Wednesday, May 2, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.
Eighty-nine-year-old Bill Taylor waited a long time to tell his World War II story - and a remarkable one it is.
Taylor, who was the mayor of North Las Vegas from 1961 to 1968, says in a book that he made a daring escape from the Japanese, traveled with the Red Chinese army and even met and chatted with Mao Zedong.
The book, "Rescued by Mao," (Silverleaf Press, $23.95, and scheduled for release late this month ) is based on Taylor's journals during his perilous journey to freedom. The book's cover photo shows Taylor beside a young Gen. Mao, who would become leader of Communist China from 1949 until his death in 1976 at age 82.
Taylor, who escaped from the Japanese by jumping off a moving train near Shanghai on China's east coast, said he would not be alive today if it were not for the future Chairman Mao ordering his troops to provide Taylor safe passage to his repatriation at Yenan in north central China.
Taylor was a civilian construction contractor on Wake Island when it fell to the Japanese on Dec. 23, 1941, resulting in his capture. Today he shrugs off those who suggest his story sounds too amazing to be true.
"I don't give a damn about the doubters," Taylor said by phone from his home in Provo. "I just tell the truth. I decided to write this book to leave a record for my children and future generations of my family."
Taylor is a father of five, grandfather of 30 and great-grandfather of 40. Newspaper clippings dating from the 1960s make reference to his capture by the Japanese during World War II and recapture by the Red Chinese.
Some of those accounts mention Taylor met Mao, but offer no details.
Garry Mitchell, owner of Silverleaf and its parent company, Leatherwood Press of Sandy, Utah, said Taylor's story has been researched by experts.
"I'm absolutely sure it is accurate," he said.
Mitchell said experts who reviewed Taylor's manuscript for accuracy include Temple University history professor and author Gregory Urwin, military historian and author Alex Kershaw and the late Marine Brig. Gen. John Kinney.
"After 3 1/2 years as a POW ... (Taylor) escaped from the Japanese and was the only escapee to contact Mao Zedong," Kinney said in a quote obtained by the publisher before Kinney died in October at age 91.
And then there is that black-and-white photo taken by a Mao aide.
"It is authentic and, actually, there is more to it than the reader sees," Mitchell said. "The full photo shows Red army soldiers around Bill and Mao, with guns drawn on Bill."
UNLV history professor Sue Fawn Chung said Taylor's story is not difficult to believe when you take into account that Mao "was not a big wig at the time" but was curious about the Western world.
"Mao wanted to visit the United States back then," Chung said. "He was a friendly guy who would have wanted to meet an American who was brought into camp by his troops."
Mao even said he had conversed with Americans at that point in history.
"Yesterday, in a talk with two Americans ... I said that the U.S. government was trying to undermine us and this would not be permitted," Mao said in a June 11, 1945, speech at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Taylor said his meeting with Mao occurred July 5, 1945. Taylor does not recall his conversation being as deeply political as the one referred to by Mao.
"He congratulated me on surviving and making it through China, and gave me two woven carpets that I took home," Taylor recalled.
(The 20-inch-by-14-inch carpets, with green, brown, pink and black checkered patterns and borders, hang today at the end of a long hall in Taylor's home. They are in a glass case.)
"The main part of my side of the conversation was thanking him and his troops for saving my life," Taylor said of Mao.
Taylor trekked about 1,000 miles to freedom - 100 miles on his own after escaping near Shanghai and 900 miles on the 2 1/2-month journey to Yenan.
"It was dangerous with so many Japanese forces and troops under the Wang Jingwei puppet government out there," Taylor said. "They attacked us several times as we went from village to village."
After arriving home near the war's end, Taylor joined the Navy.
He returned to Southern Nevada and joined his brother in the steel business. Later, Taylor started his own company, Atlas Steel, which included the Nevada Test Site among its customers.
North Las Vegas' government offices began integrating during Taylor's first mayoral term, as the city's first five black employees were hired.
In 1982 Taylor moved to Hawaii, where he built 90 homes on Maui. He retired to Utah, his birth state, in the early 1990s.
In 1990, Taylor returned to Communist China with his second wife, Barbara, in response to an invitation from Chinese officials. They said they had found a copy of the photo of Mao and Taylor in their archives and wanted to meet him.
"To me Mao was a great man because he was able to bring his people together. He was the George Washington of his country," Taylor said. "Of course, I never agreed with his politics."
Sun reporter Mary Manning contributed to this story.
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