Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Asian & Asian American Studies. Biography. Eight- year-old Akihisa Takayama escapes from Japanese-ruled Manchuria, after the Russian invasion of 1945, to Chinese Taiwan. But life in Taiwan is as repressive under the brutal dictatorship of the Kuomintang as it was in Japanese Manchuria. In the 1960s, now a physician, and named Charles Yang, he ultimately escapes the White Terror of Taiwan for the United States, and from there goes on to Canada to become one of the first Taiwanese Canadians in Vancouver. His experiences illuminate the repression in Taiwan, and the ongoing dispute between Communist China and Taiwan over the meaning of "One China." This is a rare personal account of the little known histories of Manchukuo and Taiwanese immigration to North America.