by Helen Zia
By the end of the third day of their impasse, Annuo had an idea. She could offer her father a compromise: She would study law—as her father had. How could he denigrate his own field? She first broached the idea with her mother: “I’m willing to study law instead of literature. I cannot choose medicine.” With her mother as go-between, her father grudgingly agreed. It wasn’t what Annuo wanted, but at least she would end up with a diploma. In the fall of 1953, Annuo entered the undergraduate program of Tai Da’s law school.
Annuo (right) takes a break from her undergraduate law studies at Taiwan University with one of her cousins, circa 1955.
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MEANWHILE, THE WAR IN KOREA had led to an open feud between Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, whom the president had appointed supreme commander for the Allied powers. Taiwan figured prominently in their public schism, since MacArthur opposed Truman’s hands-off policy toward Taiwan and Communist China. By the time the United States and the People’s Republic of China were confronting each other in the Korean War, MacArthur was making public statements in direct contradiction to the president. Whereas Truman was determined to keep Korea from becoming another world war, MacArthur wanted to use Chiang Kai-shek’s troops to attack China, even to use nuclear weapons at the risk of drawing the Soviet bloc into a full-scale nuclear world war.
On March 24, 1951, MacArthur torpedoed Truman’s efforts to end hostilities by unilaterally declaring his intention to expand military operations against China. Two weeks later, Truman fired him.
A cease-fire in the Korean War was finally brokered in 1953, though the war did not officially end. The border dividing the two Koreas remained at the thirty-eighth parallel, just as it had been before the war. The peninsula, however, had become a cratered moonscape from the intensive bombings. Some five million soldiers and civilians had been killed. General Dwight D. Eisenhower swept to victory as president of the United States, and with a Republican administration in office, the conservative China lobby that supported Chiang Kai-shek regained its influence. One of Eisenhower’s first actions in office was to remove Truman’s ban against the Nationalist military attacks on the Communist mainland. The Nationalist army was now “unleashed,” as Chiang put it, while his stronghold on Taiwan was secured indefinitely under the protection of the United States. Generalissimo Chiang and his son Chiang Ching-kuo vigorously crushed any dissent from Taiwanese ben sheng ren and mainland wai sheng ren alike. Though the existence of the Republic of China in Taiwan was ensured by the U.S. Seventh Fleet, the price to the republic’s citizenry was high.
The war in Korea and the threat of Communist invasion only further solidified the stranglehold of the military and secret police. Annuo’s generation was inured to obey rules, to avoid conflict, and to stay off the government’s watch list. Like other college students in Taiwan, she had heard of government raids on campuses. Students suspected of subversive activities or Communist sympathies often disappeared and were never seen again.
Annuo avoided such dangers and did her best to plod through the undergraduate law program. She was completely uninspired, forced to study a subject she disliked. But it was her means to an end, she kept reminding herself: She needed the college degree to apply to graduate school, to get away from this suffocating island. She went through her college years in a daze, as though she had shut down the better part of herself.
Annuo had started at Tai Da when she was almost eighteen. Her bus trips to reach the distant campus took hours each day, and her father’s stifling rules from her middle school years still applied: no bicycle riding, no visiting friends, no trips away, no dating, no boyfriends. Although boys were forbidden, she was also warned that she could marry only an engineer or a scientist. How will I ever meet anyone to marry? Annuo fretted. Maybe my father’s old condemnation is right—no one will want to marry me.
By the time she was ready to graduate, Annuo felt more lonely and isolated than ever. At twenty-two, she didn’t have many girlfriends and wouldn’t dare to try to meet boys. She was squelching her dreams—just as her mother had done with hers—to satisfy the demands of her father. It dawned on Annuo that she was becoming the person she never wanted to be. She had to get away.
NEW YORK, 1950
The cloud over Ho’s life began to lift after the INS had decided that he could work without fear of deportation. Meanwhile, the political storms affecting the lives of all the stranded Chinese had only intensified from the anti-Communist and isolationist whirlwinds emanating from Washington.
In 1950, a former State Department official and suspected Communist named Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury and imprisoned. American scientist Harry Gold, along with engineer Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, were charged with spying for the Soviet Union. While Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a hunt for Communists in the State Department, Congress considered ways to limit admission of all immigrants except for those from Northern Europe. The proposals before the American public included the exclusion and deportation of potential Communists and subversives, “psychopathic personalities,” and “homosexuals and other sex perverts.”
The spreading phobia of foreigners and Communists included suspicions that all Chinese were threats to national security, leading Ho and his fellow students to question their long-term prospects in America. Every three months, Ho was required to report in person to the INS regional office at 70 Columbus Avenue in Manhattan to surrender his passport and confirm that his immigration status was unchanged. Other Chinese students across the United States faced more onerous monthly personal appearances before the INS. Ho was more fortunate than the students in Buffalo or other distant locations who had to travel several hours each way by bus with school chaperones for the brief appearance. Once the INS bureaucracy reviewed each case, the passports were returned by mail with the new extensions. Then the process would begin again.
Unlike Ho, many of his compatriots were still barred from working. Unexpectedly, a window of possible relief appeared in 1950 when more politicians in Washington realized that they could not coerce Chinese students to stay in the United States while at the same time forbidding them to support themselves—especially when those policies were being used as propaganda by the Chinese Communists. Congress passed the China Area Aid Act of 1950, providing six million dollars to assist the stranded students. In addition, the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and later the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 allowed for a few thousand Chinese and “Far Eastern” refugees to apply for visas and for permanent residence status—similar to provisions that had allowed some two hundred thousand Europeans to enter America as refugees under the Displaced Persons Act, though in far fewer numbers.
Unsure of what to do, many students were hesitant to apply for assistance. After all, they had come to the United States as students, not refugees. Some refused to apply because they objected to the refugee label, which conjured images of impoverished beggars, White Russians, and Ashkenazi Jews in Shanghai.
After weighing the options, Ho warily applied for refugee status. However, global events once again threw the Chinese students and their families, wherever they might be, into turmoil. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950 with support from the Soviet Union, America entered the war two days later, to prevent the spread of Communism. As the new global crisis exploded, Ho and the other stranded Chinese watched closely, unsure how this new war would affect their families, the region, or their own tenuous positions.
When Communist China entered the war, sending two million troops to aid North Korea, Washington’s spotlight was back on China. Congressional hawks, joined by American commander in chief of the United Nations Command, General Douglas MacArthur, seemed intent on total war with the Communists. MacArthur sent U.S. warplanes to rain napalm on nearly every town and hamlet in North Korea and notoriously declared his willingness to use nuclear warheads to create a radioactive wasteland along China’s
border with North Korea.
Truman rejected MacArthur’s bravado, fearing that such an attack against China would draw the Soviet bloc into a nuclear world war, but the possibility of employing nuclear weapons horrified Ho and his friends. With the images of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki fresh in their minds, they knew that a single atom bomb over China’s densely populated cities would be deadlier yet, incinerating millions of people, including, perhaps, many of their families.
The exiles met in private, worried huddles, well aware that they had no voice in America. On the one hand, if they opposed an attack against Communist China, they might be labeled as pro-Communist and face arrest and imprisonment by the U.S. government—or by the Nationalists, if they ended up in Taiwan one day. But if they criticized the Communists, their families in China could be harmed in retaliation. Several dozen stranded Chinese students became so frustrated by what they viewed as a forcible detention in the United States that they appealed to Communist China’s premier Zhou Enlai to intervene; it is not known if Zhou took action, but their letter and the names of the student signatories immediately entered FBI files. Others posted anonymous letters to American officials, complaining of the detentions as well as the prohibitions against returning home. All such activities became subject to FBI investigation.
Already, it was whispered through the Jiao Tong student-alumni network that one of the school’s most prominent graduates living in America was accused of being a Communist. Qian Xuesen, renowned as a leading rocket scientist, had served with the U.S. military during World War II, holding the rank of colonel, after his training at MIT and California Institute of Technology. Qian helped create the U.S. missile program and, after the war, became a professor at Caltech. Qian had sought permission to visit his aging parents in China, but the U.S. government blocked his request, stripped him of his security clearance, and forbade him to leave the country, in spite of the insistence of Qian and many of his American colleagues that he was not a Communist. Then came the shocking news that the INS had arrested the esteemed scientist in September 1950 and imprisoned him on Terminal Island in Los Angeles. Ho and other stranded Chinese scholars were stung by Qian’s mistreatment. If a world-famous scientist with a history of loyal service in the U.S. military could be accused and jailed, what could save them from the same treatment or worse?
Qian was the most distinguished Chinese in America to be so accused, but the FBI used harsher tactics against the working-class Chinese in Chinatown and other “downtown” neighborhoods. The INS conducted three “lightning raids” in Brooklyn, arresting eighty-three Chinese suspected to be “aliens,” imprisoning them on Ellis Island. Newspaper articles declared that “a great amount of Chinese Communist literature” was seized. A “Confession Program” was being prepared for Chinatown, promising amnesty to anyone who admitted their own illegal entry—and who would snitch on others. The INS and FBI investigated groups like the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance, which had been critical of Chiang Kai-shek. Chinese as young as eleven years old were being detained for up to a year on Ellis Island.
In defense of such actions against the Chinese in America, John F. Boyd, district director of the Seattle INS branch, later wrote in a memo to the INS Central Office:
One of the most alarming aspects of the situation…is the danger to national security. Most of China is Communist dominated. Some of the Chinese…show evidence of indoctrination. These persons will be potentially dangerous in the event of outright war with China. Certainly this is no time to relax the control over them as they seek to enter the United States. The Service would likely be censured by Congress should such relaxation come to attention.
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WITH THE KOREAN WAR under way and the angry talk of using nuclear weapons against China, Ho was in for another shock: He received a draft notice for military service from his draft board in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He had registered with the Selective Service System when he went to work for China Motors, as was required of all males in the United States between eighteen and twenty-six. In July 1950, the Selective Service had classified Ho as 1-A. He would be among the first in line to be drafted to fight in Korea. Ho was in disbelief. How could he possibly fight against China? He prepared a letter to his draft board informing them of his impending refugee status and inquiring if that would change his draft classification. After posting his letter, there was nothing to do but wait. Young American men around him were being pressed into military service and sent to Korea. Ho wondered if he might be joining them soon.
Just when matters couldn’t get worse, the FBI contacted Ho. They wanted to interview him. Would he be shipped to Ellis Island like his former roommate, or imprisoned like rocket scientist Qian? On the appointed day, he nervously entered the FBI office in downtown Manhattan. The FBI agent asked him to explain his involvement with the Chinese Students’ Christian Association. Ho’s answers were straightforward and without hesitation: He had only attended the group’s social events. He had never been part of any political activity and had no information about it. The FBI agent let him go, but Ho was unnerved by the experience. In the past, he had listed the group on his résumé. Never again.
With Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee widening their witch hunt to target almost anyone, no one in America seemed safe. Like many others in the United States during the 1950s, Ho and the Chinese exiles just wanted to blend in and stay out of trouble.
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AFTER A YEAR’S WAIT, in 1951 Ho was approved for refugee status. The new designation came with a bonus: He’d receive a stipend of $150 per month in government assistance for as long as he remained a student. The money couldn’t have come at a more critical time. His project to engineer a Chinese typewriter was being shelved, and he would have to find another job.
The newly enacted federal assistance turned visa holders like Ho into “professional students,” as they jokingly called themselves. In order to receive the refugee stipend, they had to continue their studies, whether or not they cared to. Because most had entered the United States as graduate students, they had to stay enrolled in a university program. There was another compelling reason to maintain their status: Every Chinese student was well aware that most American companies would not hire a Chinese, regardless of education, skills, or talents. There were plenty of stories of Chinese American graduates with advanced degrees who could find work only as waiters or laundry workers. Ho’s $150-per-month refugee stipend was definitely better than the pay at a menial job.
Luckily for Ho, he was still a graduate student at NYU. To get his doctorate, he would have to complete a dissertation. Ho accepted the topic suggested by his adviser—attempting to prove a theory about the effects of vibration on material plasticity. The subject intrigued him, and he’d collect his stipend for as long as it took him to complete his thesis.
Later that year, Ho learned of a small engineering company that was looking for a draftsman. He applied and was offered the low-paying drafting job. As a mechanical engineer, Ho was qualified to do far more advanced work. But knowing that few, if any, American companies were hiring Chinese engineers, he took the job. Fortunately, Ho’s new boss soon recognized his talents and encouraged him to adjust his immigration status and obtain a security clearance that would allow him to work on more challenging projects. His company provided Ho with a letter of recommendation to the INS:
MR. CHOW IS AN ESPECIALLY TRAINED MECHANICAL ENGINEER AND HIS SERVICES WITH OUR COMPANY WILL BE OF GREAT BENEFIT TO OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE PROGRAM TODAY….OUR FIRM HAS MADE EVERY EFFORT TO ACQUIRE AND TRAIN PERSONNEL OF MR. CHOW’S CALIBER, BUT WE FIND THAT IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE, IN VIEW OF TODAY’S CONDITIONS, TO DO SO AS QUICKLY OR EFFICIENTLY AS HIRING MR. CHOW TO DO THIS WORK….WE REQUEST THAT MR. CHOW’S APPLICATION BE PROCESSED WITH UTMOST SPEED SO THAT OUR COUNTRY CAN BENEFIT IN SOME MEASURE FROM HIS ABILITIES.
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The company’s efforts paid off. By the end of the year, Ho received approval to work on military projects classified as “confidential” and undoubtedly bound for use in the Korean War. Nevertheless, the INS was never far away, as Ho was reminded each time he reported in person.
By the fall of 1951, new government procedures allowed Chinese scholars and students to apply for a special immigration status as “displaced persons.” Such a status was almost as good as a green card and would remove the constant threat of deportation that his temporary status as a refugee student carried. Only a relatively small number of the “most desirable” stranded Chinese scholars would be admitted as displaced persons. In September 1951, Ho applied for displaced person status.
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THAT SAME YEAR, by sheer happenstance, Ho met a remarkable woman. One of his friends wanted to drop something off at another friend’s apartment on Riverside Drive. Ho tagged along. The location was a pleasant walk to the Hudson River from Ho’s place near Columbia. The building was fancier than anything he knew in the student ghetto where he lived. While the friends chatted by the door of the apartment, a young woman came out of another room to meet the visitors.
“This is my younger sister, Junlin Wong,” said the host. “She’s new to New York—just graduated from Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
Ho gave her a respectful nod and murmured some congratulatory words. She had a ready smile that dimpled her cheeks like Shirley Temple’s. Her eyes, bright and inquisitive, sparkled with friendliness. She was fashionably dressed, and she had an educated and sophisticated demeanor. He sensed at once that she was from Shanghai. When she greeted them in the dialect of the Shanghai region, he was happy that he’d guessed right. Then, in English, she said that in America, she went by the name Theresa.
