Moments of My Life (2018.08.28)<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nRecently my short-term memory loss seems to be getting worse; it worries me that I am really growing more and more forgetful. I turned 86 years old on August 28, 2018. That is the reason I\u2019ve decided to jot down the past events of my life, while I can still remember them. I am not sure whether any of my sons or grandchildren will be interested in their mother or grandmother\u2019s life history, but I am happy that I\u2019ve finally completed this essay (originally written in Japanese, and now, in English). After all, this is still a part of their family history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was born two years after my big brother, Ing-Tze Lee \u674e\u82f1\u54f2 in Tainan, Taiwan. My paternal grandfather Seng-Chin Lee \u674e\u5148\u9032 was a coal dealer in a time when all families in Taiwan cooked with coal. I didn\u2019t know my paternal grandmother, whose name is unknown, except for seeing a black framed portrait of her hanging on the wall in the living room. The picture disappeared after my grandfather passed away. Our paternal grandfather, \u674e\u5148\u9032 , was kind to us. He always brought us candies and live hens when he visited us so that my mom could slay the chicken and cook it as a big treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My maternal grandfather, \u9ec3\u5ef7\u798e Ting-Cheng Huang was a physician who had three daughters but no sons by his wife, my grandmother, \u838a\u6c34\u6f02 Tsui-Piew Tsung. My mother, \u9ec3\u70f1\u7098 Kent-Him Huang, was their eldest daughter. She was born on November 11, 1908. Because her father also wanted sons, after the birth of his three daughters he took a concubine, who bore him two more daughters and three sons. (My mother died in 1987. Of her two sisters, the middle sister died of spinal tuberculosis at a young age while the youngest sister, whose name was \u9ec3\u73e0\u862dJu-Lan Huang, played two important roles in my life later on, as I will tell. After Ju-Lan Huang passed away I lost contact with the rest of her family.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After graduation from Medical College in Taipei \u53f0\u7063\u7e3d\u7763\u5e9c\u91ab\u5b78\u6821, my father \u674e\u6dfb\u679dTien-Chi Lee (August 26, 1902 – 1941) was sent to Kuantong \u5e83\u6771, China, for obligatory service at Pok-Ai \u535a\u611b Hospital when I was three years old. A year after that, we moved to Hong-Kong \u9999\u6e2f, where my father opened a private medical clinic in Wan-Chai \u7063\u4ed4. My life in Hong Kong was very happy. Our family increased from four to seven with one sister and two more brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are my siblings and me, in order of birth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My big brother, \u674e\u82f1\u54f2 Ing-Tze Lee (August 7, 1930 – 2009);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Myself, \u97d3\u674e\u6167\u5afb Hwei-Shien Lee Hahn (born August 28, 1932);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My younger sister, \u674e\u4f69\u7dbe Pei-Lin Lee (September 26, 1934 – 1991);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first younger brother, \u674e\u82f1\u9a30 Eddington Lee (December 21, 1936);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My next younger brother, no name, who died of tuberculous meningitis as an infant;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My youngest brother, \u674e\u82f1\u5049 Wylie Lee (born August 18, 1941, died August 15, 2018, just a month before I finished this essay on my life).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have many pleasant memories of my Japanese elementary school, which I attended since we were considered Japanese when Taiwan was a colony of Japan. On the Japanese Emperor\u2019s birthday, we all bowed to the sacred portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, which were hidden behind a veil that was opened for just a few seconds for us to worship and bow to. Then, we all were sent home carrying a gift of box containing red and white buns filled with red beans. They were delicious. I made many Japanese friends whom I keep in touch with even now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, in the kitchen, our maid found a litter of newborn mice and quickly gave them to the cook and chef in the restaurant downstairs. They happily deep-fried alive them one by one and ate them all. I was astonished and scared but was told that this was a Cantonese favorite treat. I wonder whether they are still doing that nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a Cantonese maid whose hair was twisted in a long single braid \u9577\u8fae\u5b50 and who would always wear a black top and long black pants. She helped my mother by taking us to school, and took care of my three-year old younger brother Eddington \u82f1\u9a30. When he cried, the maid, whom we called \u201c a-Ma\u2019a\u201d \u963f\u5b24, used to scare my brother, saying, \u201cHush! Hush! Don\u2019t cry. Otherwise the Tza-Pak (\u67e5\u4f2f Indian British police who wore turbans on their heads) will put you in jail!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also have more pleasant memories, such as visiting the nearby park or to the Woo-Mun Hoo (\u80e1\u6587\u864e\uff09Recreational Park. The picture in my mind of my mother and us standing there by the bridge is very beautiful and nostalgic to me. I recall the vendor on the street selling hot chestnuts fried with black gravel on a wok; they tasted so delicious that my mouth still waters when I think of the taste. Years later when I visited Wan-Chai \u7063\u4ed4 again, those vendors were all gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Eddington, another younger brother was born. Unfortunately, he passed away at when he was not yet a year old, a victim of tuberculous meningitis transmitted from my father, who had had pulmonary tuberculosis since his medical college years. Back then, there was no effective cure. The only treatment was bed rest and rich nutrition such as eggs, meat and milk etc. Even with his illness, my father continued his medical practice because he had to feed his growing family. I felt sad when a framed, black-ribboned picture of this little baby brother was laid on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My parents bought a new upright piano in Hong Kong when I was seven years old. I started piano lessons together with my younger sister, \u4f69\u7dbe Pei-Lin. At the first annual piano teachers’ association guild event, my mother dressed me in a fancy dress and took me to the performance room. I received a report card with a grade of 95\/100 for my performance and a remark telling me to lower my pinky when playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With war raging in both the West and the East, Taiwanese and Japanese citizens in Hong Kong were sent back to Taiwan or to Japan 1940. Because my father\u2019s open case of pulmonary tuberculosis kept progressing, my mother asked a Japanese friend to bring my big brother \u82f1\u54f2 and me back to Taiwan by ship so that our elementary schooling would not be interrupted. My mother gave me a silver necklace with a heart-shaped pendant which contained small pictures of my father and mother, for us to look at whenever we missed our parents. I was then ten years old and my brother was 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We lived with and were cared for by my aunt, \u9ec3\u73e0\u862d Ju-Lan Huang, my mother\u2019s youngest sister, who had children about the same age as us. My uncle changed his Taiwanese last name \u9673 Chen into Japanese \u548c\u6cc9 Izumi so his family received an award as a model, Japanese-speaking family (\u570b\u8a9e\u5e38\u7528\u5bb6\u5ead). There were many elementary schools for the Taiwanese, which were called \u516c\u5b78\u6821. However, we (my brother, my cousins and I) were sent to Hanazono Elementary School (\u82b1\u5712\u570b\u6c11\u5b78\u6821), a Japanese school. I enjoyed the years I spent in the elementary school and in junior high. There I made a few close Japanese friends with whom we have continued our friendship to this day. Decades after World War II ended, we visited each other back and forth between Japan and Taiwan many times, renewing our friendship each time, even after we were all married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our class teacher\u2019s name was \u76ca\u6eff \u5148\u751f Masumitsu and he was a military retiree. He was very strict with us. He never showed a smiling face. He struck our male Taiwanese classmates often, making them cry. When I attended our class reunion in Yokohama (\u6a6b\u6ff1) on May 30, 2005, we talked about our former teachers. We missed those teachers who were kind and nice to<\/p>\n\n\n\n
us. We felt great grief when learning of their pamssing except \u76ca\u6e80\u5148\u751f. No one liked \u76ca\u6eff\u5148\u751f.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time the rest of our family moved back to Taiwan, in 1941, my father was in the terminal stage of tuberculosis. My mother travelled from Hong Kong to Taipei (in northern Taiwan), bringing my father to the hospital there, and then from Taipei to Tainan (in southern Taiwan), bringing my three younger siblings to her sister, Ju-Lan Huang, in Tainan, where my older brother and I were already living with her. My mother then returned to Taipei and stayed with my father at National Taiwan University Hospital \u53f0\u5927\u533b\u9662 (Taita Hospital) until he passed away a few months later, in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When my mother finally came to Tainan, she brought us a two-month old baby brother, \u82f1\u5049 Wylie, who needed milk badly. My maternal grandfather, a practicing physician, asked the prospective wet nurse; \u201cHow can I be sure that my grandson will get enough milk from you?\u201d She unfastened her dress and squeezed her breast, shooting milk across the room so that it reached the opposite wall. This made a deep impression on me, but I don\u2019t think my baby brother Wylie got enough milk from her because he was small and skinny throughout his life. I recall that my grandfather had to buy a female goat to feed Wylie when the wet nurse was fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walked to school with my big brother \u82f1\u54f2. But because of the air raids (the American Boeing-29 bombers flew over Taiwan almost every day), we had to rush to the shelter every time the siren went off. Mothers had to attend classes for firefighting and emergency medical rescue. We all had to wear Mompe \u3082\u3093\u307a (ankle-length long pants) and a padded cotton hoods. Often we heard that an entire family had been killed instantly by a bomb that hit a shelter directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 1, 1945, the first and the heaviest bombing in the central part of Tainan city set the entire city in flames. My mother bought a water buffalo cart for us to escape \u758f\u958b from Tainan with her precious jewelry. Our 80-year old maternal grandma with bound feet \u7e8f\u8db3and the important household items were put on the cart; the rest of us all walked through the night to a nearby village called \u5927\u5167\u5e92. When we stopped and rested under a tree and turned our heads to look back, we saw the scorching of Tainan, staining the pitch-black night sky and leaving the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
entire city in a bright red haze. This sight and the sad memories are deeply engraved in my brain and have stayed with me forever. After I got married, I found out that my husband\u2019s older sister, \u6dd1\u82f1 Su-Ing Hahn, 18 years old, who had just graduated from high school, was also a victim of the bombing on that very day. She was buried under the ruins near the Hahn Clinic, which had disappeared. We graduated from elementary school that year but never received our diplomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The war ended in 1945 shortly after the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered unconditionally and we, the Taiwanese, were released from Japanese control. Chang Kai Shek\u2019s political party, Kuomintang \u570b\u6c11\u9ee8 took over Taiwan. The Japanese citizens were sent back to Japan by boat. My best friend, \u6642\u4efb\u4e45\u5b50 Hisako Tokito was one of them. We kept in touch throughout our lives until she passed away in 2015. Thanks to her diligent letter-writing, I received the benefit of being able to write and speak Japanese just as the Japanese do, without a Taiwanese accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the defeat of Japan, we Taiwanese had to switch from speaking Japanese to Mandarin in public places. Because my mother had learned Cantonese and Mandarin in Hong Kong, she instantly became a tutor of Mandarin classes. In my high school, I won first place in the Mandarin speech contest. The school presented me with a plaque engraved with the words \u201cPerfect and correct pronunciation\u201d. I was in 8th grade then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was in 9th grade, in 1947, the 228 Massacre took place throughout the island. (This was the violent suppression of an anti-government uprising in Taiwan by the KMT, The Kuomintang of China or Nationalist Party of China, who murdered 18,000 – 28,000 people of the opposition, and was one of the most important events in Taiwan’s modern history). It was a period of horror in our lives. Many of the Taiwanese elite, famous physicians, social leaders, old and young, were shot without trial. Many were executed and their corpses were left exposed by the riverside or in public parks, showing the cruelty and brutality of the KMT against the Taiwanese who opposed them. The families of the victims were not even allowed to cover their loved ones\u2019 bodies on the streets with blankets. There was great fear in every Taiwanese mind because the KMT was terribly brutal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, Tainan city had the least bloodshed because of the efforts of my father-in-law \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 Shyr Chyuan Hahn, Dr. \u4faf\u5168\u6210 Tsuan-Seng Hou, and a few others. They risked their lives and worked tirelessly to calm the rage of citizens and prevent violence and bloodshed. Even<\/p>\n\n\n\n
though over 20,000 people were executed throughout Taiwan, only one was in Tainan, a lawyer named \u6e6f\u5fb7\u7ae0Tek-Chiong Tan who was executed as a scapegoat. I did not see his corpse, but my husband did. The image haunted my husband so badly that nothing could pass down his throat for several days. A statue of the lawyer was erected later in the park where he was executed decades after Chiang-Kai Sek died. Chian Kai-Sek \u8523\u4ecb\u77f3 fled to Taiwan in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My piano teacher \u5468\u6176\u6df5 Keng-Eng Chiu registered me in the annual Tainan piano competition sponsored by the municipal government when I was in 10th and 11th grades. I won first place two years in a row. I received pure gold harp-shaped pendants as awards and was invited to broadcast on the air at the radio station for a period of time. I gave both of the award pendants to my mother when she lost her job. She exchanged the pendants for white rice on the black market to feed us five children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One time we had visitors: a medical school student \u5433\u79c0\u60e0 Shou-Hwei Wu and her mother, from Taipei, who stayed overnight at our house. I immediately became a big fan of \u5433\u79c0\u60e0 and made up my mind to follow in her footsteps. After going back to Taipei, she sent me preparatory books together with a letter encouraging me to become an MD. I was accepted by the National Taiwan University Medical College the next year. In the same year, my piano teacher, hoping to send me to his alma mater \u4e0a\u91ce\u97f3\u6a02\u5b78\u6821 Ueno Music College in Japan later, advised me to take the entrance examination to the Music Department of Normal College. Eventually I was accepted by both colleges. Without hesitation, I chose the medical college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I graduated from medical school in 1958. My maternal grandfather \u9ec3\u5ef7\u798e had graduated from the same medical college in 1906, my father \u674e\u6dfb\u679d in 1929 and my father-in-law \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 in 1918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a student from a low-income family, I had applied for and received a scholarship for financial support and in return had to clean the classroom windows on campus. And while studying I also taught beginning piano players for a side income to make financial ends meet. The biochemistry professor \u8463\u5927\u6210 Ta-Cheng Tan offered me a job of teaching piano to all three of his daughters for extra income. And he recommended me to the American Military Officer\u2019s<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Club for a schollarship, which I won. I can never thank Professor \u8463 enough for all he did for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My medical school life was uneventful and very happy. There were exactly one dozen female students in my class out of 76 students. We often went out together for a nightcap or outdoor activities. We organized \u674f\u6797 a string orchestra and performed frequently, along with other activities for entertainment. I was the piano accompanist throughout my school life. We had field trips to do medical research, conducting statistical surveys of endemic black-foot disease \u70cf\u8173\u75c5 or simple goiter \u7532\u72c0\u817a\u816b patients in rural areas. At the farewell parties in aboriginal villages, some of our female students wore aboriginal costumes and danced while singing their songs \u9ad8\u5c71\u9752. I learned how to ballroom dance, went out with classmates and had fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my final year of medical college before internship, my aunt, Ju-Lan Huang, who had helped raise me and who was a professional matchmaker, came to see my mother and recommended that I marry the second son of \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 Dr. Shyr-Chyuan Hahn, a famous physician of internal medicine and pediatrics in Tainan city. My mother and Mrs. S-C Hahn had been high school classmates. \u97d3\u826f\u4fe1 Mr. Liong-shin Hahn was a math major at the National Taiwan University. We had our first meeting at my sister’s and my joint piano student recital. Liong-shin and his two younger brothers came to the recital. One year later we were married, on September 14, 1958. My eyeglasses were taken away by my mother on my wedding day. She told me a bride with glasses would look ugly. Therefore I couldn\u2019t see anyone or anything clearly, and knew neither where it took place nor who attended my wedding that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first son, Samuel \u4fe1\u4e00 was born the next year, on September 24, 1959 in Tainan. My father-in-law named him \u4fe1\u4e00. The name has three meanings: 1) the number one son of Liong-shin, 2) one as the unit in mathematics, 3) faith in the one and only God. After having worked as an intern, rotating between wards for one year, I remained at the National Taiwan University Hospital as a fixed intern in pediatrics. In the second year, I became a first year resident in internal medicine. When I was on night duty, I brought my baby with me to the residents\u2019 dormitory. I was the very first female resident who got married; my classmates helped me take<\/p>\n\n\n\n
care of my baby son \u4fe1\u4e00 Sam. Two years later, my second son, \u4fe1\u4ec1 Jim was born. Between Sam and Jim, I suffered a miscarriage of twin girls. I was handling viruses in the research laboratory then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the Mid-Autumn Festival Day in 1962, my husband left to pursue his advanced degree at Stanford University. Professor \u8a31\u632f\u69ae Chin-Eng Koh a math professor at National Taiwan University, was going to UC Berkeley on the same plane. While they were looking at the bright, shiny, full moon at a hotel in Tokyo, thinking of their families they left behind, I was weeping in Tainan with two sons. Since that night, whenever I see the full moon, I think of Liong-shin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My parents-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. S-C Hahn, were a pair of very kind and devoted parents. They treated me no differently than their own children. \u4fe1\u4e00 Sam was Dr. and Mrs. Hahn\u2019s very first grandson. They graciously took over the task of caring for Sam while I returned to work in Taipei. This went on after I had our second son \u4fe1\u4ec1. In spite of their busy lives, seeing the patients, caring for their very first two grandsons, Dr. S-C Hahn still left me with many fond memories which I cherish often. He still made the time to write many letters to his children who were in Taipei for further study. I had to go back to National Taiwan University Hospital for my work in the Diagnostic Laboratory section as a lecturer. As I was leaving my two sons under the care of my parents-in-law, in tears, Dr. S-C Hahn told me, \u201cYour sons are also our precious grandsons as well; they are in good hands; nothing to cry about.\u201c Sure enough, Sam became Dr. S-C Hahn\u2019s mascot. At the age of three, Sam followed his grandfather everywhere, even to medical meetings whenever permitted. At night, while my mother-in-law was changing their diapers, my father-in-law would hold a jar for his grandsons to urinate into. The nurses gave Sam a new title of Uncle Number 8, as an extra little brother after \u826f\u61b2 Liong-Hsien. Dr. S-C Hahn passed away suddenly on June 30, 1963 of a stroke due to stress and overwork brought on by attending many meetings, working late hours and other duties. His wife, my mother-in-law, lived until 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a separation of three years, my two sons and I finally rejoined \u826f\u4fe1 Liong-shin in Stanford, California, U.S.A. in the summer of 1965. Sam was then six years old and Jim was four. They didn\u2019t speak a single word of English. But Sam\u2019s class teacher told me at the PTA meeting at the end of first grade, \u201cCongratulations! There are four girls wanting to marry your son!\u201d When he was a 6th or 7th grader, Sam won first place in a spelling bee at his school. Sam\u2019s story and photo appeared in the local newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After completing his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1966, Liong-shin accepted the position of an instructorship at Johns Hopkins University, so we moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Two weeks after driving across continental U.S.A. from Palo Alto to Baltimore, I gave birth to our third son, Paul \u4fe1\u5b8f. He was \u201cmade in the U.S.A.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years later, Liong-shin accepted an offer from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I was busy raising three sons as a full-time housewife, cooking, driving the children to the school, attending PTA meetings, going to sons\u2019 music performances with a youth symphony group, etc. for seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When our sons were approaching college age, my husband discussed with me how to finance their expensive college education. We concluded that I should return to the medical profession. It took me two years to pass the ECFMG (Examination Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates) and FLEX (Federal License Examination). I was already 44 years old. After undergoing radiology residency training at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh for three years, I was finally able to practice medicine in the United States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my residency training away from home, my husband took care of our sons in addition to teaching at UNM. I started looking for a job as a radiologist in Albuquerque in January, 1978. But there were no openings at the local medical facilities except on the military base, Kirtland, where they were offering bonuses to MDs. When I went to see the hospital commander, he asked me to start the very next day. I was by then already 47 years old. As a requirement, I had to take basic military training for one week in San Antonio, Texas. The training included gun shooting, long-range marching, combat casualty training, camping in the wild, cliff climbing, etc… Luckily, I survived without any bodily injury and obtained the ribbons. At times we were divided into groups of five. One person had to be the \u201ccasualty\u201d and the other four had to carry the \u201cwounded victim\u201d on a stretcher going through low-lying barbed wires, passing over high cliffs and so on. The others chose me as the casualty every time because I was the smallest and lightest person and it was easiest with me for them to duck or to carry me above their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was soon promoted from the rank of captain to the rank of major. After five years of service in Kirtland USAF Base Hospital, I was transferred to the Yokota USAF \u6a2a\u7530\u7a7a\u8ecd\u57fa\u5730 Hospital in Fussa city \u798f\u751f Japan. I was the sole radiologist there and had to do all the radiology examinations, including fluoroscopic examinations, venography, arthrography and mammography in addition to film readings. I was in contact with the local Japanese radiologists when we needed to refer our American patients to the local medical center for further examinations. When there<\/p>\n\n\n\n
were joint medical symposia held locally, I was assigned as the interpreter, translating from English to Japanese and vice versa. A year after being assigned to Japan, I was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. I had a \u201chigh ranking officer\u201d decal on my car bumper. When driving in and out of the base, the guard at the gate always saluted me. This amused my husband when he took sabbatical leave from the university and was living with me for two years. He taught mathematics at the International Christian University and Sophia University in Tokyo during his second year of staying on the Yokota Base. And I moonlighted at the US Navy Hospital in \u6a2a\u6d5c Yokohama, the U.S. Air Force Hospital in Misawa Base \u4e09\u6ca2, Kunsan Base and \u539a\u6728 Atsugi Base several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among my many moonlighting jobs, there was a most memorable and exciting event I experienced at the Lyndon Johnson USAF Medical Center in American Samoa in 2001. A surgeon asked me whether I would be willing to accept the task of trying to save the life of a 13-month old baby girl. This young patient had an intussusception of the intestine that was threatening her life. Trying to avoid an aggressive operation, the surgeon asked me whether I could try a barium enema, that was less invasive. There was no reason to refuse, so I decided to try. On the first two attempts, the intestinal blockage didn\u2019t budge. I held up the baby, and cleaning the soiled radiology table, I prayed to God to help me save the baby. As I slowly began the third attempt, suddenly the mother of the baby, who was holding her under the fluoroscope, shouted out, \u201cThank you, Doctor! My baby is saved!\u201d When I looked at the fluoroscopic monitor, the blockage had loosened and the barium was rumbling into the small intestine happily and merrily! I thanked God for His mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, when I realized I was going to be 70 years old, I made up my mind to retire. Altogether I had worked for 23 years in the US Air Force, as an active duty officer and a civilian contract radiologist. On my 70th birthday, in 2002, I retired from my final post at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. The department held a big celebration party with two large cakes, one for my retirement and the other for my birthday on August 28, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After retirement from my work I began engaging in public service, serving as president of the Honolulu Chapter of the Taiwanese Association of North America for one busy year, during which time I published a 40-page TAA News Magazine. And I have been a member of the Taiwanese Evergreen Club and NATWA (Taiwanese Women\u2019s Association in North America) as well as NATMA (Taiwanese Medical Association in North America).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point I would like to tell a little bit about my religious faith. My mother was a Buddhist. Every month she would cook dishes, making an offering to Buddha on every 1st and 15th day of the lunar month before we ate. After I married my husband, I was baptized without my<\/p>\n\n\n\n
consent as a Presbyterian Christian. (The majority of Christian Taiwanese are Presbyterians.) It happened in this way: after my father-in-law passed away of a stroke in 1963, the priest, \u8b1d\u518d\u751f Rev. Tsai-Seng Shieh came to see my grieving mother-in-law. He found that although my father-in-law had occasionally given a sermon at our church, there was no record of his ever having been baptized. He had become a Christian when he lost his first son at the age of one year and 13 days of pneumonia. He then wrote a little pamphlet in Japanese with the title \u300e\u6b7b\u6ec5\u3088\u308a\u65b0\u751f\u3078\u300f\u201cFrom Death to Rebirth\u201c, declaring that he had been reborn as a Christian. Nevertheless, the priest was willing to hold the funeral at our church only under the condition that all of us family members would be baptized on that day. Therefore, my mother-in-law, my three sisters-in-law and I were asked to stand up and so with them, I was baptized in 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I attended many churches after I came to the U.S. I was still uncertain what the meaning was of being a Christian. Reading the Bible, buying many books, including a book of a Japanese Christian, \u5185\u6751\u9451\u4e09 Kanzo Uchimura, talking to many faithful Christians and priests, I was still unsure for myself why I was a Christian. I attended a few recruiting meetings, prayed with other believers and listened to the members\u2019 testimonies, hoping that one day I would meet God in my prayer, but never so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My cousin Susie and I went to Israel. I attended the midnight prayer for two nights. I prayed that God, the Holy Ghost would come into me. On the second night, when I started to pray, I already felt that The Holy Ghost was inside me. Every time when I am in trouble or don\u2019t know what to do to solve my problem, I pray to God to save me or give me instructions. So far, somehow, the situation has taken a better direction or the problem has been solved. For that I thank God. I have read the Bible but not systematically; I go to Bible class weekly. When I read that someone was suddenly filled with glory and converted, I wish I could have that moment one day. But so far I don\u2019t think I have had it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, my priest, \u8521\u4e00\u4fe1 I-Shin Tsai was giving a class to church members who were considering baptism. After a baby is born and the parents have the baby baptized without the baby\u2018s consent, he or she can have a second chance, to be re-baptized, when grown up; this is called \u201cconfirmation baptization\u201d. I asked to undergo confirmation baptization and my wish was granted. I was happily baptized on October 26, 2008 in the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My husband retired from teaching at UNM and moved to Irvine in California, in 1999. In November 2017 he decided to join me in Honolulu. Now we are living comfortably in a house in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alewa Heights. Life here is pretty simple: going grocery shopping about once a week, playing piano and ping-pong with Liong-shin, and doing exercise riding on a stationary bicycle. Since I stopped driving, my friends give me rides to my singing class and to church and Bible class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am grateful for this quiet and peaceful life my husband and I have been given in this nice house halfway up the mountain. I thank God for giving me this happy life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Completed on our Diamond (60th) Wedding Anniversary date, September 14, 2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moments of My Life (2018.08.28)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently my short-term memory loss seems to be getting worse; it worries me that I am really growing more and more forgetful. I turned 86 years old on August 28, 2018. That is the reason I\u2019ve decided to jot down the past events of my life, while I can still remember them. I am not sure whether any of my sons or grandchildren will be interested in their mother or grandmother\u2019s life history, but I am happy that I\u2019ve finally completed this essay (originally written in Japanese, and now, in English). After all, this is still a part of their family history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was born two years after my big brother, Ing-Tze Lee \u674e\u82f1\u54f2 in Tainan, Taiwan. My paternal grandfather Seng-Chin Lee \u674e\u5148\u9032 was a coal dealer in a time when all families in Taiwan cooked with coal. I didn\u2019t know my paternal grandmother, whose name is unknown, except for seeing a black framed portrait of her hanging on the wall in the living room. The picture disappeared after my grandfather passed away. Our paternal grandfather, \u674e\u5148\u9032 , was kind to us. He always brought us candies and live hens when he visited us so that my mom could slay the chicken and cook it as a big treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My maternal grandfather, \u9ec3\u5ef7\u798e Ting-Cheng Huang was a physician who had three daughters but no sons by his wife, my grandmother, \u838a\u6c34\u6f02 Tsui-Piew Tsung. My mother, \u9ec3\u70f1\u7098 Kent-Him Huang, was their eldest daughter. She was born on November 11, 1908. Because her father also wanted sons, after the birth of his three daughters he took a concubine, who bore him two more daughters and three sons. (My mother died in 1987. Of her two sisters, the middle sister died of spinal tuberculosis at a young age while the youngest sister, whose name was \u9ec3\u73e0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u862dJu-Lan Huang, played two important roles in my life later on, as I will tell. After Ju-Lan Huang passed away I lost contact with the rest of her family.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After graduation from Medical College in Taipei \u53f0\u7063\u7e3d\u7763\u5e9c\u91ab\u5b78\u6821, my father \u674e\u6dfb\u679dTien-Chi Lee (August 26, 1902 – 1941) was sent to Kuantong \u5e83\u6771, China, for obligatory service at Pok-Ai \u535a\u611b Hospital when I was three years old. A year after that, we moved to Hong-Kong \u9999\u6e2f, where my father opened a private medical clinic in Wan-Chai \u7063\u4ed4. My life in Hong Kong was very happy. Our family increased from four to seven with one sister and two more brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are my siblings and me, in order of birth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My big brother, \u674e\u82f1\u54f2 Ing-Tze Lee (August 7, 1930 – 2009);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Myself, \u97d3\u674e\u6167\u5afb Hwei-Shien Lee Hahn (born August 28, 1932);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My younger sister, \u674e\u4f69\u7dbe Pei-Lin Lee (September 26, 1934 – 1991);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first younger brother, \u674e\u82f1\u9a30 Eddington Lee (December 21, 1936);<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My next younger brother, no name, who died of tuberculous meningitis as an infant;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My youngest brother, \u674e\u82f1\u5049 Wylie Lee (born August 18, 1941, died August 15, 2018, just a month before I finished this essay on my life).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have many pleasant memories of my Japanese elementary school, which I attended since we were considered Japanese when Taiwan was a colony of Japan. On the Japanese Emperor\u2019s birthday, we all bowed to the sacred portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, which were hidden behind a veil that was opened for just a few seconds for us to worship and bow to. Then, we all were sent home carrying a gift of box containing red and white buns filled with red beans. They were delicious. I made many Japanese friends whom I keep in touch with even now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, in the kitchen, our maid found a litter of newborn mice and quickly gave them to the cook and chef in the restaurant downstairs. They happily deep-fried alive them one by one and ate them all. I was astonished and scared but was told that this was a Cantonese favorite treat. I wonder whether they are still doing that nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a Cantonese maid whose hair was twisted in a long single braid \u9577\u8fae\u5b50 and who would always wear a black top and long black pants. She helped my mother by taking us to school, and took care of my three-year old younger brother Eddington \u82f1\u9a30. When he cried, the maid, whom we called \u201c a-Ma\u2019a\u201d \u963f\u5b24, used to scare my brother, saying, \u201cHush! Hush! Don\u2019t cry. Otherwise the Tza-Pak (\u67e5\u4f2f Indian British police who wore turbans on their heads) will put you in jail!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also have more pleasant memories, such as visiting the nearby park or to the Woo-Mun Hoo (\u80e1\u6587\u864e\uff09Recreational Park. The picture in my mind of my mother and us standing there by the bridge is very beautiful and nostalgic to me. I recall the vendor on the street selling hot chestnuts fried with black gravel on a wok; they tasted so delicious that my mouth still waters when I think of the taste. Years later when I visited Wan-Chai \u7063\u4ed4 again, those vendors were all gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Eddington, another younger brother was born. Unfortunately, he passed away at when he was not yet a year old, a victim of tuberculous meningitis transmitted from my father, who had had pulmonary tuberculosis since his medical college years. Back then, there was no effective cure. The only treatment was bed rest and rich nutrition such as eggs, meat and milk etc. Even with his illness, my father continued his medical practice because he had to feed his growing family. I felt sad when a framed, black-ribboned picture of this little baby brother was laid on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My parents bought a new upright piano in Hong Kong when I was seven years old. I started piano lessons together with my younger sister, \u4f69\u7dbe Pei-Lin. At the first annual piano teachers’ association guild event, my mother dressed me in a fancy dress and took me to the performance room. I received a report card with a grade of 95\/100 for my performance and a remark telling me to lower my pinky when playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With war raging in both the West and the East, Taiwanese and Japanese citizens in Hong Kong were sent back to Taiwan or to Japan 1940. Because my father\u2019s open case of pulmonary tuberculosis kept progressing, my mother asked a Japanese friend to bring my big brother \u82f1\u54f2 and me back to Taiwan by ship so that our elementary schooling would not be interrupted. My mother gave me a silver necklace with a heart-shaped pendant which contained small pictures of<\/p>\n\n\n\n
my father and mother, for us to look at whenever we missed our parents. I was then ten years old and my brother was 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We lived with and were cared for by my aunt, \u9ec3\u73e0\u862d Ju-Lan Huang, my mother\u2019s youngest sister, who had children about the same age as us. My uncle changed his Taiwanese last name \u9673 Chen into Japanese \u548c\u6cc9 Izumi so his family received an award as a model, Japanese-speaking family (\u570b\u8a9e\u5e38\u7528\u5bb6\u5ead). There were many elementary schools for the Taiwanese, which were called \u516c\u5b78\u6821. However, we (my brother, my cousins and I) were sent to Hanazono Elementary School (\u82b1\u5712\u570b\u6c11\u5b78\u6821), a Japanese school. I enjoyed the years I spent in the elementary school and in junior high. There I made a few close Japanese friends with whom we have continued our friendship to this day. Decades after World War II ended, we visited each other back and forth between Japan and Taiwan many times, renewing our friendship each time, even after we were all married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our class teacher\u2019s name was \u76ca\u6eff \u5148\u751f Masumitsu and he was a military retiree. He was very strict with us. He never showed a smiling face. He struck our male Taiwanese classmates often, making them cry. When I attended our class reunion in Yokohama (\u6a6b\u6ff1) on May 30, 2005, we talked about our former teachers. We missed those teachers who were kind and nice to us. We felt great grief when learning of their pamssing except \u76ca\u6e80\u5148\u751f. No one liked \u76ca\u6eff\u5148\u751f.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time the rest of our family moved back to Taiwan, in 1941, my father was in the terminal stage of tuberculosis. My mother travelled from Hong Kong to Taipei (in northern Taiwan), bringing my father to the hospital there, and then from Taipei to Tainan (in southern Taiwan), bringing my three younger siblings to her sister, Ju-Lan Huang, in Tainan, where my older brother and I were already living with her. My mother then returned to Taipei and stayed with my father at National Taiwan University Hospital \u53f0\u5927\u533b\u9662 (Taita Hospital) until he passed away a few months later, in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When my mother finally came to Tainan, she brought us a two-month old baby brother, \u82f1\u5049 Wylie, who needed milk badly. My maternal grandfather, a practicing physician, asked the prospective wet nurse; \u201cHow can I be sure that my grandson will get enough milk from you?\u201d She unfastened her dress and squeezed her breast, shooting milk across the room so that it reached the opposite wall. This made a deep impression on me, but I don\u2019t think my baby brother Wylie got enough milk from her because he was small and skinny throughout his life. I recall that my grandfather had to buy a female goat to feed Wylie when the wet nurse was fired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walked to school with my big brother \u82f1\u54f2. But because of the air raids (the American Boeing-29 bombers flew over Taiwan almost every day), we had to rush to the shelter every time the siren went off. Mothers had to attend classes for firefighting and emergency medical rescue. We all had to wear Mompe \u3082\u3093\u307a (ankle-length long pants) and a padded cotton hoods. Often we heard that an entire family had been killed instantly by a bomb that hit a shelter directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 1, 1945, the first and the heaviest bombing in the central part of Tainan city set the entire city in flames. My mother bought a water buffalo cart for us to escape \u758f\u958b from Tainan with her precious jewelry. Our 80-year old maternal grandma with bound feet \u7e8f\u8db3and the important household items were put on the cart; the rest of us all walked through the night to a nearby village called \u5927\u5167\u5e92. When we stopped and rested under a tree and turned our heads to look back, we saw the scorching of Tainan, staining the pitch-black night sky and leaving the entire city in a bright red haze. This sight and the sad memories are deeply engraved in my brain and have stayed with me forever. After I got married, I found out that my husband\u2019s older sister, \u6dd1\u82f1 Su-Ing Hahn, 18 years old, who had just graduated from high school, was also a victim of the bombing on that very day. She was buried under the ruins near the Hahn Clinic, which had disappeared. We graduated from elementary school that year but never received our diplomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The war ended in 1945 shortly after the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered unconditionally and we, the Taiwanese, were released from Japanese control. Chang Kai Shek\u2019s political party, Kuomintang \u570b\u6c11\u9ee8 took over Taiwan. The Japanese citizens were sent back to Japan by boat. My best friend, \u6642\u4efb\u4e45\u5b50 Hisako Tokito was one of them. We kept in touch throughout our lives until she passed away in 2015. Thanks to her diligent letter-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
writing, I received the benefit of being able to write and speak Japanese just as the Japanese do, without a Taiwanese accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the defeat of Japan, we Taiwanese had to switch from speaking Japanese to Mandarin in public places. Because my mother had learned Cantonese and Mandarin in Hong Kong, she instantly became a tutor of Mandarin classes. In my high school, I won first place in the Mandarin speech contest. The school presented me with a plaque engraved with the words \u201cPerfect and correct pronunciation\u201d. I was in 8th grade then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was in 9th grade, in 1947, the 228 Massacre took place throughout the island. (This was the violent suppression of an anti-government uprising in Taiwan by the KMT, The Kuomintang of China or Nationalist Party of China, who murdered 18,000 – 28,000 people of the opposition, and was one of the most important events in Taiwan’s modern history). It was a period of horror in our lives. Many of the Taiwanese elite, famous physicians, social leaders, old and young, were shot without trial. Many were executed and their corpses were left exposed by the riverside or in public parks, showing the cruelty and brutality of the KMT against the Taiwanese who opposed them. The families of the victims were not even allowed to cover their loved ones\u2019 bodies on the streets with blankets. There was great fear in every Taiwanese mind because the KMT was terribly brutal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, Tainan city had the least bloodshed because of the efforts of my father-in-law \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 Shyr Chyuan Hahn, Dr. \u4faf\u5168\u6210 Tsuan-Seng Hou, and a few others. They risked their lives and worked tirelessly to calm the rage of citizens and prevent violence and bloodshed. Even though over 20,000 people were executed throughout Taiwan, only one was in Tainan, a lawyer named \u6e6f\u5fb7\u7ae0Tek-Chiong Tan who was executed as a scapegoat. I did not see his corpse, but my husband did. The image haunted my husband so badly that nothing could pass down his throat for several days. A statue of the lawyer was erected later in the park where he was executed decades after Chiang-Kai Sek died. Chian Kai-Sek \u8523\u4ecb\u77f3 fled to Taiwan in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My piano teacher \u5468\u6176\u6df5 Keng-Eng Chiu registered me in the annual Tainan piano competition sponsored by the municipal government when I was in 10th and 11th grades. I won first place two years in a row. I received pure gold harp-shaped pendants as awards and was invited to broadcast on the air at the radio station for a period of time. I gave both of the award<\/p>\n\n\n\n
pendants to my mother when she lost her job. She exchanged the pendants for white rice on the black market to feed us five children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One time we had visitors: a medical school student \u5433\u79c0\u60e0 Shou-Hwei Wu and her mother, from Taipei, who stayed overnight at our house. I immediately became a big fan of \u5433\u79c0\u60e0 and made up my mind to follow in her footsteps. After going back to Taipei, she sent me preparatory books together with a letter encouraging me to become an MD. I was accepted by the National Taiwan University Medical College the next year. In the same year, my piano teacher, hoping to send me to his alma mater \u4e0a\u91ce\u97f3\u6a02\u5b78\u6821 Ueno Music College in Japan later, advised me to take the entrance examination to the Music Department of Normal College. Eventually I was accepted by both colleges. Without hesitation, I chose the medical college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I graduated from medical school in 1958. My maternal grandfather \u9ec3\u5ef7\u798e had graduated from the same medical college in 1906, my father \u674e\u6dfb\u679d in 1929 and my father-in-law \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 in 1918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a student from a low-income family, I had applied for and received a scholarship for financial support and in return had to clean the classroom windows on campus. And while studying I also taught beginning piano players for a side income to make financial ends meet. The biochemistry professor \u8463\u5927\u6210 Ta-Cheng Tan offered me a job of teaching piano to all three of his daughters for extra income. And he recommended me to the American Military Officer\u2019s Club for a schollarship, which I won. I can never thank Professor \u8463 enough for all he did for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My medical school life was uneventful and very happy. There were exactly one dozen female students in my class out of 76 students. We often went out together for a nightcap or outdoor activities. We organized \u674f\u6797 a string orchestra and performed frequently, along with other activities for entertainment. I was the piano accompanist throughout my school life. We had field trips to do medical research, conducting statistical surveys of endemic black-foot disease \u70cf\u8173\u75c5 or simple goiter \u7532\u72c0\u817a\u816b patients in rural areas. At the farewell parties in aboriginal<\/p>\n\n\n\n
villages, some of our female students wore aboriginal costumes and danced while singing their songs \u9ad8\u5c71\u9752. I learned how to ballroom dance, went out with classmates and had fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my final year of medical college before internship, my aunt, Ju-Lan Huang, who had helped raise me and who was a professional matchmaker, came to see my mother and recommended that I marry the second son of \u97d3\u77f3\u6cc9 Dr. Shyr-Chyuan Hahn, a famous physician of internal medicine and pediatrics in Tainan city. My mother and Mrs. S-C Hahn had been high school classmates. \u97d3\u826f\u4fe1 Mr. Liong-shin Hahn was a math major at the National Taiwan University. We had our first meeting at my sister’s and my joint piano student recital. Liong-shin and his two younger brothers came to the recital. One year later we were married, on September 14, 1958. My eyeglasses were taken away by my mother on my wedding day. She told me a bride with glasses would look ugly. Therefore I couldn\u2019t see anyone or anything clearly, and knew neither where it took place nor who attended my wedding that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first son, Samuel \u4fe1\u4e00 was born the next year, on September 24, 1959 in Tainan. My father-in-law named him \u4fe1\u4e00. The name has three meanings: 1) the number one son of Liong-shin, 2) one as the unit in mathematics, 3) faith in the one and only God. After having worked as an intern, rotating between wards for one year, I remained at the National Taiwan University Hospital as a fixed intern in pediatrics. In the second year, I became a first year resident in internal medicine. When I was on night duty, I brought my baby with me to the residents\u2019 dormitory. I was the very first female resident who got married; my classmates helped me take care of my baby son \u4fe1\u4e00 Sam. Two years later, my second son, \u4fe1\u4ec1 Jim was born. Between Sam and Jim, I suffered a miscarriage of twin girls. I was handling viruses in the research laboratory then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the Mid-Autumn Festival Day in 1962, my husband left to pursue his advanced degree at Stanford University. Professor \u8a31\u632f\u69ae Chin-Eng Koh a math professor at National Taiwan University, was going to UC Berkeley on the same plane. While they were looking at the bright, shiny, full moon at a hotel in Tokyo, thinking of their families they left behind, I was weeping in Tainan with two sons. Since that night, whenever I see the full moon, I think of Liong-shin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My parents-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. S-C Hahn, were a pair of very kind and devoted parents. They treated me no differently than their own children. \u4fe1\u4e00 Sam was Dr. and Mrs. Hahn\u2019s very first grandson. They graciously took over the task of caring for Sam while I returned to work in Taipei. This went on after I had our second son \u4fe1\u4ec1. In spite of their busy lives, seeing the patients, caring for their very first two grandsons, Dr. S-C Hahn still left me with many fond memories which I cherish often. He still made the time to write many letters to his children who were in Taipei for further study. I had to go back to National Taiwan University Hospital for my work in the Diagnostic Laboratory section as a lecturer. As I was leaving my two sons under the care of my parents-in-law, in tears, Dr. S-C Hahn told me, \u201cYour sons are also our precious grandsons as well; they are in good hands; nothing to cry about.\u201c Sure enough, Sam became Dr. S-C Hahn\u2019s mascot. At the age of three, Sam followed his grandfather everywhere, even to medical meetings whenever permitted. At night, while my mother-in-law was changing their diapers, my father-in-law would hold a jar for his grandsons to urinate into. The nurses gave Sam a new title of Uncle Number 8, as an extra little brother after \u826f\u61b2 Liong-Hsien. Dr. S-C Hahn passed away suddenly on June 30, 1963 of a stroke due to stress and overwork brought on by attending many meetings, working late hours and other duties. His wife, my mother-in-law, lived until 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a separation of three years, my two sons and I finally rejoined \u826f\u4fe1 Liong-shin in Stanford, California, U.S.A. in the summer of 1965. Sam was then six years old and Jim was four. They didn\u2019t speak a single word of English. But Sam\u2019s class teacher told me at the PTA meeting at the end of first grade, \u201cCongratulations! There are four girls wanting to marry your son!\u201d When he was a 6th or 7th grader, Sam won first place in a spelling bee at his school. Sam\u2019s story and photo appeared in the local newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After completing his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1966, Liong-shin accepted the position of an instructorship at Johns Hopkins University, so we moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Two weeks after driving across continental U.S.A. from Palo Alto to Baltimore, I gave birth to our third son, Paul \u4fe1\u5b8f. He was \u201cmade in the U.S.A.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years later, Liong-shin accepted an offer from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I was busy raising three sons as a full-time housewife, cooking, driving the children to the school, attending PTA meetings, going to sons\u2019 music performances with a youth symphony group, etc. for seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When our sons were approaching college age, my husband discussed with me how to finance their expensive college education. We concluded that I should return to the medical profession. It took me two years to pass the ECFMG (Examination Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates) and FLEX (Federal License Examination). I was already 44 years old. After undergoing radiology residency training at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh for three years, I was finally able to practice medicine in the United States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my residency training away from home, my husband took care of our sons in addition to teaching at UNM. I started looking for a job as a radiologist in Albuquerque in January, 1978. But there were no openings at the local medical facilities except on the military base, Kirtland, where they were offering bonuses to MDs. When I went to see the hospital commander, he asked me to start the very next day. I was by then already 47 years old. As a requirement, I had to take basic military training for one week in San Antonio, Texas. The training included gun shooting, long-range marching, combat casualty training, camping in the wild, cliff climbing, etc… Luckily, I survived without any bodily injury and obtained the ribbons. At times we were divided into groups of five. One person had to be the \u201ccasualty\u201d and the other four had to carry the \u201cwounded victim\u201d on a stretcher going through low-lying barbed wires, passing over high cliffs and so on. The others chose me as the casualty every time because I was the smallest and lightest person and it was easiest with me for them to duck or to carry me above their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was soon promoted from the rank of captain to the rank of major. After five years of service in Kirtland USAF Base Hospital, I was transferred to the Yokota USAF \u6a2a\u7530\u7a7a\u8ecd\u57fa\u5730 Hospital in Fussa city \u798f\u751f Japan. I was the sole radiologist there and had to do all the radiology examinations, including fluoroscopic examinations, venography, arthrography and mammography in addition to film readings. I was in contact with the local Japanese radiologists when we needed to refer our American patients to the local medical center for further examinations. When there were joint medical symposia held locally, I was assigned as the interpreter, translating from English to Japanese and vice versa. A year after being assigned to Japan, I was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. I had a \u201chigh ranking officer\u201d decal on my car bumper. When driving in and out of the base, the guard at the gate always saluted me. This amused my husband when he took sabbatical leave from the university and was living with me for two years. He taught mathematics at the International Christian University and Sophia University in Tokyo during his second year of staying on the Yokota Base. And I moonlighted at the US Navy Hospital in \u6a2a\u6d5c Yokohama, the U.S. Air Force Hospital in Misawa Base \u4e09\u6ca2, Kunsan Base and \u539a\u6728 Atsugi Base several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among my many moonlighting jobs, there was a most memorable and exciting event I experienced at the Lyndon Johnson USAF Medical Center in American Samoa in 2001. A surgeon asked me whether I would be willing to accept the task of trying to save the life of a 13-month old baby girl. This young patient had an intussusception of the intestine that was threatening her life. Trying to avoid an aggressive operation, the surgeon asked me whether I could try a barium enema, that was less invasive. There was no reason to refuse, so I decided to try. On the first two attempts, the intestinal blockage didn\u2019t budge. I held up the baby, and cleaning the soiled radiology table, I prayed to God to help me save the baby. As I slowly began the third attempt, suddenly the mother of the baby, who was holding her under the fluoroscope, shouted out, \u201cThank you, Doctor! My baby is saved!\u201d When I looked at the fluoroscopic monitor, the blockage had loosened and the barium was rumbling into the small intestine happily and merrily! I thanked God for His mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, when I realized I was going to be 70 years old, I made up my mind to retire. Altogether I had worked for 23 years in the US Air Force, as an active duty officer and a civilian contract radiologist. On my 70th birthday, in 2002, I retired from my final post at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. The department held a big celebration party with two large cakes, one for my retirement and the other for my birthday on August 28, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After retirement from my work I began engaging in public service, serving as president of the Honolulu Chapter of the Taiwanese Association of North America for one busy year, during which time I published a 40-page TAA News Magazine. And I have been a member of the Taiwanese Evergreen Club and NATWA (Taiwanese Women\u2019s Association in North America) as well as NATMA (Taiwanese Medical Association in North America).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point I would like to tell a little bit about my religious faith. My mother was a Buddhist. Every month she would cook dishes, making an offering to Buddha on every 1st and 15th day of the lunar month before we ate. After I married my husband, I was baptized without my consent as a Presbyterian Christian. (The majority of Christian Taiwanese are Presbyterians.) It happened in this way: after my father-in-law passed away of a stroke in 1963, the priest, \u8b1d\u518d\u751f Rev. Tsai-Seng Shieh came to see my grieving mother-in-law. He found that although my father-in-law had occasionally given a sermon at our church, there was no record of his ever having been baptized. He had become a Christian when he lost his first son at the age of one year and 13 days of pneumonia. He then wrote a little pamphlet in Japanese with the title \u300e\u6b7b\u6ec5\u3088\u308a\u65b0\u751f\u3078\u300f\u201cFrom Death to Rebirth\u201c, declaring that he had been reborn as a Christian. Nevertheless, the priest was willing to hold the funeral at our church only under the condition that all of us family members would be baptized on that day. Therefore, my mother-in-law, my three sisters-in-law and I were asked to stand up and so with them, I was baptized in 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I attended many churches after I came to the U.S. I was still uncertain what the meaning was of being a Christian. Reading the Bible, buying many books, including a book of a Japanese Christian, \u5185\u6751\u9451\u4e09 Kanzo Uchimura, talking to many faithful Christians and priests, I was still unsure for myself why I was a Christian. I attended a few recruiting meetings, prayed with other believers and listened to the members\u2019 testimonies, hoping that one day I would meet God in my prayer, but never so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My cousin Susie and I went to Israel. I attended the midnight prayer for two nights. I prayed that God, the Holy Ghost would come into me. On the second night, when I started to pray, I already felt that The Holy Ghost was inside me. Every time when I am in trouble or don\u2019t know what to do to solve my problem, I pray to God to save me or give me instructions. So far, somehow, the situation has taken a better direction or the problem has been solved. For that I thank God. I have read the Bible but not systematically; I go to Bible class weekly. When I read that someone was suddenly filled with glory and converted, I wish I could have that moment one day. But so far I don\u2019t think I have had it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, my priest, \u8521\u4e00\u4fe1 I-Shin Tsai was giving a class to church members who were considering baptism. After a baby is born and the parents have the baby baptized without the baby\u2018s consent, he or she can have a second chance, to be re-baptized, when grown up; this is called \u201cconfirmation baptization\u201d. I asked to undergo confirmation baptization and my wish was granted. I was happily baptized on October 26, 2008 in the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My husband retired from teaching at UNM and moved to Irvine in California, in 1999. In November 2017 he decided to join me in Honolulu. Now we are living comfortably in a house in Alewa Heights. Life here is pretty simple: going grocery shopping about once a week, playing piano and ping-pong with Liong-shin, and doing exercise riding on a stationary bicycle. Since I stopped driving, my friends give me rides to my singing class and to church and Bible class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am grateful for this quiet and peaceful life my husband and I have been given in this nice house halfway up the mountain. I thank God for giving me this happy life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Completed on our Diamond (60th) Wedding Anniversary date, September 14, 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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