This is Helen MacDonald. Today is January 28,
2008. Dr. Hatfield, Tom Hatfield, is interviewing
Robert H. N. Ho. The interview is taking place
in the boardroom of Fredericksburg, Texas,
and the interview is in support of the Center
of the Pacific War Studies Archives for the
the National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas
Historical Commission, for the
preservation of historical information related
to this site.
Okay. Well, it's a pleasure to be here and to
meet with you, Mr. Ho, and we have
some rudimentary information to extract from
you to begin, just for
record but where were you born and when? Well I
was born in Hong Kong. Hong Kong. October 22nd
1932 so I'm an old man. Well you and I are almost
contemporaries I'm a little younger than you
are but I remember when I first
became conscious of China I used to wonder what
little boys were doing in
China at that time. So after all these years I
meet a little boy, one who was a
little boy there at the time. So you would have
been born in 1932. Did you
did you live in Hong Kong then until when?
Until well the war started on
on December the 8th in Hong Kong, 1941.
And at that time I was on my way to school that morning
and I was living on the Victoria side of Hong Kong
and the planes came in in big numbers,
maybe 20, 30 planes.
and on the Kowloon side across the harbor and
because their first objective
are two goals. First is to bomb all the
so-called air force on the airport, and the
The second one is to bomb these huge gasoline drums
along that area to disable any fuel, supply of fuel.
And it was scary.
And at first I thought it was some sort of a practice
because previous to that day,
there are many air raid sirens and so on
to train the population to meet the war.
So I thought it was just another practice,
but it turned out to be the first wave.
So I witnessed all that from the Hong Kong side
because we lived in mid-level Hong Kong.
In other words, I don't know whether you've
been to Hong Kong
but mid-level and without all the full buildings,
of course, in those days.
So you can see clearly the planes coming in
And I was scared.
I was nine years old, and I went home.
And, you know, on Christmas Eve,
it was a short war, and Hong Kong surrendered.
And we were comprehensive,
because my father was attached to the
Nationalist Army.
army at that time he was a major general and
they were hunting for him looking
for him and of course luckily he wasn't in Hong
Kong it's just my mother my
sister myself and so they were looking for us
and we had to change our identity
and so on and kicked from house to House,
relatives house, and finally ended up in
the temple. And then at the same time what
happened was that the Japanese
found that they couldn't feed the population.
The rice supply was low,
food supply is low food wasn't coming in from
China anymore so they were kind of
scared because the army that occupied Hong Kong
they were going to move to
some other theater to fight so the remaining
army that is in Hong Kong
fear that they couldn't control the population
in case there's no more food
so they encourage people to leave which is
which is very interesting so they
announced to the population say anybody wants
to get out of Hong Kong please do
so just get out of Hong Kong so we took a boat
a Japanese boat about two months
after they surrendered and to a place called
Chan Kong which is at that time a
French colony near the Vietnam, near Vietnam or
Indochina in those days.
Can you spell that? Chan Kong, I don't know,
but I can I can point out on the map to you.
Very near Indochina, it's a French colony at
that time, and so we went there, but the trip
that took us from our temple to the boat was
sort of a scary thing, because although we
changed our identity,
but our photo is still more or less the same.
Of course, we shave our hair and try to hide
our things,
but as I was telling some other people that,
you know, war is a very strange thing.
We got out of there with the help of those
people who are helping the Japanese.
you know they set up a Chinese government to
run Hong Kong a puppet
government that's right and the puppet people
should have turn out turn us in
to the Japanese but instead they helped us to
get out to the boat and this is
very interesting because to this day I think
what happened was that my family
my grandparents probably had helped them
sometime during you know their
their livelihood and they appreciated that so
they helped us to get on board
even going through these check check points
they took us in and say follow me
and then we went on board.
So that was interesting.
And then from then on, of course, we went free China.
So you asked a question, it's a long answer, but.
No, that's a wonderful answer.
Were you able to continue to go to attend school
when you went to Chang Kong?
Oh, no.
Well, perhaps I should answer your question
with a supplementary thing.
We're generally interested in your schooling.
Okay, all right.
From Chang Kong, our destination wasn't Chang Kong.
Our destination was Liu Chao in Guangxi province.
Because my father was stationed there.
And so we had to walk from Chang Kong to Liew Chow.
It's approximately maybe 100, 150 kilometers.
Of course, we would walk many days to get there.
We had rented or hired some people to carry our bags.
and we had rented or hired a sit-down chair to
share the three of us, my mother, my sister,
and myself.
And we would rotate to get on that sit-down
chair, but my sister was very young.
She was six years younger than I am, so she was
only three years old.
so she got to ride piggyback on that sedan
chair all the time whereas my
mother-in-law and I would take turns to ride in
that chair and that way we
walked all the way to Lichang. That's a long,
long walk and especially if it's raining
because it's a muddy road, very hard to get
traction and then along the way
there were gangs that would ask for money or in
kind or take away some of our
belongings and so by the time we got to Yuen
Chau, we were pretty, you know, we haven't got
too much too many things left. Well now when
you left Hong Kong you had
property, both real property and money,
presumably in the bank, or some in the
family. What happened to those possessions, the
real money and the manufactured?
We had no money because the banks closed, all
the banks in Hong Kong closed the
first day of the war, so we didn't know the
attack was coming, so even though on
on that same day, because they came in in the morning
and the troops were coming in from the north
and the planes were bombing, the banks closed.
So we had no way to get money.
We had no way to go to our safe deposit box
to get any valuables.
And we only were left with the money in our possession.
And my mother had some jewelry with her.
that was not in the safety pass box and we
survived that for the whole entire
war plus my father's salary from the army which
is a pittance and we sold her
jewelry one by one and some we had some what
they call gold bars but not in this
size but what what we call tails about the size
and we sold them and we erased
our vegetables and we raise some chickens and
ducks, so we lift on vegetables, we
lift on eggs, and occasionally we slaughter a
duck or a chicken. That's
about it. But the thing that the most anxiety
is that, looking from
hindsight, we know the war lasted four years,
but during the war we
had no idea when is this going to end could be
10 years 15 years or whatever
so if the anxiety in the family or the little
nest eggs that we have you know
my parents were quite worried what so you when
you went to Lucho and there you
joined your father that's right and Lucho is
part of free China oh yeah at
At that time, they eventually fell to the Japanese,
but at that time, yeah.
Let me go back for just a moment.
When you saw the Japanese planes in the air
on December the 8th, where did they come from?
From land bases?
From the north.
See, the British made a disaster determination.
the termination, they thought the Japanese
would come with the Navy. Same mistake they
made in Singapore. They thought they would come
from the sea, but they came from Malaya
or Malaysia now, it's called Malaya. They came
down the Malay Peninsula. In Hong Kong
it's the same way. They conquered Shanghai,
they conquered the entire coastal area of
China and they came marching in from what is
now Guangzhou at that time
was called Canton. They just came down you know
came came across the border and
from the north all the way to the Kowloon
Peninsula and then to the
Victoria. So the the guns of the British were
facing the sea. They came
They came from the north.
Yeah, they're a maritime nation.
They think about the sea rather than the land.
So, in Luchow, you joined your father.
And your father was on the staff of Chiang Kai-Shek?
Yes, yes.
I mean, that's the supreme commander.
But he was under another general called Chang
Hua Hui, who had the 4th Army in that entire
area, and he served under him.
Why don't you just continue to talk through
this, that is to go chronologically as to where
you were during the war,
and if you were separated from your parents,
from either one, just tell us about that and
let, I think, go chronologically would help us
to reconstruct this, the story.
Well, chronologically, if I start from Hong
Kong, I just told you that, and I landed in
free China, and then from New Chow, I went to
school there for a few months.
See, my father was in charge of logistics.
That's his specialty. You know, he was in
charge of shipping ammunition and fuel and food
to the Army.
And I know that he, I found his record from the
U.S. Army's Command and General Staff School in
1933 and 34.
That's right. I was with him then in Fort
Leavenworth. So that was his job to supply the
4th Army. But then Liu Chao got a little tight
and the Japanese were coming.
And so after about six, seven months of
schooling, I had to stop going to school
because we were
thinking of moving.
So we moved to an area just outside of New Chow
temporarily to see how the war was going.
In those days, the Japanese were bombing New
Chow already, mostly at night, and pretty
soon the Japanese were around the machine gun
area, and we were still there, and we
could hear the machine guns, they were coming.
We couldn't get out by train, roads were
damaged, no more buses getting out of the city.
We couldn't go by train because everybody was
packing the train on top of the roof and
underneath the carriage, and in front, those
who couldn't get on, they lie on the track
in front.
So the train couldn't move.
If they moved, they'd kill everybody on the track.
So that was a dead end.
And for a day or two, we were very anxious.
We didn't know how to get out of the city.
on the track.
So that was a dead end.
And for a day or two, we were very anxious.
We didn't know how to get out of the city.
We thought we were just gonna be, you know,
marooned there.
So what we didn't know was that my father
had already gone to Kunming.
He flew out of
of Liu Chao, he was already in Kunming.
Because for a period of time, we lost contact
with him
because he was with the troops,
and left my mother, myself, and my sister in
Liu Chao
in this new development.
So we didn't know where he was,
but it turned out that he was in Kunming.
And he was from Kunming, but you know,
He knew a lot of Americans, Chennault he knew,
so he'd find out from the 14th Air Force
that there was an empty plane going to Liuqiao
to destroy some of the documents there.
So he asked Chennault, since the empty plane
is gonna come back to Kunming empty,
could we sort of hitchhike on that one and it
was it turned out it was a B-25
which is a twin thing and the three of us went
on board that thing and we flew
to Luchow just as the Japanese was marching in
the city and it was a tight
call and so we went to Kunming. Now Kunming of
course remained free the rest
of the war and you asked me what I what I did
and I went to school there and to
the end of the war. You were in Kunming until
the end of the war. And then they
dropped the bomb and the whole show was over
and from there we went to a place
called Nanning by plane. From there Nanning we
took a boat down the East
River all the way to Canton and we stay in
Canton for a little while because it
was unsafe to go back to Hong Kong because the
British hadn't arrived back
and the Chinese Nationalist Army were keeping
order there, but they had, including my father,
was leading the Nationalist Army to keep order
in Hong Kong.
But there are many gangs, they are looting.
There was a period that there was not enough
control, a lot of looting, and so on.
on. So my father thought it was unsafe for us
to go right back to Hong Kong. So we lived
in Canton for a few months and then eventually
to Macau. So we stayed in Macau because my
grandfather is there and he had a house there.
So we stayed in Macau and I went to school
there for one semester and then eventually went
back to Hong Kong and that's it.
Now Macau is Portuguese territory. It was
supposed to be neutral. Yes.
And the Japanese didn't go in there although
they, you know, the big muscles
that you can feel there, but they never got in
there. You mentioned your
grandfather did he stay in Macau during he had
a home there so he stayed there
while the Japanese were on Hong Kong. Yeah well
my grandfather I have to tell
you this little story 80 some relatives of ours
were all caught in Hong Kong
when the Japanese came. Reason being, all our
relatives from all the rest of the
world congregated in Hong Kong to celebrate my
grandfather and my
grandmother's 75th wedding anniversary. And
except my father. My father did not
appear and my grandfather was livid. The reason
being that my father was working
with the British intelligence in pre-China and
they knew exactly the day
to the day when the Japanese would invade Hong
Kong but they couldn't tell
anybody not even my mother or anybody so he
just no show he didn't come we don't
know why my grandfather was angry because you
know big thing and then he
He didn't show up.
So we all caught there in Hong Kong, 80 of us.
And of course, the relatives were living in
various hotels.
But then when the war started,
they all came back to my grandfather's place.
However, now, why that my grandfather was in Macau,
all right, the celebration and the invasion,
they were three days apart.
After the celebration, three more days before
the Japanese invaded Hong Kong.
During those three days, my grandfather,
unbeknown to us or anybody, and he never told
us, he took a boat to Macau.
So he left Hong Kong before the invasion. You
see? He alone went to Macau because he had a
house there.
And so during the war he was not in Hong Kong
and he already left.
Now why? I suspect somebody told him to leave.
I don't know who.
so that's why after the war he was still in
Macau and we lived with him and I
went to school for one semester there and then
I came back to Hong Kong with
my sister and on his boat and the British took
a boat to Macau to welcome
him back to Hong Kong and we got you know we
were lucky to get on that boat
and went back to Hong Kong under the companion
of Admiral Harcourt, the first
commander of Hong Kong after the war. And he
took us back to Hong Kong.
Well, a little more about your grandfather. Now
when he left Hong Kong
during that three-day period. What about his
possessions, his money, safe to
deposit boxes? He's left everything. Same as
us, except he had some money in Macau, except,
you know, Macau at that time was a gambling
city just like today, but in a
very small scale, and the head of the largest
gambling house is by the name of
Ko, K-O, and he was a well-known man in Macau,
obviously, you know, controlling the casino and
even the Macau government had to, you know,
give way to his thing. He lent my grandfather money.
Oh, he loaned him money until the war was ended.
That's right, that's right. So he was comfortable.
Was, but was your grandfather able to return to
Hong Kong during the war or
did he stay away? The Japanese wanted him to
back, to be back in Hong Kong, you
know, under the puppet government because he
was somebody in Hong Kong and if he
say, you know, if he joins the government, you
know, everybody would respect him. No,
No, he never did. He pleaded that he was in ill
health, that he couldn't travel, so he stayed
in Macau.
Let's go back to those almost four years you
were in Kunming.
Yeah, about three years.
What's your strongest memory from being in Kunming?
Well, I was a boarder in a school, and I had
difficulty in the language because they speak
Yunnan language, which is a local language,
instead of Mandarin.
they taught in Yunnan dialect so I had a real
hard time as a student at first to
know what was going on because couldn't
understand it but you know when you are
young it's easy to catch on so after a while I
spoke Yunnan dialect and you
you know, and stay in school.
So that was a fond memory of mine.
And another one, which is a really amusing story,
is that the governor of Vietnam is called Lung Yun,
and he's got a son who are a few classes above me.
I was in primary school and he was in secondary school.
And he had a gun with him in school.
And he's showing off his gun all the time.
So I was in the same dormitory room with him.
It's a room of 14 people.
And I had a bed there, and he had a bed.
He was, one day was shining a gun on his bed,
you know, on the edge of the bed,
and that thing misfired.
And I was next to him in the other bed,
that bullet hit my bed, you know, didn't hit
me, but that was another memory of
mine. Memorable. And then of course nobody
dares to discipline him because he was
the son of the governor. And that was, he was
the only one that had a moped, you
know I mean yeah this is the war you know I
mean you walk but he's got a
moped you know what so you were in the boarding
school in Kunming and your
mother and father were in the area also no my
father was stationed in Chongqing
he went to Chongqing yeah he was at that time
had a first of all the fourth army
disintegrated because they fought the Japanese
and lost the battle, so he went to Chongqing to
see where they can-that was at the wartime
capital of Chongqing-and he thought he could
get another job there.
but it turned out that his supporters were also
in a dark house so he couldn't get a job except
you know just a superficial title so he was in
Chongqing for about two years
looking for a job couldn't find anything but he
lived in Chongqing with my mother
and I was in school and my sister was in
Chongqing as well so I was the only one left in
Penming in school as a boarder. Now, however,
when Stilwell didn't get along with Chiang Kai-Shek,
they brought in a guy called Weddemeyer. And
Weddemeyer, so happened, was the teacher
when my father was at the commanding staff
school in Fort Leavenworth. So Weddemeyer came
in and
said to the generalissimo, he said that I need
a Chinese, you know, army officer to be my link
between the Chinese army and the rest of the
Chinese government and the U.S. people and I know
one called Ho Chai Lai. I'd like to have him to
be my liaison officer and the
Generalissimo's office said who the hell is Ho
Chai Lai so they
looked around looked around because he was not
in favor he was in a doghouse so
finally they found my father and he said hey
you know whether I want you to be
there. So he was, all of a sudden, he became
pretty important.
What a wonderful coincidence, Wettemeyer having
taught your father at the
Command and General Staff School. Yeah, that's
right. And then he goes to China and succeeds Stuart.
So then, so the third year, two years in the
Dark house, the third year he was
was alive again, you know?
And so he served Wettemeyer as the link man
until the end of the war, you know?
And Wettemeyer kept up contacting him.
In fact, Wettemeyer gave me a watch
when he visited us in Hong Kong with his wife.
And they lived in, as you know, he retired in Maryland.
My father, my mother went back to stay with him
several times in the house and of course now
he's passed away.
I'm a student of Wedemeyer.
Oh really?
He had went to the German General Staff School
in Berlin.
He knew German as a child.
He's an important person.
In the China theater he was fondly remembered.
They respected him a lot.
Let's talk about Chiang Kai-Shek or the Chiang
Kai-Shek government.
Who do you think that Generalissimo thought was
the greater enemy?
Was it the Chinese communists? Was it the
provincial warlords? Or was it the Japanese?
He has all of those, all the conflict with those...
It was a difficult time. As you know, in 1937,
the Japanese started to invade China.
and the warlord up there is called Zhang Jilin
and Zhang Jilin was murdered by the Japanese
while he was riding in the train. He just set a
bomb and then killed him and you know his empire
so-called the Manchurian his little turf was
passed on to his son who was called the Young Marshal
So the young marshal was not really ready to
take on the task of being the warlord.
However, he commanded Manchuria, which is the
richest part of China,
a lot of stuff under the ground, oil and
everything, and industry.
So it goes back. My father, meanwhile, finished
his schooling at Woolwich in UK, which is a
military academy. Now it's called Sandhurst. At
that time it was Woolwich.
and he went back to China looking for a job as
a young officer and my
grandfather was friend of Zhang Zhilin who died
and wrote a letter to the
young marshal and recommending my father and so
my father joined the
young marshal at first at his age, eight to
come, and later on was assigned to be
the officer in charge of, excuse me, in charge
of the radio room and I
mean you can well appreciate that's the highly
most secretive thing that you
you know, the telephone, this telephone, and
the radio. Coat.
Yeah, with the coat, yeah.
And cyphering and deep cyphering.
That's right, the coat was with my father.
So, now, okay, going back to Generalissimo,
the Japanese were coming down in Manchuria
and the young marshal was no match.
And then there are other warlords all around China.
So the Generalissimo had, as you rightly
pointed out, fight the Japanese, talk to the
warlords, and especially, and then the
communists, Mao Tse-Tung.
So what he did was that he gave him credit for
getting all the warlords together to fight the
Japanese, and they signed a pact, including the
young marshal, to fight the Japanese.
But the young marshal was sort of an idealistic
young man.
He said, why don't you settle with the
communists first
and then have the Communists join in
and fight the Japanese.
And he did.
He talked to Mao Zedong several times
and Zhao Enlai several times, but didn't get anywhere.
They both had their interests.
So then he turned around and fought the Japanese
with the communists exposing him on the west.
But the communists also fought the Japanese on
their own.
And at the same time, trying to gain more territory
while Chiang was moving around
and they would eat into his territory and so on
and so forth
to expand their base.
So the communists was fighting the Japanese
so that they can claim, proclaim to the world
that, well, we are fighting the Japanese,
but at the same time, in the back, they're
eating Jack.
So, but anyway, the war ended.
The Americans helped a great deal, the war ended.
And then that's when I think Chiang Kai-Shek government
was not active enough on reconstruction.
They are a tired bunch and they are a corrupt
bunch and they, I mean, the whole economy
fell to pieces and the communists took, you
know, took advantage of that and besides they're
well trained, they're very hungry, they're
disciplined and they certainly have no corruption.
So, you know, the end of the story, you know,
gradually they just took over the entire China.
But then, of course, now they've been in power
since 1949, and they're getting caught up too.
That's another story, of course.
Well, I want to come back to 1949 in a few
minutes, but I want to go back to the war period.
Why do you think that the Generalissimo and
General Stilwell couldn't get along? What was
the problem there?
I think, basically, it's an ego problem.
They both are rather egoistic people, and of
course, Stilwell wanted the generalissimo
to do a number of policy changes, and the
generalissimo felt that to comply, he's losing
his control of this group, of his army, and so
on, and refused to give in to the end.
They're not talking to each other. And there
was complete collapse of cooperation.
and Stilwell thinks Chiang Kai-Shek was garbage.
He called him the peanut.
Yeah, and then Chiang refused to talk to him
and Stilwell remained more or less in Berlin.
Well, anyway, and then Washington knew about
this and thought, you know, it's just no good.
So they took Wedemeyer, and Wedemeyer got along
very well with the generalissimo.
I think it's a clash of personality, ego. I
think it's ego.
And also demands that the generalissimo thought
was unreasonable,
and also nervous that if he relinquished those
controls that he would be in trouble.
that's that's how much this is of course I
didn't know that I was a young kid
then but in retrospect and reading the history
I think basically that's what
happened. But you you know you of course you
were you were just a child but you
have all of this rich background and so when
you have studied it and thought
about it over the years your conclusions I
think are very useful and very
interesting there's so many interesting things
during the war I can to tell you
a few anecdotes of you I'm totally unrelated to
what you asked me let me
let we might get to that let me relate it also
to the generalissimo
We're ready again. I want to go all the way
back to the day the war started.
The day the war started?
December the 8th, 1941. Did you have any
awareness of the war before them, of the
Japanese, you were nine years old, but of the
Japanese occupation, their
aggression toward China? Schools, all the
schools in those days, every morning the
the principal would stand up and tell us the
progress of the war in China and make all
students aware what is going on. And so we were
not surprised. We knew they were to come
to Hong Kong. Of course, there were a lot of
propagandas that the British could defend
Hong Kong and all that but at the time we were
young kids we believed the
British would could repel the Japanese when
they come to Hong Kong of course and
but daily briefing by the principal to the you
see I don't know whether you
have the same system but we would have to stand
attention to raise the flag to
sing the national anthem and then the
headmaster would step on the podium and
announce activities
and so on you know of the day and so in that
period every morning the principal will talk
something about the war where were the Japanese
how the nationalists are fighting them and
And that was, of course, before the Americans
got involved in the war.
As a point of clarification, the school was a
Chinese school. Yes.
And so you had the Chinese flag.
Yeah, that's right.
And the British flag.
Because it's a colony.
So we had to raise two flags.
Did you sing God Save the King?
No, we sing the Chinese National Anthem because
we're Chinese schools. I guess they sing God
Save the King in the English schools.
Do you think that in that period you became
aware of Japanese brutality, the rape of Nan King?
heard something about the rape of Nan King but
not in detail. We knew they
warned us that Japanese were savages and they
would kill and so on. They certainly
killed a lot of people in Hong Kong and some of
them I witnessed so it's a scary
thing and they raped a lot of people in Hong
Kong as well but not to the
stand-up in Nanking, that was a contest between
armies in Nanking. You know, I mean, the reason
they killed so many people is that the armies,
the two armies, they wanted to see who killed
the most. And that's a game. And they, you
know, and they raped and see who could rape
the most and who could kill the most. That was
all well documented. The Japanese just
went berserk in Nanjing and they just killed
for fun. But in Hong Kong, they kill under
the pretense of discipline. If you don't bow to
90 degrees when you see a Japanese, they
kill you. They say you have no respect for
Japanese so you have to learn how to
bow and so on and then they catch these people
who steal and then they cut their
heads off you know. Well you know one of the
questions that I had planned to ask
you I think you've answered it already and that
is was the Japanese
brutality exaggerated in the Western press or
by historians?
Well, I can't speak for Nanjing, but I can
certainly say something about Hong Kong.
I mean, they came to-see, after we left our
house with 80 relatives to hide at different
relatives house and the Japanese would knock on
the door and look for young
women and they came several times to our place
and the young women would have to
hide and under the bed or and so only the
elderly would be there and they and
And then they steal, they don't find any young
women, they steal, they take your watches off.
We were trained, and the Japanese would say,
what time is it?
And you know, you say like that, and they say,
give me your watch.
So we're trained to say, look at the clock
there, what time is it, and you know, they're
all sorts of things.
We hide our food and, I mean, not the rice and
all that, but liquor, you know, beer and
liquor we have to hide all that because they
will take that away and then they
will if they don't find any women but not in
our house but the next door they
didn't find any women they slashed the stomach
of these older
older women just just put the knife in there
and slashed them and I mean it's
I've seen all that they they dragged the people
out in the street they forced the
neighborhood to form a circle and they chopped
their heads off.
What, how do you explain such cruelty? Well I
think they they were expanding
very quickly and they want to get you know keep
control of the territories
that they won, and they want to rule by fear.
And plus the fact that, mind you, the army,
the soldiers, most of them are just farmers and
peasants and they have no education. And
they love power and they kill.
But I think the high command in Hong Kong
is a general called Sekai,
but he probably said we are here
with X number of soldiers,
but tomorrow we might have to move half of them away.
How do we rule the place?
Well, kill them so that they're scared.
And, you know, they grew it by fear.
Well, what I was thinking of when I asked the
question, and that's a very good, interesting answer,
was that many American soldiers who were
prisoners of war,
it was very common for them to say that it was
what they called an inferiority complex on the
part of the Japanese.
I mean, I would suppose toward Chinese culture
and well, they, they, of course, feel felt
very superior for Japanese, Chinese, and
there's some, you're right, there's some sense of
the inferiority complex because their culture
came from China, but, but they were cruel,
know they they do water torture they do they
burn your they could put the
matches on your finger and burn them and mean
things you know.
Advancing from that period then again in Hong
Kong and I want to return to
Kunming for a few minutes. When you were in
school there were you aware of
of the Flying Tigers, the American volunteer
group, were you?
No, very much so. I mean, we, you know, we can
be sitting in the classroom, a plane flies by,
I can tell you what made. We were so attached,
you know, the Mary Widow, the twin 61, and 35,
and I mean 25 and 24s and we don't have the 29s
and when mean but the the
Mustang and the P40s and all that and I you
know when I was a kid and during
holidays I used to go I used to get you know
because the colonels and they think
we were kids and say oh you know they're lonely
too of their family they'll come
on over to the airbase. So they bring their
planes up to warm them up in the
morning. They say, oh come on, get into one of
these bombers and they say, oh take a ride up, you
know, and then come down. So we know, we just
know the sound, we can hear the
sound. Of course nowadays jet engines are
difficult, but in those days propeller
planes. 51, actually P-40s is the mainstay and
then the 51s yeah. The P-40
with the very loud Allison engine. And then
later on they had the 51s. The 51s with the Merlin
engine. Well did you know any of the flying
Tigers by name? Would you
recall them? Well I know of one colonel who
taught me how to drive when I was
11 years old and he you know in those days his
name is Willoughby and I
forgot his first name he was a colonel
stationed in Quiming and he has a jeep
and jeep needs no key you know yes so he's one
day said oh I take you to a
track, running track. So he said, okay, you
drive. So he taught me how to drive. I never, I
never, I didn't have a
license but I know how to drive. Learned to
drive a Jeep. Yeah. Well, all of those planes
and the gasoline for them,
all the supply had to come from India. That's
right, yeah, the Burma Road, yeah.
Well, and flying the hump. Yeah, and flying the
hump, yeah. Were you aware of those?
I mean, in school, would you have been
conscious of the supply line? Oh, convoys. We
lived in a village called Zhangjiaquan, which
is near the, was right by
the lake and but near the temples outside of
Kunming and the Burma Road passes
right right there every night convoys, convoys,
I mean they were maybe 50-60 cars
would come down and my uncle who managed to get
to Kunming he was in that
business. He was on the commercial side. He
would go running back and forth the
Burma Road to get luxurious goods, so-called
luxurious goods like liquor.
And he would have a few trucks. So mind you,
it's not just that
military using the Burma Road, but the
commercial people are using
Burma Road to go to Burma to get supply you
know vice versa yeah. Did you by
chance ever travel the Burma Road? Only to
Dali, only to Dali and that's Dali.
Dali, we'll find it. It's now a tourist
attraction place, beautiful place in
in Yunnan province and we were there, just
there, it was not too far from Kunming.
I want to ask you about one episode involving a
flying tiger and the lake and it's the story
of a man named Johnny Allison who was a flying
tiger and he crashed in the lake.
I knew nothing about that.
And the Americans, with all the technology,
could not figure out a way to raise the P-40
from the bottom of the lake.
And they tried and tried and they couldn't,
while the Chinese watched.
The Americans, when they quit, then the Chinese
raised it up using bamboo poles and however
they did it.
they recovered the plane. It's a story that's
wonderfully well written and it's in the book
God Is My Co-Pilot by Robert L. Scott. It's one
of the better essays in the book.
I knew nothing about that book.
Robert L. Scott made it seem so important that
I thought that other people including
me might know the story of Johnny Allison.
Well, the war, where were you when the bomb
was dropped?
Quinn Meek.
You were in Quinn Meek.
Yeah, Quinn Meek, yeah. And we had a hard time
understanding what atom bomb, what exactly
it means. What's atom, you know? And I remember
we were very curious about a bomb that could
destroy literally a city. And it was something
very new, just like, you know, we were discussing
what is atom, atom bomb, you know?
I think most people were in that situation,
including the crews of the B-29s that dropped
the two bombs.
But before we go on from that, you were around
General Chennault at times. What's your
recollection of Chennault?
Quite pompous. He was attached to a Chinese
lady, and there were some talks about that.
I don't think, I could be mistaking, that he
married her there. I think it was just
a relationship then. I can't remember that, but
as a young boy, my parents would be invited
to the base to have sometimes these weekend
dancing, the officer dancing, and they were
desperately in need of women to dance, and my
mother went there, my father, so she was
one of the women, and I get invited there
occasionally to see the movie because on weekends
they have the movie, and I was allowed to see
the movie.
American movie.
Yeah, very good movie, at the base. While they
were in the offices, mass or club, have
these social dancing and so on. Chouinard, of
course, he wouldn't be talking to me much,
but from my observation, he was kind of a
pompous guy or gung-ho guy, that sort of thing.
You know, an important personality in that
period, not in Kunming, but is Madame Cheng.
She was in Chongqing most of the time.
Oh, she was?
Yeah, Chongqing.
Generalissimo was in Chongqing. Yeah.
Not in Kunming.
Oh, was he?
No, not in Kunming.
Maybe they-
Well, I meant to say Chongqing. Yeah.
Oh, they were in Chongqing.
She was an important connection to the
Americans, or certainly- Absolutely.
absolutely because of her Wellesley connection
and she spoke perfect English
and and she I was going to say she was like
Hillary. Well you know she was
invited to give to make an address before a
joint session of Congress. Yeah
yeah that was a memorial thing and Madam Chang
knew exactly how to entertain how
to speak and very forceful person and yet very
hospitable makes you feel at
home yeah but it's her and she has sisters also
who have similar qualities
yeah but they don't one sister was was
communist associated and she didn't she
was in Chongqing but she didn't she was on the
communist side. Manchu Zhao Enlai
was in Chongqing stayed there so I mean the
communist represented by Zhao Enlai
in Chongqing I mean he he lived there
representing the communist and Madam
Shen Yat-Sen, who's very commonist leaning,
wasn't choking, was living there.
And then the the other sister married Kung
Chang-shee and she was not active
but Kung was of course the finance finance
minister and but she she's just
housewife type, well not a housewife, but not
very active. So Madame Chiang was
very very active. Well let's talk about the
period from the end of the war until
the Nationalist government moves to Taiwan. A
sort of seemingly chaotic
period or you said that you thought the
Generalissimo, one of his big mistakes
was not giving enough attention to their
restoration of the government and
economic development. Yeah, total collapse.
Corruption and failing on
reconstruction and so on. It was chaotic in a
sense that they knew
knew the war was very much over so in a sense
part of the government had already
moved to Taiwan and the rest stayed behind and
when and then you know they
had to mine the store in Chongqing and but at
the same time they building up
the Taiwan government foundation, Manchu.
Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese for 50
years and most of the people there speak
Hokkien dialect of Chinese
but mainly speaks Japanese and they were
educated under the Japanese system so
So they're very loyal to the Japanese, and now,
all of a sudden, the Nationalists move in.
Of course, after the war, Taiwan was reverted
back to China, but then the population was
still very much Japanese-oriented.
And so when the nationalists came with their
government and with some troops, there was
a big rebellion there whereby the nationalists
killed a lot of the Taiwan people and it was
like the Tiananmen Square thing except in a
bigger scale actually.
So even to this day a lot of the Taiwanese do
not like the Kuomintang and there's a conflict
saying that I'm Taiwanese, you are Chinese, you
know, and but anyway that's that's another thing.
So they moved part of it over there and when
Kentong fell, that's the end. I mean Kentong,
yeah we are now called Guangzhou and when that
fell the whole thing moved over to Taiwan
and they had the Navy to ship them over, they
had the planes, a lot of planes was confiscated
by the communists,
and then also during this period there are some
nationalists thought the Communists was the way
to go,
and they refused to go to Taiwan, rather they
joined the communists, you see.
So you have a part of the government officials
joining the communists.
And along came the materiel,
the planes, the ships, and the machinery, and
so on,
all went to the communists.
And the communists at that time, of course,
their posture was that everybody's welcome.
And Lo and behold, after that, they stopped
eliminating them.
Well, about yourself and your family and the
move to Taiwan, when and how did that movement occur?
Well, first of all, 1949, I was in Hong Kong,
of course, going to school there. Yes.
and so I was unaffected because Hong Kong was
British colony and my father was transferred to
Taiwan with my mother and my sister and I
remained in Hong Kong under the care of my grandfather
and then continued schooling. Now
Now, the Korean War started, I think, 51, isn't it?
50, okay.
So, after my father moved to Taiwan,
he was assigned to Tokyo
to be the Chinese representative
of the Occupy Forces under MacArthur.
And he remained there during the beginning
of the Korean War.
And he got MacArthur to Taiwan to see the Generalissimo
because MacArthur was going to use the nationalists
in Korea to fight, except Truman vetoed that idea.
So he accompanied MacArthur to see the Generalissimo.
And that didn't come to anything.
So anyway, then the constitution was
established in Japan
and quickly overnight, everybody who was a
military man
became an ambassador because it changed.
So my father suddenly became the ambassador,
although he was supposed to be a three-star general,
a four-star general representing China.
And all of a sudden he's on a coat and tie as
an ambassador.
And then he stayed on after MacArthur left for
a short while. Then he was assigned to the
United States, but that's something else.
But I, meanwhile, went to school in Kansas
City, Missouri.
When did you make that move from Hong Kong then
to Kansas City?
Well, I graduated in 1950 from high school.
And the plan was that had it not been
the communists in China, I would have gone,
continued my higher education in China
in a Chinese university.
But that sort of went out of the way.
So what I did was I had a choice
of either going to the UK or to the U.S.
And my family knew of the Consul General there
in Hong Kong.
And he recommended his old school,
which was Pembroke Country Day School
in Kansas City, Missouri.
And so he said, that's a good school for you to go,
for your son to go, that is.
And so I ended up there in a high school,
reason being that my English wasn't good enough.
So they said, well, you know,
it's best for you to go back to high school
for two years before you go to college,
even though I graduated from high school in
Hong Kong.
So 50, 51, no, 51, 52, I went to Pembroke.
And then 52, I went to Colgate.
So that's how, that's how that, yeah.
Well, and so then you went to Colgate in 1952.
and at some point you pledged Sigma Chi.
Oh, yeah.
Well, we both pledged Sigma Chi the same year.
I know, the pledge class.
Yeah, well, we were rushed
on the first year, at the end of first year, right?
Then we faced the music the next year.
and I really enjoyed that experience and I was
kind of many years later that I
found out that Sigma Chi at my time would not
take in Jews nor any other
of you know like Chinese or Japanese or anybody
like that and many years later I
found out they gave me a force I mean they gave
a force name to their
headquarters which was in Evanston, Illinois
and say you know so-and-so the
clutch class and so on and so they knew nothing
that I was Chinese and I was
very grateful for the Colgate-St. Mackay people
that they obviously thought I was
okay. Well I would have been flattered if you
had come into Delta Tau Delta at
the University of Texas. Well let me go into a
little bit of a little of that
that you are you are Chinese but it was very
much European in your family. Yeah
Yeah, exactly. My family, my grandfather's
father, I guess my great-grandfather, was
actually Belgian who migrated to England and
eventually ended up as English. So his name
was a businessman and he was one of those that
came to the Far East to get rich. So
he landed in Hong Kong and he claimed that he
was Jew nationality. He was English, but
didn't claim Belgium. He said he was Dutch. So
he became the honorary Consul General of the Dutch
government in Hong Kong. But he was involved in
Hong Kong the slave trade.
Now when I say that word it looks pretty ugly,
but actually it is all over the place
when the United States and Canada built the
railroad they needed Chinese laborer
yeah so he was the agent to San Francisco
another company there to ship
Chinese laborer to San Francisco so that was
his business plus another import
export business. And he married, I wouldn't, I
shouldn't say he was married, he
took in a woman, a Chinese woman, and then my
grandfather became the
product. And then meanwhile on my mother's
side, it's the same story with a guy
named Bottomley and married a, not married, but
you know had a Chinese woman
and produced my mother's mother or my
grandmother on my mother's side so we
both Eurasians and down the line. Have you ever
heard that Pearl Buck, you know
the name Pearl Buck, she thought the superior
people in the world were the
Eurasians the mix the mixed races between them.
Well nowadays maybe now in the old
days in my grandfather's day it was not it was
a minus not a plus meaning that
not Chinese nor the Caucasian would like to
recognize them. Yeah. And they were
persecuted and that they had a hard time and
that's maybe one of the reasons why
my grandfather was successful because he was
determined to show them that he you
know he could he could do it. Now which
ancestor is this Sir Robert? That's my
grandfather. That's your grandfather. Yeah. How
did he acquire the title? Well he did a lot
of good things for the Chinese in Hong Kong and
the Chinese in China. He did a lot of
good things for the British as well. He just
mixed the two cultures, produced a lot of
good things like hospitals, like Hong Kong
University, he was the main donor for that,
the first university in Hong Kong, called the
University of Hong Kong, and he donated
planes, ships to the war, efforts to the
British, and at the same time he donated
fighter planes
to the Chinese government in China.
And he made his money in real estate
and also in commodities.
And he was very astute.
He was the richest man in China.
He got properties all over China and Hong Kong.
I think we should call time out,
but you're familiar with this book by Irene,
Irene wrote this book.