值此局面下，父母便帶着我和弟弟約翰一同到煙臺去入學，藉作暫時的休息，換換環境。此時姐姐凱琳，哥哥雅各已是該校學生。
中國內地會在煙臺設立的中小學，簡稱“芝罘學校”，是一道地英國式學校，設立的目的在方便所有在中國傳教士的子女，不必返回自己的國家去受教育。學校初創時僅有課室十間，外加廁所，及至我們入學，早已大加擴建，儼然一現代化校園。它還有一特點：地臨海濱，這原是教職員夢想中的至佳環境。
記得，當日軍進佔學校的那天，我們的老師正在教我們拉丁文名物字的第四格式，課還沒完，他就低聲說：“我們的新統治者來了！”
頭戴鐵盔，胸佩勳章，腳穿高皮靴，槍上裝着刺刀的日本兵在校外的馬路上把崗，走起路來腰間的佩刀一搖搖地。
自海上一艘航空母艦起飛的一架飛機正在撒下“東亞新秩序”的傳單。
戴德生是我曾祖父，二十一歲時決意放棄了他的醫學教育，欲親到中國來實現一個夢想，將基督教傳佈至各省份。1853年（咸豐三年）他啟程來華工作，1881年（光緒七年）創設“芝罘學校”。
他不主張公開集資興募捐，他相信上主會將神蹟奇事帶到人間。
戴德生說：“我並不希望上主派遣三百萬傳教士前來中國工作，可是，不論多或少，祂總會充分資助的！”後來，中國內地會由他組成（1865年），傳教士多至千人，在供應上並無缺乏。
戴德生的家人就在這種堅定信仰氣氛下長成的。我父親是繼曾祖父之後第三代服務中國的傳教士。我們這些孩子們認為父母送我們到芝罘學校當寄宿生然後回到工作崗位上是當然的發展。況且，這場戰爭，中日兩國為敵，英美兩國原是守中立的，本不直接干係我們的事，是年我七歲，弟弟約翰僅六歲。
1941年十二月八日清晨，我們起床後，驚見日軍佈崗於學校通校園外面所有的大門，又在門旁張貼告示：“大日本海軍管理”。日本神社的僧侶隨後在球場上行了一次祝福儀式。此後學校一變而成日本天皇的財產。
校園裏所有的人都起了恐慌不無原因。早飯時間，我們收聽廣播報導，說：美國艦隊在珍珠港被襲起火，繼續焚燒中，英艦兩艘已沉沒於馬來亞海域。這時，我們開了校門看，日軍已把守了每一道門，槍上裝着刺刀，如臨大敵。他們更將我們的校長拘捕，禁止他和任何人接觸。
最近一個月來，我們的拉丁文老師馬丁先生正積極籌備聖誕節慶祝會中一個傀儡戲的節目。馬丁是一位樂觀的人，我們有同一想法：戰爭決阻止不了我們過節的慶祝。他手持牽動傀儡的細繩索，在校園的空場上大踏步伐，傀儡便隨他的動作跳動起來，當着學生和日本兵表演一番。他們見了也不免大笑，和學生笑成一起。人總是一樣，都是有感情的。這一着，我們和日本士兵的關係鬆弛了。真的，有誰還對着那些見了傀儡跳動也會歡笑的武裝士兵害怕呢？
由於戰爭的混亂，附近的中國人民正在忍受飢餓中，竊賊時常在晚上光顧我們的校園。最令我們老師驚恐的事是一天晨起發現女生們的大衣皆不翼而飛。此後，各級任老師輪班守夜，小學部的女教員在就寢前先將曲棍球棒子在床邊放好，以防不測。
話分兩頭。在離我們約七百英里西北方的鳳翔縣一名聖經學院的學生在開教職員會時將一份中文報紙交給我母親，那報紙上印着令人震驚的大字標題：
母親讀畢，嚇得目瞪口呆，真料不到美國也會介入戰爭。她惦念着四個心愛的孩子，會不會有一天被日軍所吞噬。又鑒於凶暴的日軍於攻入南京前後對中國婦女的強姦獸行，她便不寒而慄，終至木然地倒在臥室中的床上啜泣了。
想起往事來，似乎一場舊夢。幼年，在美國賓州威克拜城的一間教堂裏，費貴森牧師曾對她說過這句話：“愛麗斯！如果你對上主所喜悅的人或事盡心做出當做的工作來，那麼上主也會對你所喜愛的事或人加以保護。”
後來我母親將這句話真不曉得重念過多少次呢！按照母親所說，那時她想到費牧師的那話，以及對上主立下的約。即已堅信上主的應許和護佑，生活中當即恢復了寧靜。
此後，雖有日本飛機多次到陝西來投彈，軍隊的調動往來頻繁，郵件也漸斷絕了，但她相信上主的慈手必會遮蓋保護。(下期續)
A Song of Salvation at Weihsien
Prison Camp
Mary Taylor
Previte
They were spilling from the
guts of the low-flying plane, dangling from parachutes
that looked like giant silk poppies, dropping into the
fields outside the concentration camp. The Americans
had come.
It was August 1945. “ Weihsien
Civilian Assembly Center ,” the Japanese called our
concentration camp in China . I was 12 years old. For
the past three years, my sister, two brothers and I
had been captives of the Japanese. For 5 1/2 years we
had been separated from our parents by warring
armies.
But now the Americans were spilling
from the skies.
I raced for the forbidden gates,
which were now awash with cheering, weeping,
disbelieving prisoners, surging beyond those barrier
walls into the open fields. Americans, British, men,
women, children—dressed in proud patches and emaciated
by hunger—we made a mad welcoming committee. Our
Japanese guards put down their guns and let us go. The
war was over.
Kathleen, Jamie, Johnny and I were
the children of Free Methodist missionaries. We and
all our classmates and teachers had been taken
prisoner in the early years of World War II when
Japanese soldiers commandeered our boarding school in
Chefoo, on the east coast of China . As the Japanese
army advanced, my parents, James and Alice Taylor,
escaped to China's vast Northwest, where, for the
remainder of the war, they continued their missionary
work.
Before the war came, the fabled land
of my childhood was a country of acient Buddhas,
gentle temple bells and simple peasants harnessed to
their plows. But across the China Sea , a clique of
militarists was rising to power in Japan and pushing
for expansion. They wanted “ Asia for the Asians,”
with China , Manchuria and Japan cooperating under
Japan's leadership.
They struck first in 1931 with an
“incident” in Manchuria , and within six months they
controlled it under a puppet government. Next, Japan
started nibbling at China , eating her, as Churchill
said, “like an artichoke, leaf by leaf.” No Allied
power was willing to use military force to stop the
takeover.
As the Japanese continued to eat away
at China , Dad and Mother were finding it increasingly
difficult to continue their work in the Henan province
in central China . The Japanese soldiers were cocky.
When you pass through the city gate, you dismount and
bow to us—that was the order. Twice, when Mother
hadn't dismounted fast enough from her bicycle,
soldiers struck her across the head with a stick.
So Dad and Mother took Johnny and me
and headed for a breather in Chefoo, where the two
older children, Kathleen and Jamie, were already
enroller in school.
The Chefoo School was, more than
anything else, a British school. Its purpose was to
serve the many children of Protestant missionaries in
a vast, foreign continent—to be a tiny outpost where
we could learn English and get a Western-style
education. The original school had been 10 rooms and
an outhouse, but by our time it had grown into a
modern campus, a schoolmaster's dream, just a few
steps off the beach.
When the Japanese army arrived in
Chefoo, Latin master Gordon Martin was teaching a
Latin noun to the Forth Form. “So,” he said softly,
“here are our new rulers.”
Wearing steel helmets, bemedaled
khaki uniforms, highly polished knee-high boots, and
carrying bayonets, Japanese soldiers took up duty on
the road in front of the school. Swords swaggered at
their waists.
From an aircraft carrier in the
harbor, a plane dropped leaflets in Chinese explaining
“The New Order in East Asia .”
The Japanese Army is coming soon
to protect Japanese civilians living in China . The
Japanese Army is an army of strict discipline,
protecting good citizens. Civil servants must seek to
maintain peace and order. Members of the community
must live together peacefully and happily. With the
return of Japanese businessmen to China , the business
will proper once more. Every house must fly a Japanese
flag to welcome the Japanese.
--Japanese Army
Headquarters
There was no effective resistance.
The New Order in Asia had arrived.
It was the schoolteacher in her, I
think, but Mother believed in learning things “by
heart.” And with so much turmoil around us—war,
starvation, anxiety, distrust—she was determined to
fill us with faith and trust in God's promises. The
best way to do this, she decided, was to put the
Psalms to music and sing them with us every day. So
with Japanese gunboats in the harbor in front of our
house, and with guerrillas limping along Mule Road
behind us, bloodied from their nighttime skirmishes
with the invaders, we sang Mother's music from Psalm
91 at our family worship each morning:
“I will say of the Lord, He is my
refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him will I trust…
“Thou shalt not be afraid for the
terror bu night…
“A thousand shall fall at thy
side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but…He shall
give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways…”
Our little choir soared with the
music—“to keep thee in all thy ways…Thou shalt not be
afraid…”
We children had also sat wide-eyed in
Sunday school, listening to spine-tingling stories of
such pioneer missionaries as David Livingston in
Africa , John G. Paton in the New Hebrides , and J.
Hudson Taylor in China .
Hudson Taylor was my
great-grandfather. At 21, he decided to give up his
medical studies in England to pursue a dream—to take
the Christian faith to every province of China . He
sailed to China in 1853, and it was he who founded the
Chefoo School in 1881.
He did not believe in public pleas
for money or elaborate recruiting drives. He believed
in God—and miraculous results.
“We do not expect God to send three
million missionaries to China ,” Hudson Taylor had
said, “but if He did, He would have ample means to
sustain them all.” Hudson Taylor founder the China
Inland Mission, and God sent a thousand
missionaries—and money to support them.
We Taylor children grew up on that
kind of faith. Our father was the third generation of
tailors preaching in China . It seemed only natural to
us when, in early 1940, Mother and Dad left us at the
Chefoo School and returned far into China to continue
their work. After all, it was China's war, Japan's
war. England and America were neutral.
I was 7 years old at the time. My
brother Johnny was 6.
On the morning of Dec. 8, 1941 , we
awoke to find Japanese soldiers stationed at every
gate of our school. They had posted notices on the
entrances: Under the control of the Naval Forces
of Great Japan . Their Shinto priests took over
our ballfield and performed some kind of rite and—just
like that!—the whole school belonged to the
Emperor.
There was reason enough for panic.
The breakfast-time radio reported the American fleet
in flames at Pearl Harbor and two British battleships
sunk off the coast of Malaya . When we opened the
school doors, Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets
blocked the entrance. Our headmaster was locked in
solitary confinement.
Throughout the month, Mr. Martin, the
Latin master, had been preparing a puppet show for the
school's Christmas program, and as far as he was
concerned the war was not going to stop Christmas. Mr.
Martin was like that. With his puppet dancing from its
strings, he went walking about the compound, in and
out among the children and Japanese sentries.
And the Japanese laughed. They were
human! The tension among the children eased after
that, for who could be truly terrified of a sentry who
could laugh at a puppet?
But with the anarchy of war, the
Chinese beyond our gates were starving. Thieves often
invaded the school compound at night, and, to our
teachers' horror, one morning we came downstairs to
find that all the girls' best overcoats had been
stolen. After that, the schoolmasters took turns
patrolling the grounds after dark, and our prep school
principal, Miss Ailsa Carr, and another teacher, Miss
Beatrice Stark started sleeping with hockey sticks
next to their beds.
* * *
Meanwhile, in Fenghsiang, 700 miles
away in northwest China , a Bible school student
interrupted a faculty meeting and pushed a newspaper
into my mother's hands. Giant Chinese characters
screamed the headlines: Pearl Harbor attacked! U.S.
enters war!
Mother was stunned. America at war!
She had visions of the Japanese war machine gobbling
her children—of Kathleen, Jamie, Mary and Johnny in
the clutches of the advancing armies. She knew the
stories of Japanese soldiers ravishing the women and
girls during the Japanese march on Nanking . Numb with
shock, she stumbled to the bedroom next door and fell
across the bed. Wave after wave of her sobs shock the
bed.
Then—it might have been a dream—she
heard the voice of Pat Ferguson, her minister back in
Wilkes-Barre , Pa. , speaking to her as he had when
she was a teenager, saying. “ Alice , if you look
after the things that are dear to God, He will look
after the things that are dear to you.”
In later years, she told the story a
hundred times.
“Peace settled around me,” she said.
“The terror was gone. We had an agreement, God and I:
I would look after the things that were dear to God,
and He would look after the things that were dear to
me. I could rest on that promise.”
In the years to come, she said, as
Japanese bombs fell around them and as armies marched
and mail trickled almost to nothing, “I knew that God
had children sheltered in His hand.”(to be
continued...)
