Chapter 1

STORM CLOUDS

March is a bitterly cold month in Peking. Bone-chilling winds sweep relentlessly down out of Mongolia, across the ancient capital. On this particular day, March 24, 1943, more than 200 foreigners swaddled in padded garments, and overburdened with suitcases and assorted bundles, struggled from every quarter of this city, to assemble inside the gates of the American Embassy.

Christine and I had arrived in China two years earlier, fledgling missionaries with the Oriental Missionary Society, assigned to teach in the mission's Bible school in Peking. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, brought an abrupt end to our course of language study and marked the beginning of 15 months of house arrest.

Now our captors prepared to herd all citizens of Allied nations in the northeastern provinces of China into a single camp located outside the city of Weihsien, a compound which they now euphemistically labeled the "Civilian Assembly Center." The notice, laboriously inscribed in slightly fractured English, pictured our future home as a virtual utopia where we would enjoy all the amenities of civilization, including "fresh strawberries in season!"

Orders were that we could take with us only what we could carry. (Our beds and a footlocker apiece would come later by freight truck.) No baggage allowance was given to small children. Chinese, we had observed, managed to carry imposing burdens by suspending their cargo from either end of a bamboo pole balanced on their shoulders. Though in our state of semi-incarceration we could not locate a suitable bamboo pole, I decided a heavy wooden drapery rod would serve the purpose. Alas, our scheme came to naught when just outside our compound gate the pole snapped, dumping our luggage unceremoniously in the street.

Thus Christine and I, suitcases in hand trudging along, joined our other missionaries. Our small daughter, Sandra Kay, just two and a half and enfolded in the loving embrace of her Chinese amah (nurse), followed in a rickshaw.

At the Embassy, several thousand Chinese thronged the streets to bid their Allied friends a heartfelt, tearful farewell and, at the same time, to voice their outrage at the Japanese for abusive treatment of the foreigners. Our captors, though clearly taken aback by this spirited protest from the customarily unemotional Chinese, devised a plan to cast the demonstration in a more "favorable" light. The following morning newspapers carried a picture of the thronging Chinese, with the explanation that the citizens of Peking had gathered to "celebrate" the ridding of their city of pernicious foreign elements!

Now we were ordered to march, two abreast, to the station where we would board a train for the 500-mile journey to Weihsien. So commenced the unsightly luggage-burdened caravan, which struggled through the narrow streets to the accompaniment of harsh commands and the rough proddings by officious, strutting men in olive-drab uniforms. An elderly gentleman in the column in front of us slumped to the ground, clearly unconscious. Impatiently the guards seized him by the feet, dragging him roughly to the side. When the man's companions tried to revive him they were pushed forward with rough thrusts of the long rifles.

At the station we were herded like cattle onto a waiting train. Though we had the entire train of three compartments to ourselves, the narrow, slatted, wooden benches could decently accommodate only about half of us. The fortunate occupied seats while the rest were forced to stand or sit on luggage in the carriage aisles. When a single lady missionary expressed outrage at the rough handling, she was rewarded with a savage blow to the chest — the force of which would have sent her sprawling were she not encompassed by a sea of bodies.

At 10 o'clock that evening our train ground noisily to a halt. We learned that we had arrived in Tientsin and would be required to change trains. Our guards, we discovered, had agreed on a little diversion to ease the boredom of the journey — an impromptu contest to see which officer could transfer his cargo load of prisoners from one train to another in the shortest time. While I struggled with suitcases, Christine — a large bedroll strapped to her back — carried our sleeping two-year-old. With our tormentors behind pushing and prodding, we stumbled out of the coaches and across the platform. Christine, laden with the heavy backpack and our little daughter, could not move with sufficient alacrity to satisfy the guards. A brutal shove to her back sent her stumbling, collapsing against the rough, steel steps of the train, opening a deep gash along her right shin. In the narrow, overcrowded coach with seats facing each other, her wounded leg was of necessity now wedged mercilessly between her neighbors — kicked and bumped with every sudden change in the movement of the coach.

Another change of train was called for at Tsinan. In the remorseless cold and dark of early morning, the bleakest hours of the day, we were roused from fitful half-sleep to shuffle across the station platform. This transfer was even more discomforting than the last, due to the fact that our three coach-loads of passengers were now sardined into only two carriages. Thus we lurched on in abject misery, arriving at our destination of Weihsien at 4:30 the next afternoon.

Trucks were waiting to convey us through the narrow alleys and out the south gate of the walled city. Two miles outside of town we came to a large compound surrounded by high walls with ominous looking guard towers situated at each corner. We entered the enclosure through two large wooden gates. Ironically the Chinese characters on the sign above read, "Le Tao Yuan" (Courtyard of the Happy Way). We had reached the Weihsien civilian concentration camp!

Hundreds of Allied prisoners from other parts of China had already arrived. Exhausted and hungry (it had been 24 hours since we had eaten) all of us were ushered into the mess hall. Our repast was a bowl of watery soup in which floated small nondescript fish, heads and all, along with morsels of stale bread. This was, very literally, a foretaste of the thousands of meals we would ingest in this camp in the years ahead.

A cold rain had begun to fall. While men bedded down in the dormitories, women and children were led to the second floor of the old administration building. After three nights we were assigned to the 9- by 12-foot dormitory room, which was to be our home for the duration of the war. We divided the bedding from Christine's backpack, using the thinnest blankets for mattresses and pulling the heavy quilts about us for warmth. Christine held Sandra close to her to share body heat, talking with her about God's protective care. Weary from the long journey, Sandra was asleep almost with the closing of her eyes.

By now Christine's injured leg throbbed and ached all the way up to the hip, yet, having a place to curl up even there on the hard, rough floor she thought "felt good." And in her heart strangely rose prayers of gratitude, remembering that, yes, even in prison camp, our "times are in His hands."

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