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.