World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseSuo Yuming was born in Jiangling County, Hubei Province, China in 1920. In the early years of WW2, like many civilians, he and his mother fled westward to Sichuan Province to escape the Japanese advance. He initially attended university level courses in the temporary capital of Chongqing, but ultimately had to drop out to obtain employment to support his mother. In 1933, shortly after when Japan's aggression toward China was made known after occupation of northeastern China (ie. "Manchukuo" puppet state) and the First Battle of Shanghai, in order to prevent cultural artifacts from possibly being captured by the Japanese, the Chinese government relocated the contents of the National Palace Museum in Beiping to Shanghai. When Shanghai fell under Japanese control in 1937, these treasures were move to Nanjing and then Chongqing, and they were under the care of the staff of the central government's Museum Preparatory Office. In 1941, Suo obtained employment with the Museum Preparatory Office as a draftsman. What he thought was temporary job became permanent as he was well treated, given fair wages and growing responsibilities. When WW2 ended, he and his mother relocated the Nanjing as the central government returned to its pre-war capital. When the Nationalist-controlled central government began to lose the civil war against the communist rebels, officials of the the Museum Preparatory Office decided to evacuate the artifacts under its care to Taiwan for safekeeping. The artifacts were divided up into three shipments, and Suo, among others, were assigned to safeguard the third and what turned out to be the final shipment during its journey. The third shipment contained 972 crates of treasures from the National Palace Museum, 154 crates of treasures from the National Central Museum, and 122 crates of documents from the National Central Library. The crates were loaded aboard a merchant ship in Nanjing in mid-Jan 1949. As every available space was filled with crates containing museum material, the ship's crew members could effectively bring only whatever they could carry on their persons, and thus Suo had nothing more than his clothing, a blue vest his mother had made him, and two large denomination coins in his pocket. When the planned 8 to 10 days journey was still underway after more than 20 days filled with many unscheduled stops and suspicious meetings, Suo learned that the ship's captain was contemplating defecting to the communists. As the senior representative of the Museum Preparatory Office, he took control of the vessel and ensured its safe arrival in Taiwan. Once in Taiwan, he traveled with the crates to Taichung, where a manager of a super plant was a personal acquaintance of the head of the Museum Preparatory Office offered warehouse space to store the crates. Shortly after, Suo was placed in charge of constructing underground storage bunkers at Beigoucun in Taichung. In 1965, the National Palace Museum reopened in Taipei, Taiwan, and Suo became an employee of the museum. By this time, mainland China had fallen under the control of communists, and he had learned that, for his work evacuating the treasure from the mainland, his name had appeared in the Five Black Categories list. For that, he suspected that his mother was likely ill-treated during the cultural revolution, if she was still alive by that time. Continuing his employment with the National Palace Museum, he became a resident expert in ceramics and lacquerware. In the 1990s, when communications and travel opened between the two Chinas, he visited the mainland, but was not able to learn of anything about his mother. In 1999, the Beigoucun bunkers collapsed during an earthquake. In 2015, during the 90th anniversary of National Palace Museum, President Ma Yingjeou presented Suo with honors for his life long service. In the subsequent years the former employees of the Museum Preparatory Office passed away from old age. When Suo passed away in Jun 2022, he was the last to have taken part in the evacuation of treasure from the mainland China to Taiwan, which most likely spared countless pieces of artifacts from destruction by the communist regime.

Suo Yuming Timeline