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

  Graduate students came to Taiwan to work in many different fields of Chinese studies. The Mainland was closed and Taiwan was the best place not only for Mandarin language studies but also many Chinese classics and other historical documents. Dick and Leigh helped us understand how graduate students coming to Taiwan were warned not to get politically involved. After all, they were told, they needed to get their studies done, and they shouldn’t do anything to make it more difficult for students from their university to come after them. We understood that the great China scholar at Harvard, John King Fairbanks, was especially emphatic on the point.

  It seemed curious to me that these graduate students and professors with extensive backgrounds in Chinese studies could choose to ignore what was happening under their noses or justify their silence to maintain their access to the island. The Kagans said that university professors in the U.S. were reluctant to publish articles critical of the Nationalist government in order to keep the doors open for their students to continue coming to Taiwan. It was the same song the missionaries sang, except without a “university” verse.

  One of the refreshing things about the Kagans was that they were also embarrassed by that reality and had already taken some risks. He had done a master’s in East Asian history at the University of California at Berkley and had gone on to the University of Pennsylvania to work on his doctorate. There he had become active in a small group of scholars who opposed American foreign policy in East Asia, especially Saigon, Seoul, and Taipei. In Taiwan, he sought out and interviewed dissident leaders.

  Dick was a Jewish conscientious objector. His Jewish heritage informed his sense of justice. I found myself fantasizing about converting to Judaism, where somehow there seemed to be more integrity. But it was only a fantasy. Had there been a Jewish community in Taipei, I suspect its members would have compromised their sense of justice as much as the missionaries and the graduate students. Although Dick and Leigh left at the end of our first year, they helped us think through the issues around involvement in politics. They encouraged us in the decisions we were about to make. They vowed to assist us once back in the States, and they did.

  “As we see it,” I said because Judith and I had already talked the issue through with the Kagans and agreed, “we don’t have the option of not being involved in some way. It is not simply a matter of being politically involved in a host country; our State Department is already involved here propping up this government. If we do nothing, we are putting our stamp of approval of what our State Department is doing here.”

  “In good conscience, we can’t do that,” added Judith, “so the answer to your question is yes, we will do what we can.”

  The only important question that remained was what could we do and how we could do it.

  The first thing we thought was important for us was to provide accurate information for people who visited Taiwan.

  “If people in the U.S. knew what our government was supporting here in Taiwan, it would be harder to perpetuate the ‘Free China’ myth,” I said to Dr. Peng on one of his visits.

  Not ten years had passed since Senator Joe McCarthy’s paranoid assault on the fears of communism in the U.S. Also, word of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were beginning to leak out of Mao’s China while the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam was rapidly expanding. In the midst of such developments, perhaps it was unrealistic to try and convince Americans that Taiwan was neither “free” nor “China,” as we had come to see.

  We had found Peng to be so approachable and credible that we thought one small contribution we could make was to arrange meetings for him with visitors from outside the island. One of the expectations of missionaries was to entertain visitors, many of whom were contributors to the Taiwanese mission in their churches back in the States. What was expected was that we would show them “the work,” meaning the Methodist mission work. That responsibility was borne primarily by missionaries assigned to be “port hosts,” but we were all expected to help when we could.

  Some visitors were more interested in shopping than seeing “the work” or knowing about life in Taiwan, but we were surprised at the number who seemed genuinely interested in what was really happening on the island. We shared our perspective with them, even to the point of alarming some of our missionary colleagues, who thought it inappropriate to talk about such things at all, even if they knew them to be true.

  If the visitors seemed serious, we would arrange a meeting with Dr. Peng. The meetings had to be secret. Sometimes we arranged for them to meet him at our home, but more often at a restaurant. He would make sure he was not followed and we would make sure we were not followed. Over dinner, Peng would share his perspective in a calm tone, patiently answering the most basic questions. Although the visitors were most always impressed, we soon came to believe that most of these people didn’t know enough about the realities of Taiwan to take advantage of the opportunity they had in a conversation with Peng.

  We decided that if we had print resources we could put in the hands of visitors beforehand, meetings with Peng would be much more fruitful and more worthy of his time and the risk we all took in arranging the meetings. We did not want revolutionary tracts; we wanted articles that would be credible to scholars and understandable to laypeople. Of course, under martial law, which had been in effect since 1949, possession of such documents was a serious offense. Since the articles would have to be published anonymously, they had to be credible on their own. We tried to explain that in the foreword:

  We are a group of men and women of local and foreign nationalities residing in Formosa (Taiwan) whose professions comprise the fields of religion, education and public affairs. Our primary purpose in compiling this paper is to point out some issues that should provoke thoughtful discussion of the realities in this country. While we are aware of the disadvantages of remaining anonymous, we choose to do so both for the sake of our own safety and for that of our families and friends. That such secrecy is necessary is, in itself, indicative of the nature of the regime by which this island is governed.

  We know that a vast amount of public funds and great official efforts are being expended abroad by the Chinese Nationalist Government to maintain an image of this country as a worthy member of the “free and democratic” world. We know also that abundant official publications boasting of the Kuomintang’s (Nationalist Party) achievement in Formosa are being distributed to foreign visitors here. Thus we feel acutely a need to present a more balanced picture to those who are concerned with what the real situation in Formosa might be. With these things in mind, we have compiled several articles – some previously published – which are at considerable variance with the governmental propaganda and which, we feel, as a result of our own observations and personal experiences, reflect more truthfully the actual situation in Formosa under Chinese Nationalist rule. Emphasis is given to the political situation because we are convinced that this political situation affects the whole of life here – partly by making impossible any changes in the present structures that might contribute to the realization of social justice – and that any discussion of the problems in Formosa is superficial unless this basic political problem is recognized.

  How would we get articles to give to foreign visitors? We would produce them—summarize important books, copy articles from journals, and write some articles ourselves.

  Where was one to begin in explaining to foreign visitors that what they had been taught to believe was “Free China” was, in the view of many, if not most, Taiwanese neither “Free” nor “China”? The American public was largely ignorant of the “current events” in Taiwan since World War II, not to mention the history of the island before that. In our minds, the beginning point of conversation about a Taiwanese perspective was “2-28,” referring to February 28, 1947, a date etched into the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people like Pearl Harbor had been for Americans six years earlier. On that day, an incident took place in Taipei that led to the massive slaughter of thousands
of Taiwanese at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese troops. The event was the beginning of repressive martial law on the island, or what came to be called the “White Terror.”

  While most Taiwanese knew about Pearl Harbor within days of the event, it was safe to say that few Americans knew anything about 2-28. While Tillman and Peggy Durdin wrote about reports of the massacre from Nanking and posted them in the New York Times and The Nation,[12] the attention of war-weary people in the U.S. was on the descending Iron Curtain in Europe.

  A young American diplomat, George H. Kerr, affiliated with the U.S. Consulate in Taipei at the time of the massacre, witnessed many of the atrocities. His book, Formosa Betrayed[13], published in 1965, provided the first glimpse many Americans had of the horrors of 2-28. Kerr not only described in great detail the events leading up to and through the 2-28 massacre, he also documented the U.S. military blueprint of the undefined status of Taiwan in the 1951 peace treaty with Japan.

  Two years later, Chen Lung-Chu and Harold D. Lasswell published an analysis of the international status of Taiwan, Formosa, China, and the United Nations: Formosa in the World Community[14]. They had impressive credentials. Chen was a senior research fellow in international law and international human rights at Yale; Lasswell was a professor of law and political science at Yale. They began with how the island had been ceded to Japan at the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. At the end of World War II, Japan surrendered Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek acting on behalf of the United States and other Allied powers. Immediately after suppressing the 2-28 incident, the Nationalist government unilaterally claimed Formosa a regular province of China. As the Nationalists continued to lose the civil war on the Mainland, most observers felt it was simply a matter of time before the Nationalist regime would be exterminated. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 changed that. President Truman, while proclaiming the “neutralization of Formosa” and dispatching the United Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa and any operations launched from there on the Mainland, stated that “the determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.” In the peace treaty with Japan, signed in September of 1951, Japan formally renounced “all right, title, and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores.” Formosa was “detached” from Japan but was not “attached” to anyone since the treaty didn’t specify any beneficiary of Japan’s renunciation.

  As things stood in 1967, when the book was published, the Chinese Nationalists had both effective control over Taiwan and the China seat in the United Nations. Although outside the framework of the United Nations, the People’s Republic of China claimed Taiwan and the Nationalist seat in the UN. Chen and Lasswell argued that the overwhelming majority of Formosans abhorred both the Nationalist and Communist regimes and hoped to achieve independence through self-determination. The authors argued for a “One China, One Formosa” solution.

  These two books had begun to fill a void in academic perspectives that for years had taken only Nationalist and Communist claims into account. We thought foreigners ought to know about these two books, so Dr. Peng wrote twelve-page condensations of each of them for the packet.

  Together, we selected other articles for inclusion in the clandestine packet:

  “The Majority Problem in Formosa,” an article that appeared in Student World, a World Student Christian Federation publication;

  “General Wedemeyer on the Nationalist Occupation of Formosa,” excerpted from United States Relations with China,;

  “Formosa: Solidarity of Gloom,” by Marilyn Blatt Young;

  “Taiwan – DISNEYLAND EAST,” by Arnold Abrams;

  “The China Impasse: A Formosan View,” by Li Thian-hok;

  “Chiang Kai-Shek’s Silent Enemies,” by Albert Axelbank,; and

  “Government Influence on Education in Taiwan Today,” an original article written by one of our academic friends.

  After we selected the pieces we wanted and wrote the foreword, we decided that we needed an introductory article, one that would point to the rest and provide an overview for the people who read only one article. Peng could have done exactly what was needed, but we didn’t want him writing anything that could be traced to him. So we turned to one of our academic writer friends who agreed to write the article for us. It’s called “An Introduction” and it is well-written, as one might expect of a writer for the New York Times.

  Back in the States, the Kagans told Fox Butterfield to get acquainted with us when he came to Taiwan. Fox was a graduate student from Harvard and a stringer for the New York Times. He had been born with a silver academic spoon in his mouth. His father was the famous Harvard scholar who edited The Adams Papers. Fox was always interested in getting a story for the Times, but we found that we both liked and could trust each other. His occasional stories in the Times were good—better than most of the other news stories published about Taiwan.

  Later Fox would become the Times bureau chief in Saigon, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Boston and a correspondent in Washington and New York. He would win the Pulitzer Prize as a member of the New York Times team that published the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study of decision-making about the Vietnam War leaked to the newspaper. It prepared a series of lengthy articles and published them in 1971.

  One of the things that impressed us in 1966 was Fox’s journalistic integrity. When asked about his craft, he would reply, “I was trained to think you've got to write what you find, warts and all, if you believe it to be accurate.”

  That’s what we wanted—someone who would write about Taiwan, “warts and all.” We unimaginatively titled his article “An Introduction.” It was that and it lead the reader to the other articles. But it was more than an introduction. We might have better named it “What Americans Should Look for in Taiwan—And What They Should Ask Themselves.”

  What we had to ask ourselves, he said, was what role our government was playing in Taiwan. Despite State Department officers’ bland pronouncements that they did not interfere in “China’s domestic affairs,” Fox pointed out that the U.S. propping up the Chiang government was intervention, as was training Ching-kuo’s secret police and providing them with the latest equipment. He closed with the words of the editor of a magazine shut down by the government:

  America is basically hypocritical. You hold up Chiang Kai-shek when he would fall down by himself; but you say there is nothing you can do to improve the political situation. Don’t you care about democracy?

  Selection, writing, and editing the pieces for the packet, although time consuming, was the easiest part of the project. Getting them printed and distributed were different matters altogether.

  Chapter Ten

  Word Spreads

  What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

  — Abolitionist Wendell Phillips (1811-1884)

  Before we decided on anything, we made several decisions. The first was about risk assessment. We knew if and when we got into trouble with the authorities that any Taiwanese with whom we were working would in all likelihood suffer far worse consequences than we would. We assumed the worst that would happen to us was deportation. There would be times later when I wondered if we had been right about that assumption. We would be right about how much more Taiwanese associated with us would suffer. Because of the differing levels of risk, we decided that we would only be involved in antigovernment activity with Taiwanese who knew the risks and who had already been in prison. Peng, and later Hsieh and Wei, all knew the probable consequences of our activities far better than we green Americans did.

  While that first decision limited the number persons with which we would be involved, it also made clear with whom we would not be involved. Before our appointments to the seminary had been made, we decided that we would not let our students or Taiwanese faculty know what we were doing with Peng and others. In some cases, students and faculty would come to know s
omething of how we felt about the Taiwanese situation, but as far as they were concerned, it was just how we felt.

  We involved other foreigners. Since we always operated on a need-to-know basis, few of the missionary colleagues, foreign graduate students, or U.S. government employees we recruited to help ever knew about the things we were doing in which they were not directly involved. We tried to arrange at least one meeting with Peng for them as individuals or couples so that they could hear him make his case. We only approached missionary colleagues we knew shared our general view of the situation. Not surprisingly, most of those had been through the Stony Point missionary orientation.

  One of the other decisions we made at the outset was that we would not engage in any public protest, choosing rather to work quietly and secretly to prolong giving the government any reason to kick us out as much as we could. We couldn’t imagine any public protest we might make that would aid the cause anyway.

  The first of our projects, which we dubbed “Educating Americans,” was directed only at foreigners and would continue as long as we were in Taiwan. We weren’t out to change Taiwanese views. That, I believed, would have been irresponsible “political involvement” for American citizens. We were, however, out to change American views, a kind of involvement in politics that we believed to be our responsibility as citizens, especially given the kind of information to which we now had access. One-party rule by the Kuomintang, their multiple secret police agencies, and their stacked courts cared nothing about what might be citizen involvement in another country or even the provisions of the ROC constitution. Under martial law, dissent was not tolerated.

  After Peng, Hsieh, and Wei printed and almost got their manifesto distributed in 1964, the government tried to make unauthorized printing more difficult. Not only were all printing presses registered with the government, but mimeograph machines as well. How were we to get our selection of articles printed?