George Kerr on why he left his Vice Consul position

In Chapter 7 of Formosa Betrayed, George Kerr writes about two reports he sent to the US Embassy in Nanking:

Late in the year I sent along to the Embassy and the Department a secret coded supplementary report upon prominent personalities about town, and certain evident conflicts within the Taipei Government. My report evoked a telegraphic request for more detail, but this was construed to be a rebuke; I had committed an unpardonable bureaucratic sin by raising an issue which called attention to ourselves. 

My second semi-annual report for 1946 on social, political and economic conditions was endorsed, coded, and forwarded through Nanking, to Washington. It carried a warning that tensions within Formosa were near the breaking point, a violent crisis might be upon us at any time. The document was given a number and entered into our secret record book.

Later on, he writes that when he was in Nanking writing a "State paper" to be translated and given to Chiang Kai-shek, he made use of the December report "which had been endorsed and forwarded to the Embassy. But in the Embassy files I found also a brief, secret, unnumbered follow-up dispatch from Taipei which said in effect that the Embassy should not take my December predictions of impending crisis too seriously."

In an October 27, 1974 letter, Kerr expands more on this note and gives also some more context for why he left his position as Vice Consul. It is well-known that Consul Ralph Blake and Kerr did not see eye to eye on how to respond to the crisis in Taiwan. It's also commonly known that the KMT didn't want Kerr to stay on in his position. Hsiao-ting Lin,for instance, writes, "Chiang Kai-shek's officials acridly blamed George Kerr ... for instigating the islanders' rebellion against the Chinese rule, leading to Kerr's disgraceful recall." Kerr suggests, however, that it was he who made the final decision to leave:

In late 1946 I prepared a long Memorandum predicting a crisis at any moment, naming names and citing incidents. It was endorsed by Blake and forwarded to Nanking and Washington. But then Blake flew off to Nanking, leaving me in charge, where he urged that I be pulled out. When the crisis did occur, and I went to Nanking to report to Stuart, I was given access to the files in order to prepare the Memorandum which appears—severely censored to remove all references to Formosan appeals to the USA—in the White Paper. In the files I found an unnumbered Memo from Blake to the Embassy, sent along immediately after the endorsed December Memo, in which he strongly denigrated my report (which he had endorsed). When Stuart and Butterworth asked me to return to Formosa, I drew their attention to it, and on resigning the Service, pointed out that no man of integrity would serve under Blake under those circumstances. Blake knew that if he needed it, he could summon up that unnumbered Memo, but since it was not entered into our register of numbered, secret despatches, it could remain lost forever. (emphasis added)

Kerr suggests that despite his conflict with Blake, Ambassador Stuart and Counselor to the Embassy Butterworth still wanted Kerr to stay on in Taiwan.

(The memo Kerr refers to here appears to be different from the memo Blake attached to a later report, cited by Richard Bush, in which he criticizes Kerr's style of writing.)

Source: Letter to Jonathan Mirsky, available in the Okinawa Prefectural Archives.