Jamie Taylor’s Bird Watching Diary

1944 -1945

By Mary Taylor Previte   (Jamie’s little sister)   

In 1944 and 1945,  James “Jamie” Taylor, 14 years old,  filled a 4" x 6"  notebook  with carefully-penned observations –  about putting his hand into a  sparrow's nest and finding babies,  counting bustards flying overhead,  welcoming flowers that announced the spring, listening to cicadas beginning to buzz,  numbering the leaves sprouting on a plant.  Logged  to earn his  Boy Scout Naturalist badge,  he wrote ordinary, boyish  stuff .

Ordinary?

Jamie Taylor was writing in a crowded Japanese internment camp in China, a world of barrier walls, electrified wires, guard dogs, prisoner numbers, roll calls,  and hunger. 

The cover says simply:  J. Taylor    Weihsien Birds. J. Taylor was James Hudson Taylor, III, a student in the Chefoo School for the children of Protestant missionaries in China and great grandson of pioneer missionary to China, J. Hudson Taylor. Weihsien was the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center in China’s Shandong Province. Weihsien held 1.500 Allied prisoners behind barrier walls and electrified wires.

In 1944, when Jamie started writing his bird watching diary, we four Taylor children had already been separated for four years from our missionary parents, with warring armies an impenetrable blockade. With a school full of the children of Protestant missionaries to China, we and our classmates in the Chefoo School had had been marched off to internment camp. With 1,500 prisoners in Weihsien, we had been rounded up as “enemy aliens,” each with a prisoner number. It would be another year and a half before the war ended and we would see our father and mother again.  Missionary teachers tried to be substitute parents.

In a prison camp, how do you arm yourself against fear? Our teachers' answer was to fashion a protective womb around our psyches, insulating and cushioning us with familiar routines: daily school and work details.

Structure. Structure. Structure.

Our teachers taught us exactly what to expect. They marched us off to breakfast for a splash of steaming gao liang gruel (animal feed, even by Chinese standards). They trooped us back to our dormitory, mug and spoon in hand, to scrub the floor. We grouped for morning prayers, and sang:

God is still on the throne;

And He will remember His own.

His promise is true;

He will not forget you.

God is still on the throne.

We lined up for inspection. Were we clean? Were we neat? Did we have our mending done? We settled down on our steamer-trunk “beds” for school: English, Latin, French, history, Bible.

Structure. It was our security blanket.

One of the predictable routines was school. Yes, school would go on – even in the shadow of guard towers. So would Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, Cub Scouts and Brownies. We practiced semaphore and Morse Code during daily roll calls. We practiced tying knots -- reef, bowline, round-turn-two-half-hitches. Scout leaders like Stanley Houghton and Guide leaders like Inez Phare, Brownie leaders like “Brown Owl” Evelyn Davey expected students to work on badges. In the shadow of the barrier walls and under the eyes of uniformed Japanese guards, we worked on badges – reading badges, hiking badges, folk singing badges, naturalist badges. Yes, and do a good deed every day – even when your hands are freezing from making coal balls to fuel the stoves or your knife or thumb nail is bloody from the Saturday “battle-with-the-bedbugs.” Girl Guides were expected to embroider badges for the Boy Scouts.  

Written for his Naturalist Badge, Jamie’s bird watching diary is so much more than a 14-year-old Boy Scout training a sparrow or watching poplar catkins "beginning to fall off."  Its pages are punctuated with news and observations that fascinated this 14-year-old about life in internment camp: 

June 11 New bull not as large as the old one which died of anthrax..  

Dec. 2.  Got stoves.

It's a story of relationships:

Sunday May 12 A boy threw a stone at a Crowned Willow Warbler, and

killed it.

Thursday May 18 I put my hand into a sparrow's nest and found babies, It was at block 60 under the tiles.  I am sharing with Beard (a class mate).

Tuesday May 23   A Jap gave us an egg so we put it under the baby

rook.

Between the lines, it shouts triumph of the human spirit.

March 29 Wednesday Hugh Hubbard gave a lecture on N. China Birds. It was very good. He showed us some specimens.

April 17 Monday Mr. Hubbard showed me some Brambling in a willow tree.

Monday April 24. Saw a Western China Blue and white Flycatcher. Mr Hubbard had only seem it once before.

Were spirits wilting? Hugh Hubbard took boys and girls on bird watch walks. Group walks. Private walks. He showed them stuffed birds. He taught them the songs of birds. He lectured on birds of North China. An internationally-known ornithologist and author, Hugh Hubbard would not let their spirits die. Jamie wrote about it all.

Well, not all.

Jamie didn’t write about hunger or terror or bayonet drills or guard dogs or homesickness. When he wrote about daily roll call, it was only to observe “November 10. 17 bustards passed during roll call.”

In the Weihsien internment camp, it is just as much what Jamie DIDN’T write about -- that honors with an everlasting tribute the quiet heroes of Weihsien: our teachers, Boy Scout, Girl Guide, Brownie, and Cub Scout leaders, men and women like Hugh Hubbard, Eric Liddell, Brigadier Stranks who poured their unique spirit into saving us children.

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