THE MOOD OF AMERICA
Jacobs, Paul
THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on the Primary in California and Chiang in Evanston California on the Eve of the Primary By PAUL JACOBS Los Angeles IF the California primary election had been held...
...The results of this organization have begun to show, even though there has not been a great deal of popular enthusiasm generated for him...
...Other Kefauver followers include George McLain, head of a pension organization and the chairman of the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP...
...Therein lies the dilemma—the other horn of which is certain death for Hsuan if he is sent home as a "deserter...
...Then, suddenly, the high dramatics were over, and he was out in the wings...
...Now Illinois' two Senators, Republican Everett Dirksen and Democrat Paul Douglas, are supporting a bill which may override those decisions and grant Hsuan permanent residence...
...The very intensity of the campaign into which Kefauver has forced the Stevenson supporters may be enough to give Stevenson the push needed to win the state...
...Wieczorowski had invited Hsuan home for Christmas vacation 'that year, and his parents took to Hsuan like an "adopted son...
...Hsuan came home to his rooming house near midnight July 2, 1954, to find two Naval Intelligence agents awaiting him...
...Hsuan had visited Northwestern in 1952...
...His course at Quantico had been completed—with honors...
...If the case were merely one of granting political asylum to a haunted individual, then the answer to that question would likely not merely be easy but prompt...
...Next he boarded a Greyhound bus for Evanston, Illinois...
...He packed his bags, said farewells, and traveled with his unit as far as San Francisco...
...After Hsuan lost that hearing, he faced the charge of violating his status as a "non-immigrant...
...Then he tried a bit of selfauthored drama...
...But 'the barrage of publicity had at least brought Hsuan two attorneys, Franklin A. Cole, 29, and David R. Loewenberg, 31...
...The Strange Case Of Hsuan Wei By MADELON GOLDEN ANorthwestern University student in Evanston, Illinois, holds the dubious distinction of being the principal pawn in one of the most puzzling diplomatic dramas of our time...
...On September 30, 1955, he was ordered deported...
...With the exception, perhaps, of some Negro liberals, the whole liberal wing of the Democratic Party is supporting Stevenson...
...Richard F. Henderson of Great Lakes both described unsavory conditions on Formosa they had witnessed while serving with the American forces there...
...And even with free service from attorneys, where would I get the money for the court costs alone...
...Realizing this, the Stevenson people have been operating in force within the Negro community to recapture the support once freely given their candidate...
...That idea overwhelms me," says Hsuan...
...7, 1952, with the understanding that he was an immigrant...
...By the time this debt was about nine months in arrears, "in late August or early September, 1953," Hsuan decided to make an inquiry of Capt...
...Former Governor Wu appeared in Hsuan's behalf...
...As a result, the Kefauver forces had to hire a professional signature collecting agency to get enough names for qualification of his nominating slate...
...The Negro vote, focussed as it is on the civil rights issue, could be a decisive factor in the election...
...Meanwhile, he can only keep faith in his attorneys to figure out the spiderous web of red tape and, in between their summonses of him, go to school and work (he's night cash register checker at Marshall Field's Evanston store...
...The share of his salary due him from the Chinese Nationalist government never came...
...But any bets made on the basis of that prediction could do very well with some careful hedging...
...Liu said: "You know what will happen to you, if the government knows you are criticizing...
...From within the ranks of the party itself, Kefauver's most prominent supporters are Clara Shirpser, national vice-chairman of the Democratic Women's Committee, and former Governor Culbert Olson...
...It was after this February convention where Kefauver had taken a bold position on a number of issues that Stevenson replaced his earlier temperate statements with much more emotional appeals...
...But to do so has the effect, at least implied, of admitting that the present regime on Formosa, our military ally in the strategic Pacific, is, as Hsuan charged, "a police state...
...Liu "shouted" at him: "Dr...
...But when it involves passing severely critical judgment on the regime of so-called military ally— there is no way of telling what it will be...
...For more than a year and a half the Department of Immigration and Naturalization has sought to deport Hsuan to Formosa...
...There he played the nonchalant sightseer until final departure orders arrived...
...The truth is that Hsuan had come to our shores with considerable misgivings about the Chiang regime...
...A hero, Hsuan came back to press conferences and television shows...
...Hsuan testified during immigration hearings in Chicago that Capt...
...What do you think...
...The hearing was transferred back to Chicago...
...He criticized the government and committed an act of treason...
...Kefauver's asset is his ability to spark enough tingly warmth with his handshake to cause, weeks later, the shakee's hand to mark a ballot next to the Senator's name...
...With only verbal orders, Hsuan was taken as a "deserter...
...I helped bury him...
...The dreaded orders to return home came June 19, 1954...
...He was 25, a lieutenant, and a veteran of the war against the Communists on the mainland—one of the last of Chiang's soldiers to quit Shanghai in 1949...
...Scores of men I knew well committed suicide...
...Kefauver will draw more support from the rural areas, while Stevenson will get a heavier vote from the urban and more liberal Democrats...
...Stevenson's supporters accuse Kefauver of letting himself be used to prevent their candidate from being nominated while Kefauver has little real possibility of being nominated himself...
...Later, in the spring of 1954, he was summoned to Capt...
...The watershed for both men was the February convention of the California Democratic Council, an unofficial, loose federation of state Democratic clubs...
...They were, the Chicago Tribune later reported, acting under "orders from the Pentagon, at the request of the State Department, which in turn had received a request from the Chinese Nationalist embassy...
...Stevenson has almost the entire official weight of the Democratic Party behind him...
...He is Hsuan Wei, former captain in Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces...
...You are defending him, committing an act of treason . . . You are a traitor...
...Well-organized as they are, the Stevenson supporters were able to qualify their slate by using only volunteer signature-collectors...
...He learned nothing -about his pay...
...Hsuan pays all his bills from his $35-a-week earnings...
...The Chicago Tribune had been the first newspaper to pick up the story and plunk it on Page One— where it stayed for a week, until Hsuan had been released by the Navy Department to immigration authorities...
...At that time one of the Americans in training with him at Quantico was Lt...
...At a hearing in San Francisco, the technical charge of violating his admission status as a non-immigrant was placed against him...
...He has paid half, and his attorneys half, of $300 in out-of-pocket expenses thus far...
...Once at our Marine base at Quanti-co Hsuan often found himself on the spot—over coffee in the officers' clubs, at parties in private homes in the Washington area...
...The story began September 7, 1952,-the day Hsuan landed in the United States as one of seven hand-picked Chinese Nationalist officers for special training in this country...
...At his later hearings, Hsuan testified that Capt...
...Hsuan had told a U.S...
...Seven days after his arrest, Hsuan was released by the Navy Department to the Immigration Department—on parole without bond...
...Kefauver's adherents tend to be among the more conservative or peripheral elements of the official party structure...
...they estimate that they have already put in more than a thousand hours on the case without compensation...
...Indeed, there is perhaps too little "bossism" in the California Democratic Party...
...An accused deserter was tortured to death, and we were all forced to watch the tortures as an 'object lesson.' It took the poor fellow ten agonizing hours to die...
...His slate is primarily businessmen, attorneys, and some agricultural representatives from the San Joaquin farm area of the state...
...Duplicating the official and semi-official Democratic Party machinery, the Stevenson supporters are fighting for their political lives...
...Further, say the Stevenson people, Kefauver has raised semantic issues and made easy promises to all groups in order to win their support...
...Since Stevenson carries the endorsement of the California Democratic Council, a Kefauver victory would mean an enormous loss of prestige to the clubs in the Council...
...His request for political asylum, under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, was refused...
...In the first round of hearings before Chicago immigration authorities, Hsuan was denied his appeal for political asylum under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953...
...Afterwards Attorney Cole decried these closed sessions as a "miscarriage of justice...
...Other newspapers rapidly came to Hsuan's aid, including the Chicago Sun-Times...
...K. C. Wu, former governor of Formosa, living in exile in the United States, has declared: "There can be no doubt that this boy would be executed for his political opinions on Formosa...
...He had just settled in his new job as an Evanston hotel elevator operator when the much publicized arrest happened...
...While his case for political asylum was pending, he planned to start an engineering education at Northwestern's Technological Institute...
...It is certainly true that Kefauver's stand on the civil rights issue and his blast at the Emmett Till murder did much to win support for him in California's Negro communities...
...His journey toward Formosa was interrupted by headlines as noisy as firecrackers that Fourth of July weekend...
...On issues, there is little that has seemed to separate the two men...
...A cartoon drawn by Pulitzer-prize winning Jacob Burck is still Hsuan's favorite comment...
...The debate between the adherents of the two candidates has shown occasional signs of acrimony...
...The convention was disposed in advance to support Stevenson but, to the shock of the ex-governor's campaign managers, Kefauver demonstrated a surprising ability to shake Stevenson's hold on the delegates...
...I find it difficult to concentrate any more...
...But he lacks an organization and his supporters, though deeply committed to him, are marginal to the party...
...Thoughtful Americans almost inevitably would ask Hsuan about conditions on Formosa, and he would reply, he says, in a "forthright manner...
...There are some sharp differences between the character of the delegations pledged to the rival candidates...
...And, a few minutes before he was to board a plane over the Pacific, Hsuan appeared in civilian clothes before his commanding officer—with his letter of resignation...
...marine, in response to a question, that he thought criticisms of the Chiang regime expressed by former Governor Wu were factually based...
...Maj, Robert B. Carney, Jr., son of the former chief of naval operations, and Capt...
...While Hsuan sat in detention barracks at Yerba Buena, California, the Tribune growled loudly enough to be heard in Republican Washington...
...In this circular argument, he could only agree that, yes, he had not entered the country, on Sept...
...For there is no doubt that Stevenson had slipped badly by March, while Senator Estes Kefauver had picked up much support in the Golden State...
...Soldiers were instructed for whom to vote before they were marched off to our 'free' elections...
...As reason for his application he gave: "fear of persecution for political opinion, if returned to Formosa...
...but Capt...
...Thus far, the main theme of the Kefauver campaign has been that the Senator is an experienced, independent legislator with a far greater practical knowledge of government than Stevenson...
...He had observed the development of what he frankly calls a "dictatorship...
...They had lost all hope of ever again seeing their families—to say nothing of winning back the mainland...
...Since then Hsuan's hopes have been pinned on the legislation his youthful attorneys managed to spark through Illinois Senators Douglas and Dirksen...
...At first, his opinions about Formosa had been offered hesitantly...
...What about a test case under the Walter-McCarran Immigration Act...
...Robert Wieczorowski of Skokie, 111., also in suburban Chicago...
...I listen to a lecture or try to write a paper and my mind wanders...
...There is little question that Kefauver's success at the Fresno meeting, coupled with the criticism of Stevenson made by the regional director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, caused some change in Stevenson's campaign strategy in the state—a change which has resulted in a reversal of the former pro-Kefauver trend...
...Moreover, the longer he stayed in the United States, the greater the contrast became for Hsuan between the form of government he saw here and what he had left behind...
...Hearsay evidence, which would have been inadmissible in any court of law, was accepted," he charged...
...PAUL JACOBS has written for Commonweal and The Reporter...
...H. T. Liu, the naval attache at the Chinese Republican embassy in Washington...
...For one thing, he explained, "I was so confident that, in view of all the money invested in Formosa, the United States was bound to insist on some radical reforms there...
...Obviously he was in good standing at home...
...Liu did inform Hsuan he had "heard reports saying that I had been critical of the government...
...It seems safe to predict that Stevenson will carry California by perhaps five per cent...
...There are more than half a million Negroes in California and an extremely high percentage of them are registered voters, mostly Democratic...
...Hsuan was catapulted into the middle of this international incident by criticizing the Chiang regime while he was an exchange trainee in a mutual security program over here...
...The Chiang government sought Hsuan not as a "deserter," but in "reprisal for his criticism," the paper declared...
...There is every indication that the primary vote will be a large one...
...MADELON GOLDEN, formerly a staff writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, contributes to a number of American publications...
...The Kefauver group has not raised the issue of party "bossism" in California to the same extent as in Minnesota since it obviously fits none of the facts here...
...At stake is not only Hsuan's neck but also America's philosophy of political asylum...
...Liu's office...
...On April 24, 1954, Hsuan went secretly to the Washington Field Office of the Department of Immigration and Naturalization and applied for permanent residence under Section Six of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953...
...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on the Primary in California and Chiang in Evanston California on the Eve of the Primary By PAUL JACOBS Los Angeles IF the California primary election had been held March 5 instead of June 5, it is doubtful whether Adlai Stevenson would any longer be a serious Presidential contender...
...Wu is a traitor...
...He cooks his own meals in a six-dollar-a-week basement room...
...Since March, the Stevenson forces have been working intensively in every district, building up an organization reminiscent of the kind operating in a final, rather than primary, campaign...
...In my own company men were shot for the slightest insubordination," he recalled...
...I don't know that I would be permitted time enough to drag the case through the federal courts...
...Surely there must be some way out of this mess...
...Only a few labor leaders are pledged to Kefauver...
...You will be executed for this...
...In the meantime, however, the California Negro press continues to run stories on Stevenson's acceptability as a candidate to the Southern Democrats...
...He carries the endorsement of all the state's Democratic Congressmen and, in addition, has the overwhelming support of the state's labor leaders, for whatever that support is worth...
...A more immediate and personal problem began to plague Hsuan at Quantico...
...he told how another Chinese Nationalist officer, who sought political asylum on Okinawa, was returned to Formosa instead, and "shot within 24 hours...
...Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang's son, who was placed at the head of a political department to supervise the political officer system within the armed forces, "studied police state techniques in Russia for more than a decade," Hsuan went on...
Vol. 20 • June 1956 • No. 6
