Born in 1905 in Hsinhua, Tainan, and deeply influenced by the Chiaopanien Uprising of 1915, Yang Kui’s early years showed the ethnic consciousness of anti-Japanese resistance. Later he read old Russian and 19th-century English and French literary works of realism, which opened him up to the world. In the prime of life he was a novelist, but he also undertook all kinds of labor to put into practice his concern for “humanistic socialism.”
He was arrested a number of times during the Japanese colonial period. After the war he was arrested on 6 April 1949 for having drafted a “Peace Declaration” which appeared in the Dagong Bao in Shanghai. The next year he was sentenced to 12 years, and sent to Green Island. This photo was taken at the Green Island New Life Correction Center’s athletic meet.
2011 Dialogue on Peace in Green Island 