My story

My story 8– Japan to and fro We graduated on April 30, 1953. I was assigned to Navy and appointed as assistant to the Political Officer of YunShung ﹝永順﹞ , AM 44, with the rank of ensign. The ship was built in 1943, a 625 ton Admirable class minesweeper. She had served briefly in the US navy, was leased to the Chinese Nationalist Navy in 1945, and handed over in 1948. Since there were no mines to sweep, the Nationalist navy used her as a frigate. Her wide hull and slow speed, 13 knots at the most, earned her nickname “the duck”. I did not like my assignment to the ship. My horrible seasickness during the passage to Taiwan in 1949 and to Matsu (馬祖) the year before turned me against anything floating. I would rather go back to Jinmen (金門), the front, than to any ship. But that was an order and there was no bargaining. More than 200 of us went to the Navy, mostly to the marines and headquarters, and only about a quarter t...

My Story 7: To Taiwan, and back to Taiwan. Arrival Vessel  Hai Shen ( 海辰輪 ) was a 7000 ton cargo ship manufactured by the US during the Second World War. She belonged to the Liberty Class, built in haste to replace the loss of supplying vessels sunk by German submarines. Hai Shen was built in 1942 in San Francisco and was originally named the Lyman Beecher. Sold to the China Merchant Steam Ship Company in 1946, she was renamed Hai Shen, or Sea in the Morning. About 5000 soldiers and civilians squeezed into her holds and decks. It was hard to find a place to lie down. The ship departed Swatow on September 30, 1949. My company was assigned a space in a hold that was accessed through an opening in the deck by descending vertically down a three-story high ladder. There was no lavatory in the hold. On the side of the deck were set up numerous temporary outhouses in the form of two planks that extended outward on the gunwale. Although canvas walls offered some protecti...

My story 6 –1949(2) I have kept a diary since the 5 th grade. The earlier part was left in home and lost. From June 14, 1949, despite my being tossed around in Taiwan without a steady residence, and drifted all over the oceans to England and to the US, I have kept all my personal chronicles. Thus from June 14 th , 1949 onwards, I have records of events in my life with definite date and exact feeling or thought at the moment. On June 15, 1949, when we were still in Reijin, we were issued two uniforms, two pair of shoes, three towels, and strangely, one umbrella. We received umbrellas because there were no hats for us. We were ordered to return one uniform and a pair of shoes a week later, so we were left no clothes to change. Three days later, the academy with about five hundred cadets left town. The county authorities organized a big farewell party to see us off. Firecrackers exploded. Relatives of departing cadets crowded ...

My story 5 – 1949(1) If the Communists had not come back to influence my life the second time, I would have been a Western medicine practitioner in my native county. I had actually planned to take the entrance exams to several medical colleges. Or I could have been a middle school teacher, because the educational system was expanding fast while industries had not developed to offer enough opportunities for engineering graduates, of which the field I was also interested in should I fail in my first choice. The Communist occupation of my county in the 1920s and 1930s did not have any direct impact on me. To me, the torture, killing, and other cruelties under the Chinese Soviet rule were only tales. So as the Nationalist Army was pushed back in the civil war, and the government was no longer in control over the situation, economically and socially, even in their own area, I followed the general trend and adopted the prevalent feeling of disappointment against the Nationalist Govern...