On January 8, 1980, after twenty-six days on the run, Shih Ming Te was arrested, having been informed on by Kao Chin-lang and Hsu Chun-tai, former political prisoners who had once been jailed with him. The day before his arrest, Shih Ming Te had just undergone cosmetic surgery by Dr. Chang Wen-ying, who implanted silicone in his chin to disguise him with a protruding jaw. This is the official photograph taken at his arrest.
While Shih Ming Te was imprisoned for the Kaohsiung Incident, the authorities inhumanely deported his American wife, Linda Gail Arrigo, refused to let her re-enter the country to visit him in prison, and even forbade them to correspond. Only after martial law was lifted was she finally allowed to write to Shih Ming Te directly. On September 26, 1987, Linda Gail Arrigo wrote her first letter to him, recalling the night of the Kaohsiung Incident.
“I remember vividly that at about ten-thirty that night, as we stood at the corner by the Formosa Magazine Kaohsiung service office, with torchlight flickering around us and tear-gas canisters exploding and thick smoke everywhere, you said to me the last words of that night: ‘If I must spend the rest of my life in prison for this — and the people can from now on stand up firmly and resist their oppressors, and the paralyzing fear can end from now on — I am willing!’” — From Linda Gail Arrigo’s letter to Shih Ming Te
After the Kaohsiung Incident, on December 13 the military police and intelligence agents of the Chiang Ching-kuo regime launched a simultaneous island-wide roundup, hunting down every Tangwai figure. Shih Ming Te dramatically broke through the dragnet. What followed was an unprecedented manhunt across Taiwan: wanted notices covered televisions, utility poles, neighborhood bulletin boards, every station and every port. The reward rose from five hundred thousand to five million NT dollars. At the time, two hundred thousand could buy a small apartment in Taipei. If you were born before the 1960s, you will not have forgotten that at one point in your life, wanted notices covering every street and alley plunged the whole society into an all-out search driven by terror. How many people of conscience and historical awareness hoped to protect him — and how many unknowing people longed for the reward.
The reward kept rising as the authorities grew impatient…
The Statute for the Punishment of Rebellion, the harshest law in the world, had ruled Taiwan for thirty years. Anyone who was a thorn in the authorities’ side could be prosecuted under Article 2, Paragraph 1: “Whoever, intending to overthrow the government by illegal means, commences to carry out such intent shall be punished with death, and the property shall be confiscated.” And what was Article 4, Paragraph 7? “Whoever commits any of the following acts shall be punished with death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment of not less than ten years: … 7. harboring or concealing a rebel.” The intent of the KMT’s wicked law was perfectly clear: for their own sake, for their families’ sake, people had to betray their compatriots, betray the righteous, betray those who had gone before.