SCOUTING YESTERDAY | South Dakota's future governor shot before escaping Chinese capture

This week in South Dakota history: Jan 24-30

Map of Taiwan Straight. Map: Wikicommons

U.S. ships off the coast of Taiwan, 1958.

Gov. Bill Janklow received the 823 Badge of Honor from the nation of Taiwan, the Argus Leader reported 25 years ago today.

Presented at the state capitol by Elizabeth Chu, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Kansas City, the badge was being given to Janklow as a result of his service in the U.S. Marine Corps. along with Taiwanese troops and more than 600 other U.S. soldiers who participated in the second Taiwan straight crisis.

Janklow’s career in the U.S. military was court ordered, according to the South Dakota State Historical Society. After a pattern of trouble with the law as a youth, he was told by a judge it was either reform school or the military. The 16 year old dropped out of Flandreau High School and joined the Marines.

Stationed in Okinawa, Janklow was a Private First Class rank when he joined a group of Marines on Aug. 23, 1958, that had volunteered to bring artillery to Taiwanese troops stationed on the Quemoy and Matsu islands, located just a few miles off the coast of mainland China.

“That’s the time the communists decided to invade and we got trapped on the island… I ended up with all kinds of problems,” the governor was quoted as saying during the honor ceremony 41 years later.

It was while the Marines were delivering artillery to nationalist forces when the Chinese attacked, according to the Rapid City Journal. The U.S. ships had left the area, leaving the soldiers stranded for weeks. Janklow said the Taiwanese had built an underground city, but people needed to be above ground on the lookout for an attack.

“They came a lot of times,” Janklow said, “Every time they came, they were all killed, but that didn’t stop them.”

During one attack by communist forces, the soldiers took cover on the ground. Janklow raised his leg in the air during that attack and took a round. The Marines were later able to escape the island by taking a dinghy from shore to a waiting submarine.

During his 1999 remarks, the governor said friends and family had been aware of his injury, but he had never spoken of it publicly before.