Friday, 24 May

As there was air raid exercise, I woke early.

Mr. Lin and Mr. Zhuang invited me to have lunch at the Koharu Japanese restaurant. Half of the waitresses were Japanese women. They were quite old and looked plain, but their service was rather good. The Japanese embassy banquets are mainly held here. Lin and Zhuang also invited a lawyer, Zhu Ren (朱仁). Zhu was the student of John C. H. Wu when the latter taught in Soochow University. According to what Zhu said, when Lin Bin was Minister of the Judicial Administration Department, Lin would attend to all matters, large and small, himself. He also treated his subordinates high-handedly. This meant that colleagues were unwilling to work with him. When Lin stepped down from the post, the Control Yuan even said that he had used his own people, something that was wrong of him to do.

From the restaurant I could see Liu Ao Tehua(劉奧特華), the widow of Liu Ziran(劉自然), who was just shot dead by American soldier Robert G. Reynolds, go on a hunger strike in protest before American Embassy. People were so agitated that they encircled the embassy that they threw stones at it. For handling this matter, it seemed American army was not quite appropriate. Our government certainly had a hard time in dealing with it.

At 3:00 I went to House of Freedom for a rest.

Huang Guangpu came over to chat. He also had criticism towards Lin Bin. Probably Lin did many things which were disrespectful to Wang Chonghui. Therefore when Yu Hongjun’s cabinet was formed, Wang Chonghui expressed his dissatisfaction, which meant that the head in charge of legal affairs was replaced.

The evening newspapers said people had smashed American Embassy and the office of the American Military Delegation this afternoon. Also, they attacked police stations. In self-defense, policemen shot two people dead and wounded more than ten people. Marital law was then declared. It is a great pity that this matter has escalated.

I wrote to Chengzhi with regard to pineapple, camphor and so on.

Mr. Lin phoned me to say that someone is willing to buy his house at Jinhua Road for $180,000. He said he could sell it to me if I am willing to pay $170,000. I told him I am unwilling to do so and asked him to sell to the other party. So now I need to find another house, but it should not be difficult.