RESCUED BY MAO
Source: Book: “Rescued By Mao”; authored by William Lorin Taylor; published in 2007
William Lorin Taylor was born on May 18, 1917, in Ogden, Utah. Following his high school graduation he worked in the Los Angeles area with his widowed mother as his father had died when he was 14. As was the case with many depression youth, he took what work he could find and upon learning that Morrison & Knudsen Construction Company was paying high wages for work on Wake Island, he and his brother accepted employment there, arriving on the island on August 19, 1941. Taylor later wrote, “We will be here nine months and then back to the States. How little we knew about what was to come.” Because Wake is across the International Date Line, it was the morning of Monday, December 8th, on Wake when a man shouted, “Hey you guys, we’re in a war! Japan just bombed Pearl Harbor a couple of hours ago.” Shortly thereafter Taylor saw a flight of low flying planes approaching the island and thought, “Boy, Uncle Sam sure got here quickly.” However, within minutes Taylor saw bombs dropping from the planes and immediately realized the Japanese had launched an air attack on Wake. Taylor was one of the civilians recruited to assist the small Marine garrison in manning the three-inch and five-inch guns, and the fifty and thirty-caliber machine guns, almost all of which were of World War I vintage. Although their situation looked about as hopeless as it could get the civilians and marines manned the defenses as best they could and nightly managed to move the heavy guns so that they were in different positions as the Japanese continued their daytime bombing of the island. On December 11th the Japanese arrived with a small invasion landing force thinking that the capture of Wake would be an easy task. However, the Japanese were forced to withdraw from the intense firepower. This was perhaps the first retreat by the Japanese since the war had begun and they were both angry and more determined than before to capture Wake. They commenced an almost daily air attack against the island. Taylor later wrote that during one bombardment he was in the Navy communications dugout when the bombing began and “there was a tremendous explosion right outside the entrance to the dugout. Sand, dust and bits of coral filled the air inside the room. Then there was an eerie quiet. I stuck my head out the dugout and could see a huge crater, about twenty-five feet across and ten feet deep at its center. I sat down on the edge of the crater and realized that if it had been about twenty feet closer I wouldn’t have survived.”
On December 23rd the Japanese returned with a large force and within hours had overrun the island. All the American defenders, including Taylor, were taken prisoner and he spent the next 40-months in Japanese prison camps in China near Shanghai. During his imprisonment, as he endured the hardships of starvation, brutality and slave labor, he gave thought to escaping and decided his best chance would be to jump from a train if ever given the opportunity. On the night of May 11, 1945, while being transported on a train to another prison camp he found that opportunity and has written, “I was determined and knew that it was now or never; this was going to be as good as it would get as far as opportunities for escape. I knew it could cost me my life, but I couldn’t let the opportunity slip by.” With armed guards less than ten feet away he succeeded in avoiding their observation as he slipped through a small window and jumped from the train moving about 30 miles an hour. Although suffering an ankle injury he spent weeks traveling through Northern China as he sought liberty. Once he was captured by Wang Ching-wei, puppet troops of the Japanese. He was twice struck in the head with a rifle butt but he pretended to be unconscious and managed to escape when they turned their attention away from him. After weeks of travel he was captured again but this time by troops of the Eighth Route Communist Party of New China, known as Paluchun. These were Chinese who deeply hated the Japanese. Upon learning Taylor was an American who had escaped from the Japanese, they said to him, “Your’e OK now, we are friends with the Americans” and they assisted in his journey until they were able to deliver him to American troops. During his journey Taylor was taken to meet Mao Zedong, who headed the Communist forces. During their meeting pictures were taken of Taylor with Mao and he wrote that Mao said, “Throughout all of the war years there hadn’t been one POW that had escaped from the Japanese and made his way across North China. I told him that there were several times I would have been recaptured or killed by the Wang Ching-wei or the Japanese if the Paluchun hadn’t protected me at the risk of their own lives.” Upon his return to the Americans, Taylor was immediately flown to Washington, DC, where he was extensively interviewed at the Pentagon.
When the war was over the civilian’s active participation in the battles on Wake Island and their status as POWs was not recognized until 1982 when Congress passed a bill that authorized the civilians from Wake Island to be inducted into the United States Navy as of December 8, 1941, and honorably discharged in August 1945. In 2003 the History Channel filmed a documentary, "Wake Island: The Alamo of the Pacific, " and during it Taylor said that Mao "saved his life." Following the war Taylor became a successful businessman, the mayor of North Las Vegas, Nevada, for eight years and a successful general contractor on Maui. He died on May 25, 2011, and has been laid to rest at Eastlawn Cemetery in Orem, Utah.
The epilogue of Taylor’s book concludes:
“I was inducted into the United States Navy and given the rank of Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class as of December 8, 1941, and given an honorable discharge as of July 28, 1945 (marking my arrival back in the United States after my escape). On December 4, 2001, I was honored at a United States Marine Memorial held in San Francisco where I received the Nation’s sixth-highest military award which states: This is to certify that the President of the United States of America has awarded the LEGION OF MERIT (with Combat V) to Gunner’s Mate Third Class WILLIAM L. TAYLOR, United States Navy, for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services.”
Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)
