Diane L. Gruber , Oysterville, Wash.

Fifty years ago this March, I graduated from Minot State College (NKA University). After quick visits with my parents in East Wenatchee, WA, and my in-laws in Lake Oswego, OR, I boarded a flight to Taipei, Taiwan, to join my husband. Michael was an air traffic controller with the US Air Force, and had been transferred from Minot AFB to CCK Air Base outside Taichung, Taiwan the previous August.

We enjoyed Taiwan and the Taiwanese people so much, we stayed after Michael was discharged that September (1972), got jobs teaching college English and remained two more years.

This naive “country girl,” born and raised on the mighty Columbia River outside East Wenatchee, knew that people in many countries didn’t have the human rights Americans enjoy. However, I wasn’t prepared for what that meant in practice, how people actually lived when the government could do whatever they wanted to do to you.

“Oh, you can’t say that, Mrs. Gruber! You will disappear!” said Dorcas in her broken English. At that time, the population consisted of about 95% Taiwanese people and 5% Chinese, virtually all being Chiang’s soldiers and families who had escaped from China in 1947 as Mao’s Communist army took over. Chiang arrived in Taiwan, slaughtered about 20,000 educated Taiwanese leaders (doctors, professors, newspaper editors, etc.), and declared martial law.

Freedom of Speech? Oh, please, what a quaint American notion! By the time we arrived, generations of Taiwanese had learned that even mentioning the government or the dictator’s name could get you “disappeared.” Loved ones of the “disappeareds” never knew if they were dead or imprisoned in the political prison offshore. There was no “right to a lawyer” and no “due process.” The masses had no rights and “the law” was whatever the Ruling Elite (that is, Chiang and his lieutenants) said it was.

As Americans, my husband and I knew that we would not “disappear” for speaking freely. The worst the dictatorship would do, could do to us, would be to deport us back to the US. Our US Passports protected us from imprisonment or execution because the USA had diplomatic relations with the Chiang Dictatorship.

Chiang Kai Shek passed away in 1975 and his son took over as ruler. Then, his son passed away in 1988. By that time the Taiwanese people were eager to rule themselves, the dictatorship collapsed and Taiwan became a democracy in 1989. Both their economy and democracy are thriving.

My volunteer work for a Taiwanese-American charity sent me back to Taiwan many times over the years. The last trip was in 2016. The Taiwanese people don’t want to live under the oppression of Communism.

There is nothing like living in a foreign country for an American to fully appreciate America. Our three years in Taiwan taught us how special it was to be Americans, because AMERICANS HAVE RIGHTS.

Americans are the luckiest people who ever trod the earth because we have the most freedoms. And we have the most freedoms because we have the Bill of Rights.