In the early morning of October 11, 1952, a shell fell on Nanri Island in southern Fujian, and under the huge sound of artillery, Hu Lian of the National Army led the 75th Division and the Anti-Communist National Salvation Army to land on Nanri Island. The PLA troops defending the island were outnumbered and suffered heavy losses, and Ye Fei quickly dispatched 2 battalions and 2 companies to reinforce them. However, after two days of fierce fighting, the PLA was defeated.
After the successful raid on Nanri Island, the Nationalist Army quickly evacuated, capturing a large number of weapons, supplies and prisoners of war, including 810 PLA and many mainland women. They were sent to Green Island in eastern Taiwan, where they were waiting for the "emotional training" of the Freshman Training Office of the Taiwan Provincial Security Command. A prison catastrophe is unfolding.
1. Green Island Training Camp
Green Island, commonly known as Fire Island, is located about 33 kilometers east of Taitung County, Taiwan Province. The island has a mild climate, full of greenery, fresh and beautiful natural scenery, and most of the islanders make a living from fishing.
It is such an isolated and beautiful island, but it is one of the five largest isolated island prisons in the world, the other four are: Alcatras Island Prison in San Francisco Bay, California, United States, White Island Prison in United Kingdom, Notre Dame Island Prison in western Mexico, and Robben Island Prison in northwest Cape Town, South Africa.
Green Island was used as a prison during the colonial rule of Taiwan by Japan. In 1911, the Japan set up the "Yakuza Island Drifter Shelter" to hold important criminals, political prisoners, and felons.
After the Kuomintang government retreated from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, the commander-in-chief of the Taiwan Provincial Garrison issued martial law to arrest those who made suspicious remarks, and adopted the method of "killing a hundred by mistake rather than letting one go" to arrest a large number of political prisoners. As a result, the detention center of the Military Justice Department of the Taiwan Provincial Security Command and the prison for national defense personnel were not enough to accommodate it, so it was moved to Green Island.
On April 1, 1951, the Neihu Freshman Brigade in the suburbs of Taipei City was expanded, and the Taiwan Provincial Security Command Freshman Training Office was established in Ludao, and on April 17, it was moved to the Liumagou area in the northeast of Ludao Township, and on May 17, nearly 1,000 political prisoners from the former Neihu Freshman Brigade and Taiwan Military Prison were moved there to receive "inspirational training and education."
The Freshman Training Division has three brigades, each divided into four squadrons, for a total of 12 squadrons, of which female political prisoners are in the sixth squadron. Each squadron is about 120 to 160 people. From 1951 to 1965, the Green Island Freshman Training Center was the place where political prisoners were held the most in Taiwan, with a maximum number of about 2,000.
Of those detained in Green Island in 1951, 55 per cent were from the province and 45 per cent were from other provinces. Among the people from other provinces, there are people from the mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and other places, the average age is under 30 years old, most of them are intellectuals, and the sentences of each person vary.
The "Sensory Education" of the Freshman Discipline Office refers to ideological transformation. "Freshmen" do not refer to new students, but rather to expect political prisoners to be reborn after ideological education. "Political prisoners" refer to prisoners of the Communist Party, underground members of the Communist Party of China, leftists, Taiwan independence figures, etc., and many prisoners have been convicted for their speech or have been framed on trumped-up charges.
The ideological transformation is mainly to inculcate the theory of the Three People's Principles, and the subjects include the legacy of the founding father, the words and deeds of the leader, the critique of communism, and the history of Soviet Russia's invasion of China. The Orientation Office will send out notes, check them every 3 months, and hold regular exams. Panel discussions are held three times a week and are evaluated by political officers.
In addition, there are also labor reforms, such as picking rice, soybeans, canned food, and coal at the Nanliao Wharf 5 kilometers away, or stacking stone walls in the camp area and going to the sea to build houses. These political prisoners built the barracks for storing grain, farming tools and raising livestock.
In addition to physical exertion, there is also mental torture. In the training office, the most frightening thing is the secret assessment. Officers in the training department will have the inmates watch each other, record their daily words and deeds, and gauge the degree of their ideological changes. If violators are found, they will be interrogated and beaten and imprisoned in bunkers, and in serious cases, they will be sent back to the Military Justice Department of the Security Department for disposal.
In this high-pressure environment, everyone in prison is reminded to live in fear. On a reassuring note, the Department of Discipline has a welfare club that provides daily necessities, a laundry department and a photography department. Only special shopping vouchers can be traded, and political victims can exchange money from relatives and friends or make seashell paintings for shopping vouchers.
Every day from dinner to before the lights out, there is a period of relaxation. In the dormitory, the prisoners could read, write letters, play chess, and some made musical instruments with limited tools. In this limited time, everyone is trying to fill the spiritual void as much as possible.
Victims also take care of those who do not have the help of relatives and friends, but if they are discovered, they are inevitably punished severely. Although the external management is strict, the mutual assistance and ideological resistance among the internal victims are surging. Soon after, there was a shocking rebellion on Green Island, in which many women were involved.
2. The Girls' Detachment and the "Re-Rebellion Case"
The Girls Unit of the Freshman Training Division existed from 1951 to 1954. On 17 May 1951, about 20 women were transferred along with a large number of male political prisoners. Later, with the addition of mainland women who were captured in the Battle of Nanri Island, until 1954, nearly 100 female political victims were imprisoned here.
Green Island is one of the very few isolated prisons for female prisoners. In Green Island, female political prisoners can only be referred to by number. The houses of the female detachments were fenced to separate the male squadrons. The open space inside the fence is a place for female political prisoners to gather for outdoor dining, activities and rehabilitative classes.
Although the management is strict, "the road is one foot high, and the magic is one foot high". In order to keep track of what was going on outside the prison, men and women political prisoners kept their letters and news going on in a covert way. This laid the groundwork for the possibility of a joint rebellion of political prisoners on Green Island later.
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party supported North Korea, and international forces led by the United States began to change and actively support the Chiang Kai-shek regime. In order to consolidate United States' confidence in the government of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek vigorously publicized the success of the anti-communist cause in Taiwan. The development of political prisoners in prisons with slogans supporting the national government was developed to show the results.
Because of the large number of political prisoners incarcerated, Green Island has become a model prison for propaganda and anti-communist achievements. In 1953, in order to publicize the success of the training and education, the Freshman Training Department proposed to hold a "One Person, One Thing Conscience Salvation Movement", and let the prisoners tattoo slogans such as "anti-communist and anti-Russian" to pledge their allegiance to the government. Among them were mainlanders who were captured after the Battle of Nanri Island.
The campaign was ostensibly for the inmates to sign their names freely, but behind the scenes, the management used the temptation of commutation of sentences, and the inmates supervised each other and put pressure on them to give in to participate. However, most people are unwilling to go against their will, adopt an attitude of passive resistance, refuse to participate, and do not give in even when tortured.
This joint rebellion among political prisoners led to the defeat of the "One Person, One Thing Conscience Salvation Movement". Not only is the management humiliated, but it also means a failure of motivational education. After the incident, the management opened a case to investigate the matter, found 29 people involved, and sentenced 14 political prisoners to death.
Among them, the female suspects Xu Xiaoxia and Zhang Changmei were not handed over to the military court, but Fu Ruzhi gave her life in this incident at the age of 23 because the official "fishing" method found out the evidence of her correspondence with the male political prisoner Ke Wanjin.
After this incident, most of the female political prisoners were transferred to the Taipei Production and Education Center in 1954, which was later renamed the Renai Education Center, where they continued to undergo ideological reform, attending classes every day and supplemented by labor, and were held until the end of their sentences. Many of these women are mothers living in prisons with their children.
The school existed from the 50s until 1987, when the "White Terror" martial law in Taiwan was lifted. Before being released from prison, female political victims needed two guarantors, but many people from other provinces had difficulty finding guarantors, so their sentences were delayed. Some people secretly bribed the personnel of the management unit as guarantees, and this ended the long prison sentence.
After being released from prison, the female victims started their own lives, some to achieve their personal goals, and some became the narrators of that history, so that that history can alert the world.
For example, Zhang Changmei, who participated in the Green Island rebellion case, was the only female interviewee in the 2015 documentary "White Life Through the Lens" after being released from prison and is now 93 years old.
3. Green Island Prison Today
With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966, respect for human rights has become an internationally recognized value.
In May 1990, the last political prisoner was released from Green Island. Since then, Green Island has begun to develop tourism, with about 350,000 visitors every year. Green Island Prison, which once used political pressure and violated human rights and freedoms, has become a landmark for commemorating and reflecting on history since it was opened to the public.
In 2000, the Green Island Prison was expanded into the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park. In 2018, Taiwan established the National Museum of Human Rights, with the White Terror Jingmei Memorial Park and the White Terror Green Island Memorial Park.
The memorial park retains the original appearance of the prison, and uses dummy to restore the scenes of the prisoners' service and life at that time, for tourists from all over the world to visit and imagine the suffering of the prisoners at that time. The Museum of Human Rights has a collection of 405 manuscripts, letters, diaries, and poems that express longing. These have become valuable materials for recording that period of history.
With the establishment of the Human Rights Museum and the development of human rights activities, more and more young people have learned about the history of the "White Terror" period. Literary and artistic works about Green Island have also been produced, and the people of Taiwan have used history to reconstruct their sense of identity.
Taiwan's modern era was first colonized by Japan and then taken over by the Kuomintang government, followed by more than 40 years of political repression. The turmoil has displaced countless families, and some Taiwan people have drifted to other countries, and the definition of identity has gradually blurred.
The history of Green Island is a memory shared by Taiwan, which gives the seeds of drifting zero a soil to take root. In 2016, United States Taiwanese writer Yang Cortana published the novel "Green Island", which began on February 28, 1947 and ended with the SARS crisis. In the life of the Taiwan people who constructed the period of the White Terror, look for cultural and national resonance.
In 2022, the movie "Liumagou No. 15" will be released in Taiwan. It is a narrative film based on "Liumagou No. 15: Green Island Girls' Detachment and Others" written by Cao Qinrong. The film tells the story of the 1953 Green Island rebellion from a female perspective, presenting the little-known situation of women in prison to the public.
The victims of Green Island that year are also 8 or 90 years old. After years of precipitation, the memories of the past have been re-energized by museums and literary and artistic works. Nowadays, Green Island for Taiwan people has both the historical memory of a political prison prison and the emotional meaning of Taiwan's hometown.
bibliography
Zhou Jun, "Taiwan Green Island Prison: Past and Present Life in 'Ghost Gate Pass'", Qiaoyuan 2015.05
Xie Yingcong, "A Study on Chen Hua's 'Re-Rebellion' Case at the Green Island Freshman Training Office (1953-1955)", Taiwan Literature, Vol. 72, No. 2
Cao Qinrong, "The Challenge of Green Island Memorial Park after Taiwan's Democracy Movement", Museum and Culture 2020.12 No. 20