The Japanese opened the camp at Weihsien in March 1943. Dorothy, John and their children did not arrive there until a fine October morning in 1943. Their arrival coincided with the departure of 450 Roman Catholic Clergy and Nuns to Peking (Beijing) and the repatriation of 250 Americans and Canadians to New York. At the same time, there was an influx of some 400 teachers and children from the China Inland Mission. They had arrived at the tail end of the monsoon and the ground was one mass of mud. They had however, missed the heavy rains, when some walls collapsed, roofs leaked so that water poured into kitchens, dining rooms and many of the dormitories. To add to the misery, Dorothy could not help noticing that the accommodation consisted of row upon row of dismal-looking huts.
The weather during the summer was unbelievably hot and accompanied by blinding sandstorms from the Gobi Desert. Winters were freezing with fierce snowstorms. The small coal stoves were insufficient. Nightly, ice formed on the washbasins and buckets and had to be broken each morning. During the morning winter roll calls, Dorothy and her family wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together for warmth. The Japanese guards wore greatcoats and knee-high leather boots, whilst the prisoners wrapped their feet in rags.
The grounds of the camp contained several large dormitories, some for schoolboys and single men, and some for schoolgirls and teachers. There were also rows of motel-like huts reserved for married couples with very young children. Dorothy, John and their youngest child, Sally, lived in one of these and their parents occupied a similar unit. Philip was placed in a male dormitory and Marjorie in another for schoolgirls. It was an easy walk for Philip and Marjorie to visit their parents and grandparents. The camp was huge, with few able-bodied men and women to cope with the hard work of feeding and managing fifteen hundred to two thousand people of all types: 'As in our little Chefoo compound,' Dorothy writes, 'every person had a job to do. The doctors and nurses worked in the hospital as aids, as did the girls. The young men 17 to 24 worked as cooks, the women who could sew, sewed. Some women did the hospital laundry; the men were bakers and yeast makers and vegetable cleaners. The more robust men hauled coal or vegetables from the gateway of the camp into the kitchens. The gates were always kept locked and guarded.'
A wall surrounded the camp with watchtowers at intervals and electrically charged barbed wire secured on top. Unfortunately, one of the students jumped up and grabbed a live wire; he was convulsed with shock and died, a dreadful sight for everyone. On another occasion, there was a great deal of excitement when two lads in their early twenties escaped. The rumour was that they joined up with a local Chinese warlord. Rations were cut immediately, guards were doubled and roll calls became more stringent. After about a month, everything went back to 'normal'.
For a time, John sliced bread and guarded the bakery against rats while keeping an eye on the stocks of coal and wood lest they be stolen and hoarded by fellow prisoners. It was surprising what a lot of stealing went on.
A sport the boys enjoyed was catching rats, using the old trick of an upside-down pail baited with food. Rats were trapped by pulling a string. They swapped rat-tails with guards, and kept the dining area free of flies by killing hundreds. These efforts were rewarded with tins of fish or corned beef, all with British or American labels. The internees ate in the mess halls at long tables sitting on benches. At meal times the food was doled out by the women on duty at the time, so much stew, gravy, a slice of bread and a mug of tea. The bread was often sour with weevils here and there. If you accidentally ate one they added to the sour taste but usually everyone fished them out. The meat was frequently so high that it was noticeable some distance away even if a lot of pepper had been added. After the meal, the dishes were given a wash of a kind in a big jar of hot water.
In the camp, plumbing was non-existent. Every morning there was a slop parade and containers would be emptied into a round hole about twelve feet in diameter, the smell from which was disgusting. As it was not fenced off in any way and was situated where the main paths crossed, it was a wonder that only one small child fell in who for ever afterwards bore the name 'Cesspool Dannie'. The latrines around the camp were emptied daily by Chinese coolies, the precious night soil being taken away and used as manure on the fields. These coolies came and went past the guards at the gate who never gave them a second look. They were dirty, humble, and doing a filthy, smelly job.
Dorothy remembers an occasion when one of the coolies, as he came in at the gate, threw down a cigarette stub which was promptly snatched up by a priest who happened to be loafing about nearby, to the sneering amusement of the guards: 'A European so crazy for a cigarette that he can pick one up that a dirty coolie threw away.'
Dorothy believed that this seizure of cigarette stubs happened every now and then. What the Japanese guards did not discover was that the 'cigarette' was a rolled-up scrap of paper with minute writing giving news of the war, sent by a priest from Eire who had an illicit radio outside the wall from which he listened to the latest news. Some time after Dorothy and her family had been freed and came to Canada she learnt that these news items were posted on the wall of the men's washroom, but no one ever mentioned it. The Japanese Commandant assured the committee representing the internees that they would be informed as soon as there was a victory for either side, but he never offered the information. Initially, all prisoners lived on rumours but eventually gave up listening to them altogether.
The food at Weihsien camp did not compare with the food at Chefoo, as it was often stale or even rotten. It was not altogether surprising as the Japanese bought all the stores and food themselves, which, Dorothy presumed, was brought by truck to the camp gates from where the 'robust' men hauled them to the kitchens on little carts. The Japanese in charge never interfered with the running of the camp. Their instructions and orders were delivered through the discipline committee, of three British and two Americans. The guards were only seen at roll call twice daily and on the watchtowers.
Dorothy, John and their youngest child, Sally, who was then six, lived in room 13 / 8, one of the ten by twelve feet former students' rooms. This whole compound had been a college run by the US Missionary Society. Their other two children, Marjorie and Philip, were in room 61 / 9 in the attic of the hospital building, with other Chefoo schoolchildren, where they all slept, were schooled and played when the weather was too bad to go out. They just had a mattress each to sit and to sleep on. The whole camp was infested with bedbugs and sleep, even for a child, was constantly being broken by these pests. Everyone did their best to keep them at bay but never succeeded in getting rid of them altogether. Considering the poor food, the cold in winter when everything froze, and the extreme heat in the summer which brought forth mosquitoes, even more bedbugs and rats, nearly everyone had reasonable health.
There was always the threat of malaria. Mosquito nets were a necessity and were dropped over the beds at dusk and rolled up in the morning. Bugs and ticks hid in the crevices and corners of the nets and bedding. The morning ritual was to squash and eliminate these pests. Ticks were ferocious, and attached themselves to bare skin by sucking blood. Dorothy used to get rid of them with a lit cigarette. Unfortunately, John suffered from malaria and often had to be carried to the hospital by anyone kind and strong enough to use a stretcher. The food in the hospital was better than that in the kitchen mess halls, but meagre. There were several good doctors from Peking, Chefoo and Tientsin. Twenty-seven babies were born in camp.
Children got four ounces of milk a day until their seventh birthday; newly born babies and their mothers got orange juice as well as milk. Before lunch and dinner started everyone queued up stoically, in an orderly fashion. Any child who could be persuaded to take it was given a teaspoon of calcium made of hand-crushed eggshells. The lady serving would give each child a crust of bread to help force the eggshells down their throat. Those who dared to take it choked badly as it tasted disgusting. Enough protein was another problem for children. They seemed to be able to obtain lots of chicken and sometimes pork from local farmers, but when Philip enquired what they were actually eating Dorothy would wink and make the whinny sound of a horse. Bread pudding was the camp 'favourite'. It was described in many ways and was doled out at just about every meal. The recipe consisted of taking stale bread, cutting off the telltale rat's teeth marks and mouldy bits, and soaking it in water overnight. The mixture was then heated and served. If a few raisins were added it became bread pudding or, if baked, it became scones or muffins. Dorothy and John had no rats in their room, only tiny mice which Dorothy hated to catch in their homemade trap; but there were rats in the bread room and they would gnaw a hole right through rows of loaves of bread from one narrow end to the other. Now and then they were given millet or cornmeal or soya bean gruel. If anyone was ill, they got the best care possible.
Clothes and shoes were a problem for all, but especially shoes for the growing children, so they were passed along the line from one to another until they eventually fell to pieces. Shoes that were too small had the toe caps cut out so they did for a while longer. The paths were mostly covered in cinder and painful to walk on in bare feet but the bigger children got used to it. They all did their best to wear shoes to church services but this was not always possible. The services were held on Sunday in the assembly hall by each denomination in turn, from early morning to dusk, and were well attended.
In camp there was supposed to be electricity but frequently it faded out, so most people made candles from scraps of candle wax or would use peanut oil lamps, which gave a tiny light, not bright enough to read by but better than nothing. Each room had a stove which burned 'coal balls' in the winter. These balls were made by mixing a certain amount of coal dust, clay and water to a stiff paste, rolling them into neat balls as big as a large egg, which were either dried in the summer sun or frozen in winter, then brought inside and stacked in each room until required.
The bed which Dorothy shared with her daughter was raised by five bricks beneath each leg, thus making room for coal, kindling wood, a box or two and the basin, jug and water pail. When they first arrived in camp, John asked for boards to make shelves but was told he had to scrounge for anything he needed. So they both walked with eyes on the ground looking for anything that could be put to use. On one occasion Dorothy found a piece of wire from which she made herself a pair of hair pins. Bits of paper, nails, wood shavings were all salvaged. The Anglican Clergy were all competent carpenters since in peacetime they were frequently given a poor parish where the locals did not know how to use wood, so the clergymen would teach them. Among the clergy was Eric Liddell, the Olympic 400 metre champion in 1924 in Paris. He had taught at the Anglo-Chinese School in Tientsin, married in March 1934 and had three daughters who together with his wife he sent to Canada in 1941 to avoid capture by the Japanese. Regrettably he died on 21st February 1945 of a brain tumour and typhoid while in Weihsien where he spent four years and was buried outside the gates of the Camp. He was a hero and an inspiration to all the camp members.
There was a lot for the clergy to do in the camp. Mending roofs, floors, doors and windows, making benches and other tasks. One of the men from the Chinese Inland Mission was a good cobbler so was kept extremely busy. Cigarettes were used as currency and everyone was issued a certain number per person and if anyone wanted more then they had to be willing to earn them by doing a lot of extra jobs. Those who did not smoke, like the Missionaries, traded their cigarettes for extra food which they gave to the children. The canteens stocked the occasional potato or onion, peanut oil and peanuts. Cabbage, turnips, carrots and an evil-like grain called gaug Jiang, were sometimes available from local farmers. Flour was delivered regularly and Red Cross parcels and 'Care Packages' from German and Italian friends who stayed out of the conflict with Japan, supplemented their diet. Dried apricots or persimmons and soap were issued to everyone, one cake of white soap for laundry and one of pink to wash with per person per month.
No one had time to be bored after the daily chores were done at home as there was always something happening: glee clubs, lectures, plays, concerts, street dances and language study, business classes or games or walks. The children had Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides after school. School classes were held wherever convenient. In spite of a great shortage of writing material, students passed the Oxford and Cambridge Matric Exams satisfactorily. The papers were based on exams of several years earlier and were actually forwarded through the Japanese officials to the proper destination, as were the results. There was both an adult and a children's library well run by volunteers. Children both young and old spent much of their free time running treasure hunts. Secret messages with clues were hidden all over the camp. Teams found and decoded the messages, dashing on to the next clue. Children also had daily communal activities: forming briquettes, cooking, pumping water, cleaning latrines and washing laundry. Laundry could not be hung out to dry if it could be seen from beyond the walls in case they were sending out signals. On a few occasions, young officers in sportswear would 'coach' them in Ju Jitsu. They were polite and gentle.
Apart from the watchtowers and electrified barbed wire, the camp was carefully guarded by armed patrols, searchlights and Alsatian dogs, trained to kill. Most of the guards were militia or retired policemen. No signs of cruelty were shown. Young children of all ages raced over the camp playing hide-and-seek, hunting for treasure and, of course, playing Cowboys and Indians.
There must have been some system for the inmates of the camp to obtain money; Dorothy assumes people sold gold cufflinks or tiepins or any such things of value, whatever they had which the Chinese were prepared to buy. This trading was strictly forbidden by the Japanese and if discovered the punishment would be severe.
Bartering required great patience, a knowledge of Chinese and enormous cheek. All these talents were present in the person of a certain Father Scanlan, an Australian Trappist Monk, who became a legend in the camp. Father Scanlan himself composed rhymes and songs about his exploits. He could not bear to see little children in the camp with too little nourishing food to eat and traded with the Chinese peasants over the wall to improve their lot. This he did in an organised way; he moved his camp bed out of his room into the opening near the wall.
One night when he had just collected some food from the Chinese and was waiting for an opportunity to hand it over to his friends in camp, the Japanese sentry passed and asked why he was sitting there. 'I am reading my prayer book.'
'How can you read in the dark?'
Father Scanlan replied that if he tilted the book toward the sky he could see by the shape of the page where he was in his prayers and could go on from there.
The sentry said 'You are a queer teacher,' and went away. However, he was caught with the food eventually and taken away and locked up in the guardhouse in the Japanese end of the compound. Father Scanlan made a point of praying and singing hymns and psalms very loudly at all hours of the night. When the guards objected, he replied that he was a priest and his duty was to pray and praise God by day and night. He had been sentenced to several weeks of solitary confinement, but the noise he made was more than the Commandant could bear and in ten days, he was released. The whole camp rejoiced and thronged about him as he was led to his quarters by the Salvation Army Band.
One of the best things about the camp community was a great spirit of friendliness and co-operation. Nationality, race, creed or class made little difference: 'We all helped each other when we could, whether it was pumping or carrying pails of water, helping with the wash, mending or lending the one and only food grinder for the peanut butter.' Dorothy's job was helping in the 'Elephant Bell' shop, so-called because it was a cross between a White Elephant and a Camel Bell Antique Shop where clothes or anything else could be exchanged for goods or cash. It was like a rummage sale but less exciting, held each Saturday morning. Baby clothes used to come back again and again as one baby outgrew the things and another became big enough to wear them. No one ironed their clothes except perhaps for a wedding, of which there were two or three. Clothes were drip-dried in the sun or in the rooms near to the stoves. Wooden washtubs could be bought in the canteen and Dorothy did her washing outside even in cold weather. Hot water had to be carried from quite a distance, one pail per family, and rationed a bucket a day.
There was a variety of nationalities imprisoned in Weihsien: British, Americans, a few Russian and a few Chinese who had British or American passports, and a smattering of French, Australian, New Zealanders and everyone from the C.I.M. School: students, teachers, some missionaries and support staff. Their luckiest catch of all was an American Dance band made up of African American musicians from the Tientsin Country Club. Concerts were held in which everyone who had played in an orchestra took part. Several of the Roman Catholic nuns were violinists, the Anglican Bishop played the cello, there were several good pianists and the Salvation Army Brass Band and the jazz orchestra from the Peking Hotel for dancing. There were good voices too, many trained, others just liked to sing. At Christmas and Easter there were Cantatas, and for the children a pantomime. Dick Whittington was staged during the holidays and the nuns put on a pageant in which every single child in camp was given a part as an angel, a shepherd or one of the crowd. If the electricity failed for any performance people were asked to bring peanut-oil lamps; a large number of these 'footlights' helped to lighten the gloom if not to light the stage. Costumes were a problem, but an amusing one. To gain entry everyone had to bring something: a coal briquette, sugar, beans, rice, possibly tinned food, and always a candle or oil-lamp to light the stage.
For the average, healthy family, life in camp was varied by all these many means. But for the very old or sick, existence was truly dreadful. One sickly old Indian gentleman, Mr Talati, who owned apartment houses, a hotel and some silk shops, was offered a chance to leave camp if he renounced his British citizenship. He replied that he had become wealthy under the British and he certainly was not going to change at this point.
After Italy decided to join the allies, the Italian population of North China were taken into internment camps; the Japanese segregated them in case the other inmates abused them. What in fact happened when the Italians were put into Weihsien camp was that some of the Roman Catholic priests went to all the houses to borrow the things that the new arrivals would need: basins, jugs, dishes, spoons and knives, pots and pans. Everyone lent what they could and though the Italians kept to themselves there was never any trouble in the camp; in fact, people went out of their way to make life easier for them.
During the internment, Weihsien was a self-governed camp under the scrutiny of the Japanese captors. Committees were formed to organize every aspect of prison life. Several camp-appointed men who reported directly to the Japanese commandant, headed these committees. They determined the rules of camp life and meted out punishment for those who disobeyed the rules. Most prisoners were willing to do their part and look after health issues: food, hygiene, rations, kitchens, hospital matters, sanitation, education, social events and activities. The Japanese wanted nothing to do with running the camp and were mainly concerned with roll call - which went on endlessly - to determine that no one had escaped. Nevertheless, rumours and messages about the progress of the war were brought to them in many ways such as the 'bamboo radio', reports hidden in food supplies brought into the camp by coolies, and 'honey dippers' who slipped tiny notes on silk rolled into prophylactics to the black marketeers; these messages had been hidden in every orifice.
The messages did not fill the gap of reliable news about what was happening in the rest of the world. What little other news reached the prisoners mostly came in the form of Japanese propaganda, which no one believed.
In 1944, after the heat of the summer, they were back again to monsoon weather of foul-smelling, slippery mud and by the end of the year another freezing winter. The food shortage got worse. Prisoners suffered illnesses, including typhoid, scarlet fever and malaria. Weight loss was dramatic and most adults weighed under one hundred pounds. Children were not developing properly. When babies' teeth appeared, they grew in without enamel and young girls did not menstruate. People were starving and malnourished and thievery increased, so additional guards were employed. All suffered alike. Clothes were worn-out and threadbare, winter clothing no longer kept out the freezing cold. Some of the women made men's pants out of blankets, which didn't last long.
Outside the camp, a hidden radio in the town was broadcasting news of the progress of the war. These reports were given to Father Scanlon. Stories and rumours were rampant throughout the camp. It was rumoured that the war was coming to an end and they learned that their gaolers had been given orders to shoot all prisoners if the war did not end in the Japanese favour. As the 40s rolled by, the rumours of allied victories were on more and more lips. The guards appeared sullen. Then in 1945 the story of A-bombs filtered into the camp.
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The weather during the summer was unbelievably hot and accompanied by blinding sandstorms from the Gobi Desert. Winters were freezing with fierce snowstorms. The small coal stoves were insufficient. Nightly, ice formed on the washbasins and buckets and had to be broken each morning. During the morning winter roll calls, Dorothy and her family wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together for warmth. The Japanese guards wore greatcoats and knee-high leather boots, whilst the prisoners wrapped their feet in rags.
A wall surrounded the camp with watchtowers at intervals and electrically charged barbed wire secured on top. Unfortunately, one of the students jumped up and grabbed a live wire; he was convulsed with shock and died, a dreadful sight for everyone. On another occasion, there was a great deal of excitement when two lads in their early twenties escaped. The rumour was that they joined up with a local Chinese warlord. Rations were cut immediately, guards were doubled and roll calls became more stringent. After about a month, everything went back to 'normal'.
In the camp, plumbing was non-existent. Every morning there was a slop parade and containers would be emptied into a round hole about twelve feet in diameter, the smell from which was disgusting. As it was not fenced off in any way and was situated where the main paths crossed, it was a wonder that only one small child fell in who for ever afterwards bore the name 'Cesspool Dannie'. The latrines around the camp were emptied daily by Chinese coolies, the precious night soil being taken away and used as manure on the fields. These coolies came and went past the guards at the gate who never gave them a second look. They were dirty, humble, and doing a filthy, smelly job.
Dorothy, John and their youngest child, Sally, who was then six, lived in room 13 / 8, one of the ten by twelve feet former students' rooms. This whole compound had been a college run by the US Missionary Society. Their other two children, Marjorie and Philip, were in room 61 / 9 in the attic of the hospital building, with other Chefoo schoolchildren, where they all slept, were schooled and played when the weather was too bad to go out. They just had a mattress each to sit and to sleep on. The whole camp was infested with bedbugs and sleep, even for a child, was constantly being broken by these pests. Everyone did their best to keep them at bay but never succeeded in getting rid of them altogether. Considering the poor food, the cold in winter when everything froze, and the extreme heat in the summer which brought forth mosquitoes, even more bedbugs and rats, nearly everyone had reasonable health.