The broadcast, which was heard in Tokyo, marked the Chinese Communists' first public word on the case. Probably it also will be the last word. Whether punished by death or reform through labor, Chou Hung-ching faces certain oblivion. Chou's wife and two sons will be branded for life, hounded ceaselessly, never free from suspicion. Had he not returned, they could have disappeared into the anonymity of the Chinese masses. Now that is impossible.
Except for refugees reaching Hongkong Chou Hung-ching, who told Japanese police October 7 that he would not return to Red China "under any conditions, no matter what the cost", was the first Communist Chinese defector ever returned to the mainland.
In the view of the people of the Republic of China, Japan failed to respect Chou's wishes to choose freedom; it allowed leftists to apply pressure and intimidation, and thus to lead Chou back into the clutches of the Chinese Communists. They consider this a mockery of the cause of freedom for which they fight, and tantamount to a declaration that Japan is out-of-bounds to freedom seekers.
Free Chinese also see an indication that the Japanese intend to seek closer ties with the Peiping regime in the hope of obtaining economic benefits.
Since 1960, the Japanese have been moving toward increased trade with Red China, despite the risk of Communist political infiltration and free world disapproval.
Trade between Japan and the Chinese mainland has risen from almost nothing in 1959 to a two-way exchange of more than US$100 million in 1963.
Chief Japanese exports to Red China are machinery, artificial fibers, fertilizers, and steel products. Chinese Communist exports to Japan are soybeans, buckwheat, coal, tin and iron ores.
Japan and Red Chinese ships have fished together in the Yellow Sea for several years under a mutual assistance pact which was renewed in 1963.
In October, 1962, Japan signed a five-year private trade memorandum with Peiping.
Viewed as Betrayal
More than 4,000 Japanese are reported to have visited Red China in 1963, including a former prime minister. In the period from August to December alone, 24 Japanese goodwill missions went to the Chinese mainland and 11 Chinese Communist cultural and trade missions toured Japan.
Normal University students sign protest in blood. (File photo)
The Peiping circus toured Japan in 1963, and Peiping opera is performing in Japan this winter.
The largest trade fair organized by Japan since World War II has just closed after successful three-week runs in Peiping and Shanghai.
Japan's decision to sell a complete vinylon plant to Peiping on a deferred payment basis and Prime Minister Ikeda's remark that "he never entertained the idea" that the Republic of China could recover the mainland raised a spate of objections in free China.
Now the deportation of Chou is viewed by free Chinese as culminating Japan's betrayal of their goodwill and expressing a determination to scuttle free Chinese friendship to please the Chinese Communists.
Relations between the Republic of China and Japan have come close to the breaking point.
Top Chinese embassy officials have been recalled from Tokyo. President Chiang Kai-shek accepted the resignation of Ambassador to Japan Chang Li-sheng and named no successor. Ambassador Chang was called back last September for consultations because of Japan's vinylon deal with Peiping.
The Republic of China has requested the Philippines to handle Chinese affairs in Japan in the event of a diplomatic break with Japan.
It has suspended government procurement in Japan. This will cost Japan some US$30 million a year, or about a third of its exports to the Republic of China. Chief Japanese exports affected will be fertilizers, industrial equipment, and machine tools. For years, Japan has enjoyed a favorable trade balance of about US$25 million a year with the Republic of China.
Private trade with the Japanese is not banned, but Taiwan traders have seen it fit not to import from Japan.
A campaign to boycott Japanese goods and services has gained momentum.
All official newspapers and many radio stations have barred Japanese advertisements. Many advertising agencies have dismantled their roadside and rooftop advertisements for Japanese goods. Japanese courses in language schools have been discontinued. No Japanese motion pictures are shown.
Students and workers have staged demonstrations and put up posters. Some 400 students of Taiwan Normal University signed a protest in their own blood. The document was sent to Tokyo via the Japanese Embassy in Taipei.
Official Statements
The free Chinese press condemned the Japanese action. The Central Daily News said the decision "testifies that Japan openly sides with the Communists in betrayal of the free world and constitutes a serious threat to the anti-Communist cause." The China Post said "Japan's international conduct of today differs little from that of the pre-war period." The China News termed the move "unwarranted" and "arbitrary". The United Daily News accused Japan of "fawning upon the Chinese Communists in disregard of humanitarianism, international justice, and the wishes and protests of the free world."
College students leave Japanese embassy in Taipei after handing a protest to the ambassador. (File photo)
The government made its position clear in two official statements, one issued before and one after the deportation. One said: "The Japanese government evaded its moral obligations by distorting the true nature of the case and refusing to honor the international practice of granting political asylum to political refugees.
"The Chinese Government, profoundly shocked by the arbitrary measures adopted by the Japanese Government, feels that this most unfortunate precedent would have the effect of closing the door to anti-Communist and freedom-loving people behind the Iron Curtain whose desire it is to seek political asylum in the free countries, and that such action would deal a serious blow to mankind's struggle for freedom and against enslavement."
The second protest accused the Japanese government of following "a policy to appease the Chinese Communists and also tolerate Chinese Communist infiltration in Japan without realizing the danger it faces itself."
The statement pointed out that Japan signed a five-year private trade memorandum with Peiping in October, 1962, and approved the sale of a vinylon plant to Peiping and Japanese trade fairs in Red China.
"Nothing can be more helpful than these in easing the Chinese Communists' economic crises and strengthening their aggressive power," it said.
President Chiang Kai-shek, who granted safe conduct to the more than one million Japanese troops and three hundred thousand civilians who were evacuated from China after V-J Day, and who did not ask compensation from Japan for war damages, was angered by Japanese ingratitude.
Words of President
In his Double Tenth Message on October 10, the President said:
"The nation launched ... the war with Japan to safeguard our national independence. In each of these undertakings we succeeded, especially in -the war of resistance against the Japanese, which covered a period of fourteen years... Thus it can be said that from the twentieth year of the Republic (1931) to the present, our righteous war against aggression and slavery has endured for thirty-two years. During this lengthy period of time, our countrymen have suffered massacres, bombings, privations, loss of dear ones, and damage of property and possessions. The persecution, starvation, and other deprivations suffered by the mainland people in recent years are without historical precedent. The over-all cause of this catastrophe was foreign aggression which began with the Mukden Incident. If it had not been for the Mukden Incident, the mainland would not have fallen fourteen years ago and there would be no Communist threat to other Asian nations today."
In his New Year Message, the President again said:
"... the Japanese warlords suddenly created the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931. They sought to monopolize our mainland resources, to enslave the Chinese people, and to carry out the so-called continental policy of "industrial Japan and agricultural China."
Overseas Chinese communities have supported the government's firm stand in the Chou Hung-ching case. Chinese residents in Tokyo demonstrated against the deportation. Chinese students in New York and Washington, D. C., and Chinese communities in San Francisco and Paris cabled President Chiang Kai-shek and Premier C. K. Yen pledging support. Chinese newspapers in Saigon and San Francisco urged overseas Chinese all over the world to boycott Japanese goods. Chinese residents in Korea formed a committee to oppose the Japanese stand.
Anti-Japanese sentiments have continued to run high in Taiwan. Student representatives and civic leaders have urged more severe sanctions against Japan.
The Chinese are an ancient people, seldom given to outbursts of emotions. Outcry over Japan's handling of the Chou case shows the depth of their feelings. Government officials and people have taken their stand on principle and not on the isolated case of Chou's deportation.
Leftist Distortion
A number of foreign friends have failed to see the significance of the deportation. Some U.S. officials expressed regret that relations between Japan and the Republic of China should deteriorate "over something as relatively minor as the Chou incident." U.S. officials even suggested Chou Hung-ching was mentally unbalanced.
On the whole, the three-month ordeal of Chou Hung-ching from defection to deportation was under-reported and over-distorted by leftists to turn public opinion in their favor. A closer look clearly shows political manipulation.
Chou Hung-ching, an interpreter for a Chinese Communist mission visiting Japan, left the Palace Hotel in Tokyo at about 3 a.m. October 7 while other members of his mission were asleep. He called a taxi and asked to be taken to the Chinese Embassy. The taxi driver, not knowing the new address of the embassy, took him to the old site opposite the Russian Embassy. In desperation, he jumped over the iron gate into the Russian Embassy grounds, not even paying the taxi. A policeman saw his action and made inquiry of the taxi driver. The driver said he had been asked to drive Chou to the Chinese Embassy. The driver told the same story at the police station.
At dawn, the Russian Embassy was requested to surrender Chou. The Russians at first denied any knowledge of him.
The Russians failed to persuade Chou to return to the Chinese mainland, or as an alternative, to go to Moscow. They turned him over to the Azabu police at 3 a.m. October 8, having kept him about 23 hours.
Time to Decide
At the police station, Chou told Japanese questioners, "I hate Communism. I have wanted to defect for a long time, and I am fortunate to have realized my defection in Japan. Now I will never go back to the Chinese mainland under any conditions, no matter what the cost."
Forty-four years old and with his wife and two children on the Chinese mainland, Chou could not have defected on a momentary impulse. He had been in Japan since September 6, with ample time to decide what he wanted to do.
Chou was doomed. Instead of being treated as a person seeking political asylum, he was regarded as an illegal entrant. The Japanese Foreign Ministry converted an international political incident into a domestic legal case to establish grounds for the deportation.
As a supposedly illegal entrant, he was placed in the custody of the Japanese Immigration Office. He was compelled to see Narimitsu Oda, a lawyer engaged by Japanese leftists and also a member of the Japanese Communist Party Oda volunteered his services to arrange for Chou's return to the Chinese mainland. Despite Oda's' persuasion and coercion, Chou at first stood his ground.
Chou was not allowed to see Wu Yu-liang, first secretary of the Chinese Embassy, and Goichiro Fujii, a lawyer hired by the Chinese Embassy, until October 16. Chou then said flatly that he wanted to go to Taiwan. Before the eyes of the director and the deputy director of the Tokyo Office, Japanese Immigration Office, who insisted on being present, Chou wrote a note to Wu, saying "Secretary Wu, please obtain an entry permit to Taiwan for me." A note to Fujii said: "I hereby appoint Goichiro Fujii to be my lawyer."
Chou wanted to know if he could make a living in Taiwan and whether he could write and send money to his family on the mainland. He was reassured on these points.
Denied Entry
The interview lasted an hour and half. Afterward, Japanese immigration officials asked Wu Yu-liang to withhold a press release on Chou Hung-ching's intention to go to Taiwan until his "true intention" was further ascertained.
Oda was hastily summoned. After a brief huddle with Chou, the lawyer told the press that Chou Hung-ching had retracted his decision to go to Taiwan and wanted to stay in Japan.
On October 23, Oda told the press that Chou had changed his mind again and asked to be returned to the Chinese mainland.
Chinese Embassy officials and representatives of the pro-Nationalist Federation of Chinese Residents' went to see Chou. They were denied entry by Chou's custodians, who claimed Chou refused to see them. Only such leftists as Oda, Kazuo Suzuki, Saburo Okamota, and Yuzo Tachiya, and representatives of the pro-Communist Federation of Chinese Residents were permitted to meet him. All mail was censored.
One thing was obvious. Chou was not happy about the words Oda had put in his mouth. He refused to eat from November 1 to 5.
Unanswered Queries
On November 7, Chou was sent to the Red Cross Hospital in Tokyo to recuperate. But he was still treated like a prisoner. His meals were served in his room and he was not allowed outside those four walls. His constant companions were Oda and other leftists. Those who wanted Chou to have a free choice were identified as "possible assassins" and denied entry. Nor was he permitted to see the press.
People and press of the Republic of China protested the Japanese treatment and urged that Chou be given a chance to speak for himself.
Chou never had a chance to talk to press representatives. On December 27 he had only a moment to grimace at a cameraman as he was taken under heavy escort to a farewell party given by pro-Communist Chinese. On December 31 he made a brief appearance at a press conference but only for distribution of a written statement.
Chou never openly declared that he wanted to return to the mainland.
What did he truly want?
Was his thinking uninfluenced and independent?
Was he free from fear and threat?
Had he been falsely promised good treatment?
All these questions of free China are still unanswered.
Oda tried to explain Chou's change of mind in terms of family attachment. The attorney said Chou received a letter from his wife asking him to return to the mainland.
To lend credibility to Oda's story and to deceive the public, the leftists published an article, "Why I Have Gone Astray While My Wife is Waiting for My Return", in the December 13 issue of the Asahi Weekly, a popular Japanese magazine. The article was attributed to Chou and accompanied by a picture captioned: "Mrs. Chou, the former Yang Mei-chuan, 33, now waiting in Canton for her husband's return."
The woman in the picture later was identified as Miss Junko Hamada, a lecturer at the Kuraishi Chinese Institute at Zenrin Kaikan (Good Neighbor House), Iidabashi, Tokyo. She is a Japanese national, although she has visited the Chinese Communist mainland five times in recent years. The two men pictured with her also are Japanese nationals.
Picture in Japanese magazine falsely identified woman as Mrs. Chou; she is a Japanese national. (File photo)
Contents of a supposed letter from Mrs.Chou also were divulged in Japanese magazines. She was represented as saying she was happy to receive the dress material and toys Chou had sent her from Tokyo. At the time the letter was received, the dress material and toys were still in Tokyo at the Japanese Immigration Office!
Some Japanese magazines printed pictures of the envelope in which the letter was received. It merely said "Please deliver to Chou Hung-ching", and carried no address. The letter thus was hand-carried. It may have been tampered with—and in any case was written under duress.
On December 25, the Japanese Foreign Office sent Toraro Ushiroku, director of the Asian Affairs Bureau, to seek Taipei's "understanding". On December 27, despite strong protests from Taipei, Japan said Chou would be sent back to the mainland. He was discharged from the Red Cross Hospital and placed in the custody of the pro-Communist Federation of Chinese Residents and a Chinese Communist Red Cross mission.
Red Cross Mission
The Chinese Communist Red Cross mission, headed by Ni Pei-chun, arrived in Tokyo November 21, two weeks after Chou Hung-ching was admitted to the hospital. It left Tokyo three days after Chou was put aboard the S.S. Genkai Maru, a Japanese freighter, bound from Osaka to the Chinese mainland. Its errand was generally conceded to be the return of Chou Hung-ching to the mainland.
Chou's face was drawn and taut on January 9 as he boarded a plane at Haneda airport for Osaka. He did not smile or wave to leftists who saw him off at both Tokyo and Osaka. In fact, he walked as far as he could and tried to hide himself from the crowds. Japanese newspapers said Chou looked as if he were "running away from something". He did not look like a man who was happily going home to his wife and children.