Shadows of the Crimson Sun: One Man’s Life in Manchuria, Taiwan, and North America

After the Russian invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria (Manchukuo) in 1945, fourteen-year-old Akihisa Takayama escapes with his family to their ancestral Taiwan. Here they find themselves under the brutal Chinese dictatorship of the Kuomintang. In the 1960s, now a physician calling himself Charles Yang, he escapes with his young family to the United States, from where they finally go on to Canada to become among the first Taiwanese Canadians in Vancouver. Charles Yang’s experiences illuminate the White Terror of Taiwan, and the geopolitical dispute between Communist China and Taiwan over the meaning of One China. This is a rare, humane, and personal account of the little known histories of Manchukuo and Taiwanese immigration to North America.