On the Front Lines of the Cold War
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and Green Berets, 218, 221
and Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 394, 395
Halberstam’s critique of, 219
and Ho Chi Minh, 38, 207–8
invasion of Cambodia by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, 269–71, 351
and Johnson, 222, 224, 227–29, 231–34, 238, 240, 256, 317, 329, 391–92, 394
journalists killed or missing during, 272–73, 386
and John Kennedy, 157, 206, 207–8, 218–19, 221–23, 329
and Robert Kennedy, 222–24
and Khrushchev, 208
and Kissinger, 381, 382
and McNamara, 126–27, 229, 232, 238, 240–41, 393
news media during, 386–87, 394–95
and Nixon, 24, 241, 242, 265–73, 381, 391–92
North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong in Cambodia during, 253–56, 258, 261–65, 267, 268
number of American soldiers in, 229
Operation Rolling Thunder during, 229–32
Paris Peace Talks on, 269, 329
refugees following, 385
Salisbury’s reporting on, 312–18
“Smallbridge” mediation mission during, 234–41, 305
and Soviet Union, 207–8, 229, 232–33
ST views on, 225, 227, 228
Tet offensive during, 231
Vietcong attack on Pleiku, 228–29
Vietcong in South Vietnam during, 227–31, 239, 242, 384–85
weapons used in, 208, 232–34, 263–64
and Westmoreland, 225, 227, 229–31, 254, 263, 386. See also Cambodia; French Indochina War; Pentagon Papers
Vorster, John, 311
Vu Xuan Hong, 388–89
Walker, Walton, 179–80
Wall Street Journal, 21, 347, 396, 397
Walter, Andrew G., 374
Wang Ching-wei, 47
Wang Dongxing, 373
Wang Guangmei, 308–9
Wang Hongwen, 373
Wang Pingnan, 104
Wang Village, China, 181
Ward, Angus, 38, 118
Washington Post, 314, 330, 359, 360, 363, 382, 396, 397
Wastin, Andre, 136–37
Watergate scandal, 362–64
Watts, William, 267
Wedemeyer, Albert C., 20–23, 81
Wei Guoqing, 142, 163
Wei Li-huang, 38–39, 41–43
Weill, Kurt, 191
Welles, Benjamin, 33
Welles, Cynthia, 33
Wenhui Bao, 302
West Berlin. See Berlin
West Germany. See Germany
Westlein, Meme, 368
Westlein, Richard, 368
Westmoreland, William, 225, 227, 229–31, 254, 263, 264, 386
White, William, 261–62
Whitney, Craig, 387
Whittlesey, Henry C., 14
Wibhawa, Col., 290
Wicker, Tom, 220
Willoughby, Charles, 5, following p. 110, 169, 170, 176, 178
Wilson, Harold, 238
World War II: atom bombs during, 3–4
bombing by Allies during, 272, 313
Burma campaign during, 30, 35, 42
Chennault in, 57n
and Chiang Kai-shek, 9
Peter Dewey in, 128
MacArthur in, 5
Soviet Union’s declaration of war against Japan during, 25–28
ST in, 3–6
surrender of Japanese forces during, 107, following p. 110
Wu Faxian, 365–66
Wu Han, 302, 373
Wu Hua-wen, 53, 55
Wu, K. C., 60
Wu Shao-chou, 63
Xinhua (Chinese news agency), 109, 298, 304
Xuzhou Daily, 73n
Yalta Conference, 22–23, 25, 31
Yang Kaihui, 376
Yang, Mr., 347
Yang Su, 374
Yani, Achmad, 281–82, 284–85, 294
Yao Dengshan, 341–42, 346
Yao Wenyuan, 302, 373
Yao Yanliu, 334
Ye Jianying, 7, 366, 373
Ye Qun, 355, 366
Yeh, George, 86
Yen Hsi-shan, 93
Yenan, 10, 13–29, 33, 38, 300, 301
Yenching University, 10, 95–98, 100–101
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 199
Yi Shih Pao, 92
Young, David R., Jr., 363, 364
Yugoslavia, 81, 101
Yuhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 296
Zeigler, Ronald, 267
Zeng Gelin, 26
Zhang Chunqiao, 370, 373
Zhao Ziyang, 379–80
Zhou Enlai: and American ping-pong team in China, 326, 338
and Audrey Topping, 301, 333, 349, 352, 367–71
and border dispute with India, 234
and Chen Yi, 339, 356
and Chinese Civil War, 10–11, 17, 18, 28–29, 81, 301
and Cultural Revolution, 304, 338, 340–41, 350, 355, 356, 371, 376
death and memorial service of, 309, 371–72
demonstrations honoring memory of, 372
and Deng Xiaoping, 309, 367–68, 370–71, 376
and Dulles, 168
and executions of counter-revolutionaries, 109
as folk hero after death, 372, 376
and founding of People’s Republic of China, 96
Gang of Four’s plot against, 373
and Geneva Conference on Korea and Vietnam (1954) and Geneva Accords, 168, 185, 188, 189, 333, 351, 391
health problems of, 368, 369–71
and Huang Hua, 95, 343
and Indonesia, 282–83
interpreters for, 351
and Kissinger, 349–50
and Korean War, 172–75, 178, 180, 181
and Li Tsung-jen, 121n
and Lin Biao, 27, 367
and Lin Liguo’s assassination plot against Mao Zedong, 366
and Malaysia, 282
Mao’s relationship with, 303, 355–56
and Nixon, 355, 377, 391
and Panikkar, 103
on Pentagon Papers, 352, 362
photographs of, following p. 224, 326, 333
and Ronning, 51, 168, 301, 333, 338, 349, 352, 367–71
and Roosevelt, 20–22
safeguarding of Chinese heritage by, 356, 371
and Sihanouk, 268
and Sino-Soviet split, 201, 203
Snow’s interviews with, 325–26, 346
and social events in Great Hall of the People, 269, 301, 326, 333, 338, 341, 349, 351–55
ST’s interview with, 311, 332–34, 347–48, 351–54
ST’s view of, 371
and Stuart, 97–99
on Taiwan, 352–55
and U.S. Army Observer Group, 23
and U.S. recognition of Communist China, 96
and Vietnam War, 189, 232, 268
Zhou Sufei, 16
Zhu De, 15–17, 44, 66, 83, following p. 110, 179, 340
Zhu Qiusheng, 369–70
Ziegler, Ron, 363
Zorthian, Barry, 227–28
* Clubb was one of the ablest and most distinguished China specialists, but his career in the Foreign Service was shattered after his return from China when he, among other China specialists in the State Department, was denounced during the McCarthy witch-hunting campaign as having in his critical reporting of Chiang Kai-shek’s policies contributed to “the loss of China.” Suspended by a Loyalty Board but later cleared, Clubb resigned from the State Department and started a new career as an eminent writer and professor at the East Asia Institute of Columbia University.
* I did not see Sun Li-jen again. On Taiwan, soon after Chiang Kai-shek fled the China mainland in 1949, Sun was appointed commander of the army divisions which the Generalissimo had transferred to the island before the fall of Nanking and Shanghai. In August 1955, Sun was accused of plotting a coup against Chiang. He was placed under house arrest. More than three decades later, in March 1988, the Nationalist government Control Yuan declared him exonerated and released h
im. The timing was significant in that the amnesty was granted after the death that year of the Generalissimo’s son, President Chiang Ching-kuo, who evidently had viewed Sun as a contender for power. Sun died two years after his release at the age of ninety-one. In 2001, the convictions of members of Sun’s staff who were accused with him in 1955 and jailed were reviewed by the government. Their trials were declared to have been conducted improperly on a basis of forged evidence. The officers were released and awarded financial compensation.
* Claire L. Chennault, following his retirement in 1937 from the U.S. Army, went to China, where he formed the volunteer Flying Tigers for operations in support of Chiang Kai-shek in the war against Japanese invaders. During World War II, the general commanded the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force based in Kunming. At the end of the war, he founded CAT, a commercial airline, whose planes were leased in the Civil War to the Nationalist forces.
* In October 2008 I relived the Battle of the Huai-Hai. On the invitation of the editors of the Xuzhou Daily, I was invited to revisit the battlefield and tour the magnificent museum that had been erected there in commemoration of the Huai-Hai campaign. I was stunned by the appearance of Hsuchow itself (now Xuzhou in Pinyin). In November 1948, I had left a shabby, disordered city of 300,000 enduring artillery shelling by the besieging PLA. Now it was a metropolis of some 1.7 million people with a skyline of high-rise office and apartment buildings. On the tour I was accompanied by Audrey, Professor Li Xiguang, executive dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism, my daughter Karen, and my grandson, Torin. We were escorted with ceremony to the Memorial Museum of the Huai-Hai Campaign, a handsome, stone-fronted building opened in 2007. Before it stood a towering gold-colored monument, its base carved with figures of soldiers in combat. In the museum, crowded with Chinese tourists, there were digitalized tableaux of battle scenes and life-size figures of both Communist and Nationalist generals in strategy conferences. Some 20,000 of the 30,000 PLA soldiers killed in the Huai-Hai campaign were memorialized in photographs and digital images. Atop the museum there was a huge revolving depiction of a battle scene on painted canvas that had taken ten painters eight months to complete. I was asked to donate my notebook and copies of my dispatches for an exhibit. In January, on the sixtieth anniversary of the triumphant end of the battle, Chinese Central Television (CCTV), the largest network in the country, showed for six consecutive nights a six-part documentary of the Huai-Hai campaign. One of the episodes was devoted to an interview with me.
* The Communist Party took control of the Catholic Church on the mainland in 1957 with the creation of the Chinese Catholic Association. In 2008 the association had an estimated 7 million members. Peking and the Vatican have not had formal relations since 1951, when the papal nuncio was expelled from the mainland in reprisal for the Holy See’s recognition of the Taiwan government. On the mainland several million Catholics, who accept the authority of the Vatican rather than the Communist association, worship in underground churches. They have at times been subjected to police harassment.
* In the spring of 2009, Chinese newspapers published commemorative articles in celebration of the forthcoming sixtieth anniversary of the proclamation by Mao Zedong in Peking of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. On April 18, the Nanking newspaper Jinling Evening News published a front-page interview with the clerk of the telegraph office in General Yang’s Lane who handled the dispatches of Bill Kuan and myself reporting the fall of Chiang Kai-shek’s capital to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Herewith is a translation of the article:
This is the indelible recollection by the former telegram translator and underground Chinese Communist Party member, Lu Liwei, who is 81-years-old, of that night when news of the liberation of Nanjing was first disseminated from here:
“April 23rd, 60 years ago, 10 P.M., there were explosions in the train station and at the airport. The entire city was lit up with flames and the atmosphere was permeated with fear. A little after 3 A.M. of the 24th, guards of the telegraph building heard a jeep coming. Everyone in the building tensed up, holding assorted weapons in hand: bricks, sticks, and clubs, in anticipation of a terrible fight against bandits. The sound of the jeep came closer and closer, and we all had our hearts in our throats. The passengers in the jeep turned out to be Seymour Topping of the Associated Press and Bill [Kuan] of the French news agency.”
Lu took a quick look at the telegram by Bill. It was a three-word piece, “Reds take Nanking.” The piece by the reporter from the AP, on the other hand, was much more extensive. It was then, that Lu realized that Nanjing had been liberated. Both telegrams were sent smoothly. Unfortunately the short piece by the French reporter was mistaken by the French News Agency as the title of a lengthy report, and the piece never got printed because the agency was waiting for the full report. During that long wait, Mr. Topping became the first journalist to report the liberation of Nanjing to the entire world.
* On July 20, 1965, I reported from Hong Kong that Li Tsung-Jen, the Nationalist vice president and later acting president, had returned to the China mainland after sixteen years of exile in the United States traveling surreptitiously via Switzerland aboard a special plane to Peking. He had broken with the Chiang Kai-shek government on Taiwan, which earlier had formally impeached him as vice president and declared he would form a “third force.” Welcomed at the Peking airport by Premier Zhou Enlai, Li pledged support for the Communist cause in the struggle with the United States to make up for his “guilty past.” He was treated deferentially by Communist officials until his death in 1969 at the age of seventy-eight. Shortly before his death, according to Xinhua, he wrote a letter to the Peking government in which he said that the only way out for the Nationalist officials on Taiwan would be for them “to return as I did to the motherland to contribute their share to the liberation of Taiwan.”
* Powers served one and three-quarter years of the sentence before being exchanged for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on February 10, 1962. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge connecting Potsdam, East Germany, to West Berlin.