Murdered for Mao: The killings China ‘forgot’

My Letter, the Truth, and the Waiting

In August 1967, I found myself in a situation so surreal and perilous that it has remained vivid throughout my life. I was aboard a cargo ship in China, under constant observation by Red Guards positioned around the vessel. They were stationed about thirty paces apart and remained on duty day and night.

After being pressured into writing a confession describing myself as a United States aggressor and supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the second steward told me that I might receive a response to a letter within two days. The response, he said, would come from the head of the Red Guards.

He quietly suggested that I write to my parents.

I followed his advice and wrote 22 foolscap pages. It was not an ordinary letter. I believed I might not survive the week, and I wanted my parents to know who I was in case I never returned home.

I told them that the woman they believed was my landlady was, in fact, my lover. She was 42; I was 18. She had been an important source of stability in my life between 1963 and 1967. I also wrote about life at sea, the loneliness, the confusion, and the fear surrounding my detention.

Writing the letter gave me a way to speak honestly at a time when I had been forced to make a statement I did not believe represented the truth.

A Tray of Leftovers and a Silent Exchange

As ship’s cook and duty mess-room steward, I saw the conditions around us at close range. The crew ate on deck, sometimes balancing plates on handrails. We were transporting grain to China for humanitarian purposes, yet food was routinely discarded while people nearby appeared to be suffering from severe deprivation.

Half-eaten sausages, steaks, and baked potatoes were thrown into the sea. There were no seagulls. I saw no fish. The absence of wildlife was itself a reminder of how severe the conditions appeared to be. Hunger was not an abstract political concept. It was visible in the faces and behaviour of the people watching us eat.

After my arrest, I was placed under what I understood to be house arrest aboard the ship. On one occasion, I filled a small metal tray with edible leftovers, food that otherwise would have gone into the stockpotand placed it on a bench on deck. I patted my stomach to suggest that I had already eaten and then walked away.

Approximately ten minutes later, the tray had been emptied.

At the next meal, I repeated the gesture, leaving enough food for perhaps three or four Red Guards. I returned later to find the tray empty. I continued doing this for another two days while waiting for a response to my letter.

During that period, the Red Guard who had previously woken me every hour stopped doing so. The atmosphere remained tense, but the immediate pressure appeared to lessen.

I cannot know why. The forced confession did not protect me. I do not know whether the letter influenced anyone, whether anyone received instructions, or whether the change was simply coincidental. Perhaps it was luck. Perhaps the food mattered. Perhaps a small act of compassion created a moment of recognition between people trapped on opposite sides of a political crisis.

All I know is that I offered food without negotiation or expectation. It was a silent gesture that conveyed something simple:

I see you. I know you are hungry. I know you are human.

I have never claimed that this gesture alone explains what happened next. But it remains one of the clearest memories of that period—and one of the few moments in which fear gave way, however briefly, to human connection.

The People's Republic of China

Murdered for Mao: The killings China ‘forgot’

In essence, the Australian government faced an agonising moral dilemma — weighing the lives of its soldiers engaged in the conflict in North Vietnam against the desperate need to provide sustenance for an entire nation teetering on the brink of starvation. This heart-wrenching choice highlights the often-unseen complexities of international relations and humanitarian crises, revealing the painful calculations made in the pursuit of survival.

Footnote 83, 84 and 169 → in a paper submitted by Tianxiao  Zhu to - The Faculty of the University of Minnesota titled Secret Trails:  FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978, etc → Requirements For The Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy - Christopher M Isett June 2021 

Tianxiao Zhu's Footnotes 83, 84, 169:

In September 1967, a group of British merchant seamen quit their ship, the Hope Peak, in Sydney and flew back to London. They told the press in London that they quit the job because of the humiliating experiences to which they were subjected while in Chinese ports. They also claimed that grain shipped from Australia to China was being sent straight on to North Vietnam. One of them said, “I have watched grain going off our ship on conveyor belts and straight into bags stamped North Vietnam. Our ship was being used to take grain from Australia to feed the North Vietnamese. It’s disgusting.” 

84. The Minister of Trade and Industry received an inquiry about the truth of the story in Parliament, to which the Minister pointed out that when they left Australia, the seamen only told the Australian press that they suffered such intolerable maltreatment in various Chinese ports that they were fearful about going back. But after they arrived in London, Vietnam was added to their story. Thus the Minister claimed that he did not know the facts and did not want to challenge this story, but it seemed to him that their claims about Vietnam seemed to be an “afterthought.”

169. "...In Vancouver, nine sailors refused to work on a grain ship headed to China: two of them eventually returned to work, and the others were arrested. Just when the ship was about to sail, seven more left the ship but three of them later returned to work. In Sydney, six Canadian sailors left their ship; they resigned and asked to be paid, but the Australian immigration office repatriated them. At that time, a grain ship usually had crew members of about 40 people. A British ship lost the Chief Officer and sixteen seamen, who told journalists that if the ship were going to the communist countries, they would rather go to jail than work on the ship."

The Canadian Government and Its Moral Code of Ethics

By hovering your mouse over the Canadian flag image below, you can also learn about the strong ethical principles upheld by Canadian seamen. Despite facing significant challenges, they believed that sending wheat to Communist China, especially when that wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam, a country at war with Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, where hundreds of troops were being killed or maimed, was immoral and unethical, and therefore should not have been continued.

Yet the Australian Government made a conscious decision to maintain its trade relations with Communist China, despite knowing that a significant portion of Australia’s wheat was being diverted to North Vietnam. This wheat was not merely a trade commodity; it had the potential to sustain North Vietnamese soldiers who were directly engaged in combat against Australia and its allies during the conflict. The ramifications of this trade raised serious ethical questions about supporting a nation that opposed Australian, New Zealand, and US forces.

Examining this wheat agreement with the People's Republic of China, made during the Holt government in the mid‑1960s, is essential. This controversial deal had significant implications, but a government campaign obscured them by discrediting British and Canadian merchant seamen, including me. These brave individuals tried every conceivable legal way to expose this illicit diversion of wheat to North Vietnam.