The People's Republic of China 

Murdered for Mao: The killings China ‘forgot’

The Letter, the Truth, and the Waiting

In August 1967, I found myself in a situation so precarious, so surreal, that it would etch itself into the marrow of my memory. I was aboard a cargo ship docked in China, surrounded by Red Guards stationed on board twenty-four hours a day, spaced no more than thirty paces apart. After being coerced into writing a confession—declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan—I was told by the second steward, who handled the ship’s correspondence, that I had about two days before a response to my letter might reach me. That response, whatever it might be, would be delivered by the head of the Red Guards himself.

It was the second steward who quietly suggested I write to my parents. I did. I poured myself into 22 foolscap pages, writing with the urgency of a man who believed he might not live to see the end of the week. I told my church-going parents that I was not the saintly 18-year-old they believed I was. I confessed that the woman they had so often thanked in their letters—believing her to be my landlady or carer—was in fact my lover. She was 42. I was 15 when we met. From 1963 to 1967, she had been my anchor, my warmth, my truth. I wrote about my life at sea, about the chaos and the camaraderie, about the loneliness and the longing. I wrote because I needed them to know who I really was, in case I was executed before I ever saw them again.

As the ship’s cook and duty mess room steward, I had a front-row seat to the daily rhythms of life on board. I often watched the crew eat their meals on deck, plates balanced on the handrails that lined the ship. We were carrying grain to China on humanitarian grounds, and yet, the irony was unbearable—food was being wasted while the people we were meant to help were starving. Sausages, half-eaten steaks, baked potatoes—they’d slip from plates and tumble into the sea. But there were no seagulls to swoop down and claim them. They’d been eaten too. The food floated aimlessly, untouched even by fish, which had grown scarce in the harbour. Starvation wasn’t a concept. It was a presence. It was in the eyes of the Red Guards who watched us eat. It was in the silence that followed every wasted bite.
 

A Tray of Leftovers and a Silent Exchange

After my arrest, I was placed under house arrest aboard the ship. One day, I took a small metal tray from the galley and filled it—not with scraps, but with decent leftovers. Food that would have gone into the stockpot or been turned into dry hash cakes. I walked it out to the deck, placed it on one of the long benches, patted my stomach as if I’d eaten my fill, and walked away without a word.

Ten minutes later, I returned. The tray had been licked clean.

At the next meal, I did it again—this time with enough food for three or four Red Guards. I placed the tray on the bench and left. No words. No eye contact. Just food. I repeated this quiet ritual for two more days, all while waiting for the response to my letter. During that time, something shifted. The Red Guard, who had been waking me every hour to check if I was sleeping, stopped coming. The tension in the air thinned, just slightly. And I kept bringing food—whenever the crew was busy unloading wheat with grappling hooks wrapped in chicken wire, I’d slip out with another tray.

To this day, I don’t know what saved me. It was certainly not the letter declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan. Maybe it was luck. Or perhaps it was that tray of food, offered without expectation, without speech, without condition. A silent gesture that said, “I see you. I know you’re hungry. I know you’re human.”

And maybe, just maybe, that was enough. British Seaman’s Record R744269 -  Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smith's Seaman. 

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