Independent of how one feels toward these other issues, one should take four assessments in mind: (1) whether his policies are based on facts, (2) whether his policies are partison, i.e. very much pro Republicans and against Democrats, (3) very punitive against those who have opposed his actions, and (4) making vast amount of money for himself or the Trump family.

In this article, we will not discuss whether his policies are or are not good for the Americans, although there are many indications that a lot of Americans are very critical of these policies. We will now focus our discussion on the 4 assessments mentioned in the previous paragraph.

(1) Whether His policies are based on facts, which is normally used to assess whether the policy makes sense. The fact that his policies are not based on facts, it is very difficult to convince him that his policy (or policies) are not good for the country.

(2) President Trump is the President of the U.S.A.. He is not just the president of the Republican Party. So his policies or actions should be assessed with respect to the whole country.

(3) His arguments against anyone should be based principally on whether this person’s argument is good or bad for the country, and not whether it is good or bad for the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. A person’s policy should be criticized if is not good for the country, and not whether it is good or bad for the Republican Party or the Democratic party.

(4) A President of the U.S. should be making policies on whether that policy is beneficial for the U.S. How that policy will affect him personally should not be part of the consideration. President Trump seems to be doing just the opposite.

Unfortunately, President Trump has failed in each of these four assessments.

We will now come back to the issue mentioned in the first paragraph. In response to the statement that several members of Congress have said that “One can refuse illegal orders, and no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” President Trump has said that those members of Congress should face the death penalty. However, that statement by several members of Congress is absolutely correct. President Trump should take back his statement and apologize to the American people.

Because my health insurance will pay for acupuncture treatments for back problems, In the last two months, I have been doing acupuncture treatments. Besides treating my back problems, my acupuncture treatments have also tried to work to treat on the nerves related to my feet and walking in general. It is too early to determine whether the acupuncture treatments are helping me to improve my feet movements and walking in general.

It is clear to me that to make overall improvements in my health and overall improvements with respect to my stroke, the process of recovery is going to be a major and long process. I will have to attack it from many approaches:

(1) Besides going through physical therapy twice a week (for one hour each), I must do it every day since every exercise in my physical therapy is useful, either to use the muscles that have not been used or used sufficiently.

(2) I must do more with the weights to strengthen my muscles, especially after my loss of weight.

(3) I must do the threadmill on a regular basis to strengthen my stamina.

(4) I must do my Taiji on a regular basis since I have not done it on a regular basis for several months.

I will do these exercises on a regular basis, and see if there is any improvement. It is also possible that it is just aging, and my health will progress based on just aging. Only time will tell.

The author came to the U.S. at age 13 is especially a mixture of a dragon and an eagle.  He exhibits traits of both, sometimes exhibiting more of one type than the other, and sometimes spontaneously transforming from one type to another, like yin and yang in Taiji.  The book recollects their experiences living through two decades of wars (The Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, China’s Civil War).

The book recollects the painful experience of the Tow family pulling up roots multiple times to escape from war:  (1) moving from Canton, China to Hong Kong in 1937, (2) from Hong Kong in 1941 to their ancestor village of Taishan near Canton, (3) from Taishan back to Canton when WWII ended in 1945, then (4) from Canton to Hong Kong in 1949 during China’s civil war, and (5) finally immigration to the U.S. in 1955 to a small town in Placerville (also known as Hangtown). 

It describes the heroic task assumed by his older sister Billie Tow Dong when our family was living in their ancestor village Taishan during the Second Sino Japanese War (unfortunately my older sister Billie passed away on 11/25/2025). It recollects the tragedy of losing his oldest brother and the impact it had on his mother emotionally. It also recollects the friendship between his father and his college freshman dormitory roommate, Mr. Harold S. Prescott, a friendship that lasted more than half a century, across thousands of miles of separation across the U.S. and across oceans.

It also recollects the author’s experiences living through the Free Speech Movement of 1963 at the University of California at Berkeley, the Civil Rights Movement, the Third World Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the decade of the 1960s. This decade resulted in many changes in the psyche of Americans, especially among students on American college campuses, as well as in the American society, as well as in other societies worldwide. It expanded their horizon and focus, paying much more attention to the social and economic conditions of their society, as well as the world as a whole.

This seismic change also affected our contemporaries. For example, a friend from the University of California at Berkeley while almost finishing his master degree in engineering in 1970 returned to Hong Kong and initiated a project to start teaching high school courses in a remote part of Hong Kong which at that time did not offer high schools.  His effort resulted in several other students joining that effort. This project lasted several years until a public high school was established in that remote part of Hong Kong, and what happened after that initiative can be found in Chapter 17.                                          

The worldwide Diaoyu Tiao Student Movement was also triggered in 1970 and 1971.  The impact of this movement is still going on, and is just as important now as it was 50+ years ago, because it is tied to the territorial sovereignty and involvement of the U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, which is still to be seen how it would be fulfilled. 

This book discusses the many extracurricular activities that the author was involved in throughout his life over more than six decades..  Most of these activities have centered on injustices and atrocities, especially those injustices and atrocities that were experienced by the Chinese that occurred during WWII during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

It describes extracurricular activities that involve organizations like “The New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA)” and “Ten Thousand Cries for Justice (10,000 CFJ).” The latter activity involves especially two people:  Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka of Japan, which is described in Chapter 33 of this book.  Both Tong Zeng and Tamaki Matsuoka have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  Unfortunately, Tong Zeng passed away on October 23, 2025.

The book also describes topics such as “Can the American Dream Be Continued?”, the “South China Sea Dispute,” “Anson Burlingame,” and “U.S.-China Relationship.”

The book is more than just one family’s memoir.  It is about the dynamic transformation and integration of one culture with another culture, which all immigrants undergo to one degree or another.

In my physical therapy and daily activities, I need to do more exercises to build back the strength of my arms and legs.

Over the next few months, I will continue to take more walks, paying attention to my walking problems.

As a long time practitioner of Taiji, I decided that besides taking more walks, the best practice to work on my walking problems is to practice my Taiji. Here are some notes on this that I had mentioned in June 2025.

• As I walk, I need to make sure that I lift up my left foot before stepping forward to avoid scraping the floor with my left foot. After my stroke, I have a tendency to scrape the floor with my left foot.
• My left foot and right foot need to be separated by roughly a shoulder width to provide the stability needed for walking when I am walking forward. This separation between the left foot and the right foot is changed only when I am trying to make a turn. If I want to make a left turn, the left foot needs to make a smaller step forward, while the right foot needs to make a larger step forward. If I want to make a right turn, then suitable changes need to be made to the above instructions.
• As I walk forward, I should keep that separation between the left foot and the right feet so that the stability can be kept.
• If I am moving backward, that separation between the left foot and the right foot need to be kept. Otherwise the stability is lost.
• If you are involved in Taiji, you need to pay attention to many slight bodily turns, because these turns allow you to turn your waist while keeping your opponent in front of you. It is the turning of the waist that gives the power to your strikes.
• For example, before you step forward to strike your opponent, you turn your body, e.g., slightly to the left. Then you turn your body slightly to the right while stepping forward toward your opponent. That sight bodily turn adds power to your strike while still facing your opponent.
• All these movements, steps, bodily turns, rotation of the waist are built into the basic Taiji movements. They are taught when you are learning the basic Taiji movements, such as in the basic Taiji 24 Form. These movements should be taught at the very beginning of learning your forms. It adds power to your strikes.

As I am recovering from my stroke, I try to do my Taiji forms, starting from the most basic ones, such as the Yang-Style 10 Form or the Yang-Style 16 Form or the Yang-Style 24 Form.

Although I may still remember all these forms, however, currently I may not be doing these forms correctly. I think it may take me several weeks, and perhaps even months for me to do these forms properly. As I mentioned in June 2025, I will continue to work on this in the next few months.

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5 Responses to “Latest Update on Recovery from My Stroke”

1.  charles shao says:June 4, 2025 at 10:27 pm (Edit)Hi Don,Go! Go! Go!Hope you will recover fully soon.Charles
2.  Shirley and Victor Huang says:June 8, 2025 at 4:14 pm (Edit)Hi Don,Glad to hear that you are recovering well and now you are redoing PT to enhance your physical strength. I think it’s a good idea to always maintain one’s exercise regimen regardless.
   I picked up an exercise called 平甩功 (go check up on Web, an exercise found by a Taiwanese guru) two years ago and found it works very well for me. Simply just keeping your blood circulation thru out your entire body.Anyway, hope you will continue to improve your health.

This is a book based on real life history of people who have lived part of their lives in China (as dragons) and part of their lives in the U.S. (as eagles).  It is about the dynamic transformation and integration of one culture with another culture.  Having lived as a dragon and as an eagle may provide the experience that may be helpful to guide us in the current complex multi-dimensional world.

It is based on the lives and experiences of the author, his parents, as well as their ancestors, and his brothers and sisters, with all of them who have all lived as dragons and eagles.  The cultures of China and the U.S. are very much intertwined in the lives of the Tow family because five generations of the greater Tow family have lived part of their lives in China and part of their lives in the U.S. 

It discusses about their history of needing to pull up roots multiple times to escape from wars, often losing everything and needing to start from the beginning.  It talks about the tragedy of losing his oldest brother and the impact it affected his mother emotionally, and their experiences living through two decades of wars:  the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945), World War II (1939-1945), China’s Civil War (1927-1949). 

It talks about their immigration from Hong Kong in 1955 to a small town in Placerville (also known as Hangtown), California.  It also recollects the friendship between his father and his college freshman dormitory roommate Mr. Harold S. Prescott, a friendship that lasted more than half a century, across thousands of miles of separation across the U.S. and across oceans.

It also recollects the author’s experiences living through the Free Speech Movement of 1963 at the University of California at Berkeley, the Civil Rights Movement, the Third World Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the decade of the 1960s. This decade resulted in many changes in the psyche of Americans, especially among students on American college campuses, as well as in the American society, as well as in other societies worldwide. It expanded their horizon and focus, paying much more attention to the social and economic conditions of their society, as well as the world as a whole.

This seismic change also affected our contemporaries. For example, a friend from the University of California at Berkeley after finishing his master degree in engineering in 1970 returned to Hong Kong and initiated a project to start teaching high school courses in a remote part of Hong Kong which at that time did not offer high schools.  His effort resulted in several other students joining that effort. This project lasted several years until a public high school was established in that remote part of Hong Kong.

The worldwide Diaoyu Islands Student Movement was also triggered in 1970 and 1971.  The impact of this movement is still going on, and is just as important now as it was 50 years ago, because it is tied to the territorial sovereignty and involvement of the U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, which is still to be seen how it would be fulfilled. 

This book discusses the many extracurricular activities that the author was involved in his life.  Most of these activities have centered on injustices and atrocities, especially those injustices and atrocities that were experienced by the Chinese that occurred during WWII.  It describes extracurricular activities that involve organization like “The New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA)” and “Ten Thousand Cries for Justice (10,000 CFJ).” It discusses about the American Dream and whether it can be continued.  One of these activities involves two people:  Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka of Japan who have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

It also discussed the South China Sea Dispute and a most unique 19-th century American diplomat Anson Burlingame.  It discusses the American dream and whether it can be continued.

It discusses U.S.-China relationship, and how China and the U. S., being the world’s two most powerful countries, with their different backgrounds and orientatations, may need to work together to help solve some of the world’s major problems.

The book is more than about one family’s memoir.  It is about the dynamic transformation and integration of one culture with another culture, which all immigrants undergo to one degree or another.  It sheds light on how we can all learn together to live harmoniously in the current multi-dimensional world.

Tariffs and Economics:

A federal appeals court said on Friday 8/29/2025 that many of the sweeping tariffs imposed by President Trump on dozens of countries earlier this year are not legally permissible.

The results could have far ranging consequences, affecting foreign and domestic policies, as well as world peace. President Trump’s policies are often not based on solid analysis, but are based on personal preferences. That is why it is difficult to assess his policies since these policies are not based on facts with data to back up.

President Trump’s numerous actions have raised many issues facing the American people. He has taken punitive actions against those who do not assess issues similar to his. He has also taken many actions which benefit himself and his relatives, including accepting a huge luxury jet from Qatar which requires a lot of American money to ensure that it satisfies the security requirements of the American government. The Trump Administration for no good reason has drastically upgraded the prison nature of Epstein’s long-time partner Ghislaine Maxwell. The American people are experiencing a lot of anxieties, worries about their own economic welfares and about their own economic health, e.g. over the lack of senior level agreements and guidance from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when many of their top leaders have resigned. The American people are worried how their country and the world are approaching the future.

Human Spirits:

The American people are concerned with how their country and the world are approaching the future. The American people’s attitude and satisfaction toward the country have taken a significant decline. Americans have serious conflicts over many issues, and the American spirit must be lifted back up.

In August 2025, I also accidentally updated my June 2025 article on Assessing President Trump’s Policies in 2nd Quarter. So we can no longer see that June 2025 article. However, we can read my most recent Sept. 2025 article “Assessment of President Trump’s Policies in 3rd Quarter 2025.”

The second part of my book describes the many extracurricular activities that I was involved in during my adult life. Most of these activities have centered on injustices and atrocities, especially those injustices and atrocities that were experienced by the Chinese that occurred during WWII. It describes extracurricular activities that involve organization like “The New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA)” and “Ten Thousand Cries for Justice (10,000 CFJ).” This current article describes an example of the extracurricular activities that I was involved in during these 50+ years.

Next year will mark the 95th anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931-1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25-30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, the country that did all of this still has not acknowledged what it did and has been trying to rewrite this part of history. We are reaching the time when all of the people who experienced this tragedy first hand will have passed away. However, many people of different nationalities around the world have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from this part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated anywhere else in this world.

Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. This article illustrates the activities of these two people, Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.

Tong Zeng (童增) – Who Speaks for the Voiceless

Although millions of Chinese people suffered great atrocities under the Japanese military in the form of massacres, rapes and kidnapped comfort women, slave laborers, biological and chemical weapon attacks, vivisection as POWs.  The instigators never admitted to their guilt and basically never punished.  The victims never received any apology and were never financially compensated for their sufferings (except for what occurred in 2016 as the result of work done by Tong Zeng and others, which will be described later in this chapter). 

When China and Japan established diplomatic relationship on September 29, 1972, in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese people, China, as a gesture of good will, renounced its demand for war reparation from Japan, i.e., the Chinese government no longer required the Japanese government to pay reparation for the damages it did to China during WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

As a young man studying for a masters degree in law, Tong Zeng investigated various international legal cases and issues regarding compensation related to atrocities committed during a war by one country on the citizens of another country.  He concluded that there are “war reparations” and “damage compensations.”  The former, “war reparations,” are compensations for the losses that the defeated countries launching the war caused to the countries they invaded.  The latter, “damage compensations” are compensations for the sufferings and losses of the people of the invaded countries caused by acts of the invading militaries violating the laws of war and humanitarian principles.

In July 1990 he wrote a White Paper “China Demands Japan to Compensate Atrocity Victims.”  [1]  Although initially he received no interest in any newspaper on the contents of his White Paper, on March 31, 1991 he got the newspaper Ming Bao in Hong Kong to post a short article about it.  Then a couple of days later, he  distributed copies of his White Paper to various delegates on their way to attend the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing.  Several delegates showed interest in his proposal.  Although it was too late to discuss this in the 1991 NPC, it was taken up as a topic of discussion in the 1992 NPC.  When news of this discussion was reported in the mass media, it ignited a brush fire across the whole country. Seeking compensation for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military was a long-overdue item for seeking justice and closure that has been buried in the hearts and souls of thousands and thousands of Chinese atrocity victims and their relatives. During the next few years, thousands of people wrote to Tong Zeng endorsing and thanking him for his proposal and wrote to him providing details of the atrocities that they or their family members had experienced. Within a few years, he had received about 10,000 such letters.

[2]  This became an archive of letters of historical significance that document the atrocities experienced by the victims and written by the victims or their close relatives. 

Here are excerpts of a few sample letters that were sent to Tong Zeng starting in the 1990s [3].

• Written on 12/15/1992 by Tang Qiangshen of Zhejiang Province, with the first part of the quote referring to air bombing:  “More than 8,000 people died from being buried alive, burning to death, freezing, boiling with hot water, cramming pepper water, poisoning, attacking by hounds, starving, body splitting by horses (all kinds), hanging, skinning, mutilation, (gang) raping, live targets of shooting and flesh carving.  …  After the Japanese army retreated in May 1945, 25 shoulder pole loads of human bones were excavated, more than 2,700 skeletons were discovered across the area.  …  18 women were raped (gang raped) before death, over 500 women were raped by brutal force; these women were stripped and raped in broad daylight, and “teased” before being raped, some even died from splitting the body with knife.”
• Written on 11/20/1992 by Tang Qingyu of Kunming, Yunnan Province:  “In 1941 when the Japanese Army invaded Western Yunnan, after Baoshan was conquered, large crowds of residents living in Baoshan and other places in Western Yunnan swarmed to Kunming to avoid slaughter by the Japanese Army. Immediately afterwards cholera broke out in Kunming. At first people thought it was epidemic plague, but soon it spread to the whole city. Those contracted cholera first would have symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, and soon they died in less than one day. On the streets one could see dead people each day. Back then at the biggest and most famous coffin shop (the boss was surnamed Zhao) on Wenmiao Street in Kunming, all the coffins were sold out.  …  The Japanese army spread cholera bacteria in Western Yunnan, therefore the fleeing people of all social circles brought the cholera bacteria to Kunming and spread it around. … As mentioned above, the number of civilians suffering direct or indirect damage from the Japanese Army runs to thousands and millions. Newspapers published at that time all carried the story.”
• Written on 3/18/1993 by Zhou Zhenqiu of Changsha City, Hunan Province:  In June 1944, the Japanese army invaded Changsha for the third time. On the afternoon of lunar July 13, when my mother, along with a group of women, was returning home from the countryside, they were captured by the Japanese army, stripped off with hands tied on the back and then bayoneted to death. My mother was bayoneted for eight times and thrown into Xiang River. An old widow was also thrown into the river after being bayoneted to death. As nobody came to collect her corpse, the corpse was pushed to the river bank by waves and eaten by crows bit by bit in the hot weather, with bones dragged away by dogs.”
• Written on 7/6/1944 by Wang Genyou, describing the experience of his deceased uncle Wang Jinsheng as a slave laborer in Japan for four years:  “In January 1942, many people including my uncle were captured by the invading Japanese army during a raid in northern Daqinghe, Hebei and sent to Tanggu Camp. Later they were sent to Japan to labor for 4 years in a ravine 3 km southern of the railway station. They dug a cave every day, which was over 15 km long from east to west and used for hydraulic power generation. They did heavy work every day but ate pig feed and they were always starved. Instead of being provided with warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, they were only given a crotch cloth in a year to work naked. The Japanese foremen often beat the Chinese laborers with sticks and whips and called them morons. My uncle saw with his eyes that many Chinese laborers were beaten to death by the Japanese foremen. The life was inhuman and intolerable. Some laborers committed suicide and some escaped and were caught back, bitten to death by foreign dogs. The Japanese foremen said, ‘You Chinese people cannot run away. You are just food of Japanese dogs.’ Many Chinese laborers died there of torturing. Also, many laborers were disabled due to the beating or work and some got blinded. They suffered in Japan until the end of 1945 after Japan surrendered. My uncle and other survivors returned to the Red Cross of Qingdao, China in March 1946 with the help of the American army. Finally, my uncle reunited with the family.”

As the result, Tong Zeng became the leader of the whole grievance and compensation movement in China.  For example, he helped to establish and became the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Association for Compensation Against Japan.  He gave voice to the thousands and millions of voiceless Chinese atrocity victims and provided an organized force to seek apology, justice, and compensation from the Japanese government, as well as those Japanese companies who were involved in slave laborers.

One of the accomplishments of this organized force is the negotiated settlement between former Chinese slave laborers of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (or Mitsubishi for short) and Mitsubishi that was reached on 6/1/2016.  The negotiated agreement included:

• Mitsubishi (or its predecessor Mitsubishi Mining Corporation) admits that during the war they had deployed 3,765 Chinese slave laborers of which 722 died during their deployment.
• Mitsubishi admits that the human rights of these Chinese laborers were violated for which Mitsubishi expresses deep remorse.  Mitsubishi accepts the historical responsibility and sincerely apologizes
• Mitsubishi will compensate each of these slave laborers (or their inheritors) 100,000 RMB (or roughly $15,000 U.S.)
• Mitsubishi will set aside 100 million yen (or roughly $1 million U.S.) to build a memorial for these slave laborers
• Mitsubishi will set aside 200 million yen (or roughly $2 million U.S.) to help locate any of the 3,765 Chinese slave laborers whose locations are currently unknown
• Mitsubishi will pay 250,000 yen (or roughly $2,500 U.S. to each slave laborer or one of his inheritors to attend the Memorial Service.

More than 70 years after the war ended, a portion of the atrocity victims finally received justice and compensation.  However, this is only a small portion of the millions of atrocity victims. Much more hard work remains in the years ahead.

The thousands of letters that Tong Zeng received from atrocity victims were accumulated and kept in many boxes in his office. 

Thousands of Tong Zeng’s Letters Kept in His Office

When years and years have gone by and there was still no apology and compensation from Japan, Tong Zeng was worried such important archives could be lost from history with a theft or fire.  So he tried to find a method of safe-keeping these letters.  In early 2014 when a couple of Chinese Americans in the U.S. heard of this dilemma, they offered to work with Tong Zeng to develop a website to keep and post all the letters, including digitizing all these letters and translating a subset of the letters into English.  This led to a joint collaborative project between a small Chinese team, led by Tong Zeng and his able assistant Meng Huizhong (孟惠忠), and a small Chinese American team of volunteers.  After almost two years of hard work working almost days and nights, the initial website called “10,000 Cries for Justice” was completed, and this important historical archive has been posted in a bi-lingual website www.10000cfj.org.

Because of the political climate at that time when China was still trying to establish diplomatic relations or build up its friendship with many countries, Tong Zeng did not always have the support of the Chinese government in what he was doing.  As a matter of fact, when certain important visitors, e.g., Japan’s Prime Minister, were visiting Beijing, Tong Zeng’s employer at that time, the National Committee on Aging, would arrange an out-of-town business trip for him so that he was not around Beijing just in case he would cause trouble.

As stated earlier, the whole compensation movement is far from completed, Tong Zeng and many other similar leaders will continue to work hard to restore justice and seek compensation for millions of other atrocity victims, so that all the voiceless victims can be heard and rest in peace.

Tong Zeng is known as “the person who speaks for the voiceless,” and Tamaki Matsuoka is known as “the conscience of Japan.”

Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) -The Conscience of Japan

One of the largest atrocities that the Japanese military inflicted on China was the Nanking Massacre which occurred for approximately six weeks starting from December. 13, 1937 to near the end of January 1938.  During these six weeks, approximately 300,000 Chinese, most of them civilians and many were women and children, were slaughtered, and over 20,000 Chinese females (women, girls, and even very young girls and great grandmothers) were raped, and one third of the city of Nanking was burned to the ground.

Tamaki Matsuoka was born in Japan in 1947, and was an elementary school teacher.  As she was growing up and as a young adult, she was taught and heard many different versions about the Nanking Massacre, including that it was fake and fabricated by the Chinese.  So starting in the mid 1980s, she decided that she was going to find out for herself what really happened during the Nanking Massacre. 

She did and spent more than 30 years of her adult life to find out just exactly what happened in Nanking during those six weeks.  An ambitious and formidable task even for a person working full-time on such a project. But Tamaki had to earn a living working full-time as an elementary school teacher, and also together with her husband raising a family with two sons. She was able to work on this project only during the summers, school holidays, or weekends. Initially she only had herself to work on this project, and she had to pay for any incurred expenses (e.g., travel expenses between Japan and China). Furthermore, she endured a lot of criticisms and attacks from the Japanese right wing, including death threats.

But she endured this difficult, challenging, and dangerous journey.  The journey was not easy at all.  She exhibited courage, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice to achieve her objective. Among other accomplishments, she interviewed over 250 former Japanese soldiers who participated in the Nanking Massacre and over 300 Chinese survivors of the Nanking Massacre.

Even after establishing some initial contacts with former Japanese WWII veterans after posting an announcement in Japanese newspapers, she had to overcome significant cultural and political reluctance to talk about this sensitive subject. Again it took months or even years of building friendship with these veterans and gaining their trusts in the importance of the project that the veterans were willing to open up and discuss these long-held memories which they had not discussed with anyone else (including their immediate family members) for over half a century. Similarly, she had to overcome significant reluctance for the survivors to revisit the long suppressed terrifying dark memories of the past, including cultural reluctance to discuss being raped, and political reluctance to discuss atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers when at times the Chinese government was trying to establish friendlier relationship with the Japanese government. 

By comparing notes of the perpetrators and victims, Tamaki matched up records and compiled testimonies of the mass slaughter, rape, arson, destruction, plunder and other unimaginable violence committed to the Nanking residents including women, elderly and children. Her work produced numerous presentations, research articles, films and several books, including winning the “Japan Congress of Journalists Prize” in 2003.  A summary of her life-long project is summarized in the English book Torn Memories of Nanking [4], which should be a must-read book for everyone.

Thanks to her and others [5], the true picture of Nanking Massacre is gradually being revealed to the world with irrefutable evidence.  Through these testimonies, there is an undeniable case for the existence of the Nanking Massacre as one of the most horrific atrocities in the history of humankind.

The best way to get a good sense of the Nanking Massacre is from interview statements that Tamaki recorded from Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers.  Here is a small sampling from her published English book.

• Qiu Xiuying (7 year-old Chinese female survivor):  “There were lots of bodies lying around Yijiang Gate.  It was a truly horrific sight, with bodies piled up to a height of more than one metre and there were more bodies lying in front of the gates and along the city walls.  There were more bodies at Zhongshan Wharf.  It was so terrifying that I couldn’t look at the bodies, but I recall that most of them were wearing civilian clothing rather than military uniforms.  There were even naked corpses.  Just like the bodies at the city gate, some were bound up and others were naked.  It was truly terrifying.”
• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier):  “The day that Nanjing (Nanjing is another spelling for Nanking) fell, there were mountains of dead bodies piled up outside the walls of the city.  I felt something soft beneath my feet.  Lighting a match to see what I was stepping on, I realized that the entire surface under my feet was like a carpet of dead bodies.  There were dead bodies everywhere.  I don’t know which unit was responsible, but they had all been killed by bayonets.  There were women and children, but no soldiers.”
• Yang Mingzhen (7 years old Chinese female survivor):  “Japanese soldiers came back again that afternoon while my mother and I were lying on the kitchen floor.  My father was so weak that he was just lying there.  A Japanese soldier came up to my father, opened his eyes with his fingers and thrust a knife into his mouth.  Then he came up to my mother and pulled her trousers down.  As he wiped the soot from my mother’s face, she bit his hand.  Livid, the Japanese soldier hit my mother’s face again and again and then raped her.  After that, he started taunting her, twisting the barrel of his gun around inside her vagina.  The other Japanese soldier pulled my trousers down and started taunting me, prizing open my still-firm vagina with his fingers.  At any rate, they were prepubescent genitals, the genitals of a six or seven-year-old.  I screamed out in pain.  The Japanese soldier forcibly raped me.  He was a beast.  The two of them took turns raping my mother and me.  Blood flowed in torrents, and it was so painful that I couldn’t even walk afterwards.  My genitals became swollen and continued to bleed.  Urine would dribble out uncontrollably and flow into my wounds, causing unbearable pain.  I still suffer incontinence to this day and am unable to urinate normally.  Even now, I still have to use diapers.  My parents were killed.”
• Teramoto Juhei (24 year-old Japanese soldier):  In the case of girls who were virgins, they would start frothing at the mouth and pass out as three or five men hold them down.  I did it as well, and nothing good came of it.  Soldiers from all over Japan did this kind of thing all the time.  It’s just a case of whether they admit to having done so or not.”
• Yang Shaorong (25 year-old Chinese male survivor):  “The Japanese practice was to make each group of three (prisoners) advance toward the river and then shoot them.  As the bodies steadily started to pile up, Japanese soldiers would then douse the bodies in gasoline and set them alight.  Gradually, my turn approached.  Since we knew that we were going to die in any case, our group moved forward on its own.  As gunfire rang out and the people in front of us were killed, we fell forward on our own accord.  However, although we had avoided being shot, we were worried about being burnt alive if we remained where we had fallen.  As my hands were bound, I used all of the strength in my legs to crawl to the edge of the Yangtze River, a short distance at a time.  Thinking that I could avoid being burnt to death by entering the river, I slowly submerged myself in the water.  Under my feet and above my head, there were bodies everywhere.  My stomach was touching the shore and there were bodies above my head, so I was able to avoid being discovered.  Finally, my fear of being burnt alive faded away.”
• Tanaka Jiro (29 year-old Japanese soldier):  “We dragged all of them (Chinese prisoners) out of the freight train hangar and made them sit down facing the shore.  When the command was given, they were sprayed with bullets at point blank range from machine guns that had been hidden in nearby trenches.  They fell down, one by one, like dominoes.  Blood-soaked, smoking pieces of flesh and clothing flew up into the air.  Light machine guns that had been set up on the wharf took care of the several dozen or so of them who had jumped into the river.  The muddy waters were soaked red with blood.  What a miserable scene!  Will such a wretched scene ever be seen again in this world?”
• Tokuda Ichitaro (23 year-old Japanese soldier):  At Xiaguan (the district in Nanking that is next to the Yangtze River), I saw a large number of bodies floating on the Yangtze River.  Corpses were continuously being tossed into the river until the water was full of them.  While transporting the corpses, we noticed that there were so many corpses on the road that automobiles could not drive through.  Basically, it was a road made of dead bodies.
• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier):  “What the newspapers often refer to as the ‘Nanjing Massacre’ is an indisputible fact, and people who deny this are lying.”
• Teramoto Juhei (24 year-old Japanese soldier):  “The Nanking Massacre happened.  I saw it with my own eyes.”
• Zhang Xiuying (23 year-old Chinese female survivor):  “I saw those things with my own eyes.  On no account am I telling lies.  I hear that there are people and politicians in Japan who say that the Nanking Massacre is a fabrication, but I [honestly] suffered these kinds of horrendous experiences, even having my daughter burnt to death.  How can Japanese people still say that the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication?”

How could humans use such atrocious treatments toward other humans?  Although a complete explanation may not be found from the interview statements, they do mention some of the reasons.

• Matsumura Yoshiharu (24 year-old Japanese soldier):  “Back then, we did not think of the Chinese as human.”
• Zhang Xiuying (23 year-old Chinese female survivor):  “The Japanese didn’t consider the Chinese as human beings.”
• Itsuki Makio (22 year-old Japanese soldier):  “At that time, the Japanese thought of themselves as superior and did not treat the Chinese as human beings.” … “I heard that our company commander had issued an order saying, ‘Once you’re in Nanjing, robbery, rape, and murder are allowed.’”
• Wang Jinfu (10 year-old Chinese female survivor):  “The Japanese killed us like insects.”

I want to end this section on the Nanking Massacre with a quote of Mitani Sho, an 18 year old Japanese soldier whom Tamaki interviewed: “Until now, I had no opportunity to tell my story.  After sixty years, I can finally give my testimony.  I am extremely grateful.  As a Japanese, I often reflect deeply on this episode.  Today, however, many Japanese deny that the Nanjing Massacre or military sexual slavery took place.  What kind of people are they?  These people are trying to find an excuse to slowly change the interpretation of the Japanese constitution.  Today, they are establishing a large military, and completely revamping the armed forces.  In addition, they are trying to place the Japanese Army under U.S. command as an allied army that is prepared to fight American wars.  Under a new security treaty and guidelines, Japan would be automatically pulled into any wars that the U.S. started.  If such a situation were to arise, it is possible that events like the Nanjing Massacre could happen again.  If we do not clearly state the historical truth and admit to this truth, we will not be able to establish a peaceful world for ourselves and our families.”

That is why Tamaki Matsuoka is known as “The Conscience of Japan.” [6]

Ending Remarks:  Eighty years have transpired since the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945.  We must acknowledge what happened during that war, we must learn from that painful experience, so that that painful experience will not have to be endured by anyone else in this world in the future. 

We must, like Tong Zeng, continue to speak for the voiceless.  We must, like Tamaki Matsuoka, continue to spark the conscience of Japan.

I hope the following comments will be used to guide us in the future:

• From Zhang Xiuhong, a Chinese female survivor (then 11 years old) of the Nanking Massacre: “We are all brothers, whether Japanese or Chinese. Please don’t do bad things like the Japanese Army did before.  Japan and China want to cooperate in a spirit of friendship. I want young people in each country to come together, to study, to work, and to build peaceful nations. Please don’t do anything bad.”
• Remark from Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito on February 23, 2015:  “It is important today, when memories of the war are fading, to look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without direct knowledge.”

Tong Zeng and Tamaki Matsuoka have committed their lives to restore the injustice and atrocity that occurred in China more than 80 years ago.  We recognize their contributions and unfailing sacrifices as behaviors that are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, and they have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the last many years.  We believe that awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize can help to close this chapter of sorrow history to an enlightened ending.

References for Chapter 33

[1] You can find this White Paper (both English and Chinese versions) at “An Archive of Historic Cries for Justice Letters”:  https://10000criesforjustice.org/10000/English%20Translation%20of%20%e7%ab%a5%e5%a2%9e%e7%9a%84%e4%b8%87%e8%a8%80%e4%b9%a6-with%20Don’s%20Comments_2015-06-14.pdf  (for English version) and https://10000criesforjustice.org/10000/1%e7%ab%a5%e5%a2%9e%e7%9a%84%e4%b8%87%e8%a8%80%e4%b9%a6.pdf (for Chinese version).

[2] In the early 1990s when the majority of these letters were sent to Tong Zeng, many relatives and Chinese media personnel borrowed many of these letters.  Because at that time copying machines were not readily available to Tong Zeng and other people in China, many of these letters were borrowed and unfortunately, most of them were never returned.  That is why Tong Zeng now has only about 5,000 letters.

[3] For more sample letters from Tong Zeng’s collection, see “Sample Letters from Tong Zeng’s Collection of “10,000 Cries for Justice”:  http://www.dontow.com/2018/03/sample-letters-from-tong-zengs-collection-of-10000-cries-for-justice/

[4] Torn Memories of Nanking, by Tamaki Matsuoka, ALPHA Education, 2016, ISBN 978-0-9920550-I-1 (paperback).  Parts of this English book, plus other material, have previously been published in several other books in Japanese and Chinese by Tamaki Matsuoka.

[5] The most notable contributor was the late Iris Chang, who authored the best-selling book The Rape of Nanking:  The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Basic Books, 1997.

[6] For more information about Tamaki Matsuoka, see “Torn Memories of Nanking – A Must Read”:  http://www.dontow.com/2016/06/torn-memories-of-nanking-a-must-read/

This is clear from many perspectives. From his cabinet members who are always been severe critics of China, such as Secretary of State Mario Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Although he advocates the Monroe Doctrine that other countries should not have any significant involvement in North America, or even Central America or South America, he is intimately involved in forming alliances in Asia, far from the U.S.’s home base in North America. This includes forming military alliances such as with Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia. One also cannot just take his words for granted. One must see what he is doing with his actions. Even though on the surface he seems to be friends to Putin of Russia, but that may be part of his strategy to create more differences between Russia and China, to split Russia and China, to avoid having to face both Russia and China when conflicts arise.

Trump has been creating all kinds of tariffs, with many of them creating higher prices on products sold by American companies, and ultimately hurting Americans in the pocket books, thus adversely affecting the American economy in an adverse way in multiple steps of the economic ladder. Trump needs to understand the ultimate consequences of his tariffs. One also needs to understand the impacts on a country as it tries to improve the overall economic and political impacts on the country. While trying to improve its economic conditions, it must also try to make sure that it did not become a subordinate of another country for the forseeable future.

The largest advanced chip manufacufacturing plant is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) which is located in Taiwan. U.S. is also trying to move more of its chip manufacturing capabilities from Taiwan to its new and expanding manufacturing plant in Arizona. Besides the fact that these chips may be owned by China since Taiwan is a province under China, there is also the question whether the people who staffed TSMC in Taiwan can be transpended quickly to Arizona, as the expansion to the Arizona facility was part of the Biden administration’s CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities which was announced on April 8, 2024. But numerous set backs, including key differences between Taiwan and the U.S.’s workplace culture, have delayed the beginning of this chips production until 2025 or beyond.

Just like everything else, Trump is doing many things, shaking the foundations from well established positions, eliminating numerous jobs, creating uncertainties in the lives of numerous people, without providing a clear theoretical framework guiding these changes. But we will survive and we will live on beyond the Trump years.

This book describes the hardships, challenges, and tragedies faced by the dragons and the eagles as they experience their lives having lived in both China and the U.S.  It is based on the real-life experiences of the Tow family intertwining the cultures of China and the U.S., sometimes exhibiting more of one type than the other, and sometimes spontaneously transforming from one type to another, like yin and yang in Taiji.

The book recollects the unrelenting political chaos and turmoil through two decades of war (the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, and China’s Civil War), their family tragedy, and their personal experiences of living the lives of dragons and eagles.  The book begins with my father’s first experience as a not-yet 15-year-old coming to the U.S. as a merchant’s son to attend high school in Providence, Rhode Island,  and then college, first at Brown University in Providence, as a freshman and then the next three years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

It then describes my father’s experience after graduating in 1930 at MIT with a Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering. He then returned to China, and worked in the County Road Department in Guangzhou (also known as Canton), and started his family. All this happened during the turbulent years of the 1930s, including the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945), WWII (1939-1945), and China’s civil war (1927-1949). 

It describes the family tragedy that occurred in our family. During those turbulent years of the 1930s, 1940s, and the first half of the 1950s, it describes their family needing to pull up roots multiple times, often losing everything and needing to start from scratch.  It describes “no man’s land” which was what Hong Kong was called on Christmas 1941. It describes the friendship between my father and Mr. Harold S. Prescott, (his college freshman dormitory roommate at Brown University) that lasted over half a century, across countries and across oceans.

The Tow family then migrated to the U.S. in October 1955. After moving to the U.S., it describes members of the Tow family on their college education, including the author (Don Tow) living through the Free Speech Movement of 1963 at the University of California at Berkeley, the civil rights movement, the Third World Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement starting in the decade of the 1960s. This decade resulted in many changes in the psyche of Americans, especially among students on American college campuses, as well as in the American society, as well as in other societies world wide. It expanded their horizon and focus, paying much more attention to the social and economic conditions of their society, as well as the world as a whole. This seismic change also affected our contemporaries. For example, a friend from the University of California at Berkeley after finishing his master degree in engineering in 1970 returned to Hong Kong and initiated a project to start teaching high school courses in a remote part of Hong Kong which at that time did not offer high schools in that remote part of Hong Kong.  His effort resulted in several other students joining that effort. This project lasted several years until a public high school was established in that part of Hong Kong. More information on that initiative, as well as what happened after that initiative can be found in Ref. 1.

Starting in the fall of 1970, a global Diao Yu Tai (DYT) Student Movement erupted around the world.  Information on this global DYT Student Movement can be found in Ref. 2. This global student movement originated over the territorial dispute on the Diao Yu Islands (or Diao Yu Tai in Chinese and Senkaku Islands in Japanese) that made front page news in newspapers around the globe.  This dispute dates back to many years, and about 50 years ago this dispute led to a very widespread global Chinese student movement, known as the Diao Yu Tai or DYT Student Movement.  From the very beginning of that global Student Movement, it was recognized that this is not just a minor territorial dispute between two countries, but it had much larger significance involving (1) the revival of Japanese militarism, and (2) American imperialism and collusion with Japan, with the intention to weaken China. This Student Movement started in the fall of 1970 and quickly gained momentum in 1971 and spread around the world in in the following decade.  This Movement also resulted in a major shift in the study focus of oversea Chinese students from mostly science and engineering to a much broader focus covering all disciplines with their eyes on the whole world.

The worldwide Diaoyutai Student Movement resulted in a major impact on the minds and thoughts of Chinese college students across the world in the sense that they are much more focused on the problems of the world, not just on engineering and scientific problems limited to their local neighborhoods. As the years pass by, the Movement affected and drastically changed the lives and the livelihood of numerous Chinese students and as well as the adults as these students become adults.  One could say that the 1970s resulted in a change in the minds of overseas Chinese, and its impacts are reflected in some the things that will be discussed in the rest of this book. 

The book is more than one family’s memoir; it is about the dynamic transformation process of assimilation which all immigrants undergo to one degree or another.  In that sense, this book has more general validity and applicability.

We plan to publish this book in both English and Chinese later this year, including self publishing.

References

Ref. 1: The Shaping of the Life of a Young Student at the University of California at Berkeley, in the August 2011 issue of www.dontow.com.

Ref. 2: Diao Yu Tai Student Movement: Recollection 40 Years Later, and 50 years later, in the October 2010 and the September 2020 issues of the website www.dontow.com.