When we were being interrogated, we pretty much let the investigators believe whatever they assumed to be true. We only had two goals to achieve throughout the whole interrogation: first of all, that no more people would be involved in our case and imprisoned. We had many friends to protect, so we couldn’t reveal any information that would lead the investigators to other people. Secondly, no one would admit to committing the “communist bandits” crime, which was the one that the investigators mainly wanted us to confess to. We learned from our predecessors that once we admitted to believing in communism / socialism, the investigators would label us as communist bandits and execute us immediately. There is no way we would be alive and interviewed right now if that had happened…

…In the middle of the interrogation the investigators started to build a theory that we supported “Taiwan Independence”, and this charge also  appeared in the judgment.  I felt it would cause a lot of confusion… especially for our party members who didn't have a comprehensive understanding about our political beliefs. Once they read that charge in the judgment they would probably begin to doubt or lose the faith, and to question if the party supported for Taiwan Independence. I heard a rumor in  jail that some of our partners were starting to feel uncertain, and that it was a consequence of us being ambiguous through the interrogation. Even though we avoided the death sentence, I still didn’t want to see our party / organization lose members or partners whom we had paid a lot of effort to organize, because of a wrong charge and misunderstanding.

I wanted to fix this problem as soon as possible, but there was no way I could talk to other people in person, so I jotted several notes on tissue papers with different aliases, and passed them out separately. We had a note-delivering system in prison, we wrote the notes on tissue paper (because it was easily  destroyed), stuck the note inside of a ball-point pen, and found people that were trustworthy to deliver the notes when they had an opportunity to leave the cells. What I wrote down on the tissue papers that time was mainly about “Re 觀（觀，read as “guan”, means view/philosophy here）”, and “Re” part represented for “revolution”. The main message I tried to spread to my peers in jail was to clarify our political standpoint, emphasizing our left-wing orientation, correcting the wrong information in the judgment, and preventing our members from feeling confusion. Unfortunately, the investigators found one of the notes, and they started to torture me to get my confession. I was thinking I couldn’t escape from execution this time. 

The thing is, I signed the notes with various aliases and sent them out at different times.  Even if the investigators found several tissue paper notes, they weren’t sure that I was the only person behind all of this, therefore they couldn’t pin it on me. I also claimed that I  had some mental issues, because I hadn’t slept for days. I used the fact that my dad just recently passed away and that I wasn’t allowed to go home to see him for the last time, as an excuse for the insomnia. Despite remembering what I wrote down on the notes clearly, I still stated that the “insanity” made me “write down nonsense unconsciously and I couldn’t recall any of it”. Based on that statement, I was transferred to the cell for prisoners who had mental problems. Buo Yang, a famous Taiwanese writer, who was also a close friend that I met in Green Island (where the Kuomingtang government put a lot of political prisoners), mentioned that I had been imprisoned with mental illness for two years in his book. This information has been quoted from many resources, but it’s actually incorrect. In fact, it was 5 years, not 2 years that I was imprisoned with the mentally ill, because of a piece of tissue paper. 

____Excerpt paragraphs from “Historical oral interview of White Terror-era case: 'Public Happiness Party Case'”