book.

  Milo has created a document that should become a classic in both the realm of the missionary experience in repressive environments and the broader community of political activists. The narrative’s style is a combination of the detective thriller and the personal memoir. The characters’ conversations are unique to their person
ality and condition. Each chapter leads the reader into deeper domains of the mystery of the plight of the author and the terror among his friends. Throughout the narrative, there is a running theological and moral debate that gives the story universal meaning.

  I was fortunate to have Milo and Judith Thornberry as neighbors living just a few doors down on Chi-nan Road, Section 2 of Taipei from 1965 to 1967. We both had an infant child to take care of, and we both became deeply involved in Taiwan politics and the issues of human rights.

  It is thus with great respect and even greater memories that I read this story of how he came to dovetail his religious faith with the struggle of human rights in Taiwan.

  Richard C. Kagan

  Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies,

  Hamline University

  Introduction

  Santa’s Smile

  A giant helium-filled Santa Claus bobbed in the wind outside my window at the Ambassador Hotel. I thought about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but remembered that this was Taipei, not New York City. The crowds on Chungshan North Road three floors below seemed indifferent to the grinning balloon tethered to the hotel. I was sitting on the bed and turned my attention back to reading a document Dick Kagan had given me at lunch—the recently declassified conversation among U.S. President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai.

  The purpose of the meeting of three of the most powerful people on earth in Peking that February 23, 1972, was to figure out how relations between their two countries could be normalized. They all agreed that Taiwan was the nub of the problem. In Chou’s mind, U.S. intentions for the island were not clear. Nixon protested that he was ready to give up the island as the price for the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic, but he needed to prepare Congress and the American people for the time when China could have its way with Taiwan.

  Chou pressed Kissinger and Nixon on their promise not to support the Taiwan Independence Movement either in the U.S. or Taiwan. Kissinger cautioned that they could “encourage,” but “allow” was beyond their capability.

  “Discourage,” suggested Chou.

  “Discourage,” agreed Nixon.

  “But you should say that you would not allow a Taiwan Independence Movement on Taiwan while American forces are still on Taiwan,” said Chou.

  “While they are still there,” Nixon qualified.

  “Because you know even Chiang Kai-shek said that you let Peng Ming-min out,” Chou pushed.

  “That is not true,” said Kissinger. He then continued to explain that no American personnel or agency would give any encouragement or support in any way to the Taiwan Independence Movement.

  “I endorse that commitment at this meeting today,” echoed the president.

  Still not satisfied, Chou persisted: “I have received material to the effect that Peng Ming-min was able to escape with help from the Americans.”

  With a show of indignation, Nixon responded, “Mr. Prime Minister, Chiang Kai-shek did not like it. You did not like it, either. Neither did we like it. We had nothing to do with it.”

  “To the best of my knowledge that professor was probably able to leave because of help from American anti-Chiang Kai-shek left-wing groups,” Kissinger added.

  Santa seemed to wave to me through the window that gray Saturday, December 6, 2003. I smiled as I thought how Mao, Chiang, Chou, and Nixon had all wanted to know how Peng escaped, but they had gone to their graves not knowing—and not knowing my role in it.

  Santa’s grin suddenly filled my window. At first I imagined him joining me in my pleasure in having successfully kept the secret and my first return to Taiwan in thirty-two years. While I reflected on what I was reading and the welcome back to Taiwan, Santa’s grin seemed to turn to a garish smirk reminding me of the cost, not just of Peng’s escape but also of all that had happened in that distant past.

  I never imagined that I would return to Taiwan. Over the years I didn’t think I would write an account of those events because to do so would have been a threat to the friends I had left behind. After the emergence from martial law in 1987 and the hope of democracy in the 1990s, I was still not sure my friends would be safe. But in 2000 Taiwan had its first freely elected president, the Democratic Progressive Party’s Chen Shui-bian, the first non-Kuomintang (KMT) official to hold the office.

  At my children’s urging, I agreed to write an account of those events, which they were too young to remember. Katy had not even been born yet. The time seemed right. For sixteen weeks, I wrote weekly installments and e-mailed them to Liz, Katy, and Richard every Monday, my day off as pastor at First United Methodist Church in Bend, Oregon.

  Although their mother Judith and I had been divorced for over twenty-five years, I encouraged the kids to get her perspective because what we did in Taiwan was done as a team. Judith and I discussed and agreed on every activity and we each fully participated in everything that resulted in our arrest and expulsion. I shared with her the letters I wrote to our children with the assurance that I was making no attempt to speak for both of us. The use of “we” did not intend to speak for Judith, nor the use of “I” to exclude her. Still cautious, I instructed the kids not to share the letters outside the family.

  Completion of the sixteen installments seemed to fulfill what I felt was my responsibility to Liz, Richard, and Katy. But on September 25, 2003, I received a phone call from a colleague I had known in Taiwan, Michael Fonte. At the time he was a Maryknoll missionary; now he was in the Washington office of the Democratic Progressive Party. He invited me to return to Taiwan so that I could be recognized for my human rights activities in the late sixties and early seventies. Judith, Liz, Richard, and Katy were also invited, along with other foreigners like ourselves who had incurred the wrath of the KMT.

  The visit was a serendipitous confirmation of the story I had written for the kids almost a year earlier. After a few days of listening to panel discussions sponsored by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, Richard said, “It wasn’t that I didn’t believe your story, Dad, but hearing it from others made it more real.”

  Encouraged by my Taiwanese and American friends who were collaborators in the events, I decided that it was time to tell the story aloud. What you will find in these pages is an account of how and why on March 2, 1971, Judith and I were the first American missionaries to be arrested since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s forces took control of the island in 1945. The sole charge, “actions unfriendly to the Republic of China,” left the way open for the government to release unofficial charges that it could not or would not attempt to prove in a court of law. The vagueness of the charge also left hidden those “unfriendly actions” I was guilty of and, if revealed, would have proved embarrassing to Chiang’s government. Many questions lay unanswered for almost forty years, and some remain; but I learned the real reasons the arrest orders were issued for the first time in late 2009.

  This story is not mine alone. None of our stories are. While writ large in my life, mine is but a few lines in the story of the struggle for human rights during the period of martial law and in the separate but interwoven stories of missionaries and U.S. government personnel. The liability of telling others’ stories as part of my own is that they are necessarily refracted through the lens of my experience. I hope that what emerges at the end adds to their experience and clarifies mine.

  Chapter One

  A Sunday Night in February

  Storytelling reveals meaning without

  committing the error of defining it.

  — Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

  One of the problems with writing history or telling a story is deciding where to begin. Being the first missionaries to be arrested and then expelled from Taiwan by the Republic of China requires some explanation beyond the immediate circumstances around the events, at least back to 1955, when I decided that God was calling me to “full-time Christian service.”

  Before the Reverend Roy Anderson
asked me to come to his office, I knew nothing about what was required to become an ordained minister. The pastor, in the last year of his active ministry and having served for only one year at Iowa Park, sat across from me behind his desk. His office was a small room next to the choir loft with a window overlooking the parking lot in the back of the church. We were surrounded by shelves crammed and stacked with books that reeked of age—a smell I would come to treasure. To the brash seventeen-year-old sitting in front of him, he looked old and uncomfortable.

  “Mike,” he said, his hands fidgeting with papers on his desk, “God calls different people in a lot of different ways, but the experience you had last Sunday surprised me.” He was right to wonder. He didn’t know me and had seen no evidence that I was “preacher material,” as they used to say. He knew my mother sang in the choir and sometimes played the organ. He knew of my sister, Cynthia, who had been active in youth fellowship, sang in the choir, and was sometimes a soloist on Sunday mornings when she came back for visits from the University of Texas. As I sat there so full of myself, I didn’t wonder if he knew anything about me or if it mattered.

  “Yes, Sir,” I murmured, thinking that being polite was good when I didn’t have anything to say.

  “You don’t have any question that it was God speaking to you in the service Sunday night?” he asked doubtfully.

  “No, Sir,” I responded. Of course, I didn’t have any doubts; the experience was real. I was sure. I didn’t reveal, however, how weeks before the experience I had said to my mother and friends, “The last thing I would ever be is a preacher.” The irony was not lost on me as I thought about what had happened Sunday night.