[excerpts] ...

... Ten days after our arrival in camp, the Commandant issued a decree that within 48 hours we were obliged to create nine committees, each of which would operate under the direction of a Japanese officer. These committees would then elect a member to serve on a council which would represent the interests of the entire community to the Japanese authorities, as well as to a delegate from the Swiss Council who made periodic visits to the camp.

Employing the democratic process in the election of committee members was, at this stage, clearly impractical. Virtually all of us were strangers to one another and, as such, had no intelligent basis on which to cast a vote for anyone. Hence the generally acknowledged or informal leaders of the four major groups in camp from Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtao and the Catholic clergy, would each appoint a member to sit on the nine committees. Later that year when we had had time to make acquaintances with our fellow internees’ regular elections were held.

These committees, presumably designed to care for all the needs of the camp, were designated General Affairs, Discipline, Labor, Education, Supplies, Housing or Quarters, Medical, Engineering and Finance.

Under their direction the entire camp was organized into a work force with every able-bodied individual, including youth, given an assignment. The internees themselves enforced the rules of their own making: If you’re not ill, you’d better be on the job and on time — “No work — No eat.” (Manicures didn’t last long in camp, and of course there was never any nail polish anyway!) On the registration form we had been required to fill out upon arrival, I, under the heading “work experience,” had indicated that I had worked part time as a cook in seminary. Hence I was appointed to one of the three camp kitchens. Christine’s assignment was helping to clean and prepare vegetables. With few conveniences or proper appliances, this chore took many hours each day. The task she most disliked was peeling and cutting leeks, especially in the winter when they were frozen. Her hands often became so numb that she couldn’t even tell when she’d cut a finger. And all of the women worked standing on a cement floor, often in an inch or two of water. That vegetable crew caught plenty of colds but not a lot of pneumonia so we were all blessed!

Since the preponderance of our camp population was drawn from the professional class, few had the practical skills required for the maintenance of this small city. Gratefully, however, among us was a sprinkling of crafts-men, artisans and skilled laborers versed in the arts of construction, masonry, carpentry, baking, plumbing, etc. These “masters” now began to school novices assigned to their work force. Professional engineers and skilled plumbers had soon trained a corps of apprentices who set about to provide a satisfactory solution to the monumental latrine and bath crises. A shower system was devised and operated by a gang of workers, whose labors with hand pumps sent water to a tower and provided a steady flow, though small at times, to bathers.

Among us were two professional bakers from Peking. Their first project was a 48-hour clinic to train all internees assigned to the bakery in the art of making bread. By the end of the session, these recruits were turning out 400 loaves a day. The bread always had a slightly sour taste, since beer hops was the only leavening agent available. At first we were also troubled by the presence of little black bits (weevils), which we carefully picked out of each slice of bread. But after about a week we didn’t even notice them. Perhaps they may have even provided some extra protein!

Few of us who arrived in camp that March had any recent acquaintance with the rigors of manual labor. Denizens of the expatriate world of business and commerce, for the most part, lived a life of shameless luxury surrounded by every imaginable comfort and a small army of Chinese servants to do their bidding. Even missionaries, many of whom had grown up on farms, employed servants in their homes in China. They had relinquished most labors involving physical exertion to coolies desperately in need of employment and with no means of survival other than that provided by human muscle. This also freed the wives for more time for teaching and mission work.

Now overnight under this new order, bank clerks, city administrators, missionaries and professors were turned into ditch diggers, carpenters, masons, stokers and hospital orderlies. The result was an epidemic of blistered hands, aching backs, sore muscles and tired feet. But undeniably there are rich benefits in subjecting the body to hard labor. Sleep comes easily at night when the body is fatigued, and the mind relaxes in the satisfying knowledge one has put in an “honest day’s work” In time, overweight businessmen and missionaries with pot-bellies and sagging jowls, were exhibiting a new trimness and muscle tone. One drug addict who entered Weihsien a virtual derelict gained weight, put on muscle and after a year was fit and rejuvenated. We all rejoiced in his rehabilitation, but his gaining several pounds on camp food made him an oddity.

Manual work is also a healthy leveler and a warm camaraderie grew between once stuffy professors, import executives, and green young missionaries who worked together in the hot sun building a latrine or dormitory extension.

One of the most pressing concerns in the early days of camp was continuing education for the children. After the entire faculty and student body of Chefoo (the China Inland Mission school for missionary children) arrived at Weihsien in the fall of ‘43, we had more than 400 youngsters under age 18 in our community.

Organizing classes for all the students, kindergarten through 12th grade (the responsibility of the education committee), was a Herculean task indeed. There were virtually no textbooks or equipment and the only regular classrooms on the compound were of necessity being used as dormitories. The dedication and resourcefulness of teachers and staff were a marvel to behold. Yet, regular classes continued until our liberation, and three classes of seniors actually took the Oxford Matriculation Exam.

Many of the students in Chefoo boarding school, when war broke out, were separated from their parents. The teachers were more than ever now not only instructors but surrogate parents, a responsibility they did not take lightly. This noble corps of missionaries resolved that even in prison camp, under the most appalling conditions, they would not relax standards of decorum and good breeding one whit.

Mary Taylor Previte, the great granddaughter of CIM founder, Hudson Taylor, and her brother, James (later general director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship), were Chefoo high scholars who also became “Weihsienites.” She recalls, “Our Chefoo teachers never watered down the standards for learning or decorum. There wasn’t one set of standards for the outside world, they said, and another set for concentration camps. You could be eating the most awful glop out of a tin can or a soap dish, but you were to be as refined as the royalty who lived in Buckingham Palace. The rules were clear: sit up straight, don’t stuff food into your mouth, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t drink when you have food in your mouth, keep your voices down, and don’t complain. After all, in kitchen number one where we ate, Saint Paul and Emily Post ranked almost equal. We heard Saint Paul over and over again, `... for I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.’ We were God’s representatives in this concentration camp, our teachers said, and God was not represented well by rudeness.”

‘ Mary Taylor Previte, “Legacy of Trust,” East Asia Millions, November-December 1985, Pages 102-104.

Children and youth were not the only students at Weihsien camp. Among the internees were distinguished professors from a dozen or more schools in east China, enough to staff a whole university. Why not, then, have evening classes for adults? Courses were offered in a number of languages, theology, bookkeeping, art, marketing, woodworking, first aid, even sailing. Among our professors were some of the finest Chinese scholars in the world, most notably Dr. Hugh Hubbard of the American Board Mission; Dr. Wilder, a Congregational missionary; and our friend, Dr. J. D. Hayes, a Presbyterian principal of the Peking Language School. Eager to get on with our language study, Christine enrolled in Conversational Chinese and Character Writing while I studied Introduction to Literary Chinese and Newspaper Chinese. Regrettably the zeal with which we first embarked upon this venture diminished as the months passed. Suffering from malnutrition, we found that after putting in a full day’s work at our regular assignments, teachers and students alike lacked energy for the demands of these academic endeavors. After about six months the adult education program was allowed to lapse.

During our years in camp, news from the outside world came to us principally from three sources. The first was the Peking Chronicle, an English language newspaper which old subscribers among the internees continued to receive. Under the Japanese puppet regime this paper was strictly a propaganda vehicle with regular “news” of the U.S. fleet being dispatched to the bottom of the Pacific. It did, however, serve one invaluable purpose. The progress of Allied Forces could easily be charted by noting names of Pacific Islands in which the Imperial Forces had enjoyed their most recent “triumph” The successive mention of the Marshall Islands, Manila, Iwo Jima and Okinawa told us of our troops’ approach to Japan. And when the Chronicle reported “thousands of Allied bombers being shot down over Japan,” we felt certain that the end of the war was near.

A more reliable source of news was a fellow internee, a White Russian, who was a skilled radio technician and called upon to keep radios of Japanese officers in repair. After fixing the radios, he of course “tested” them and in the process was able to glean regular war news from Allied shortwave broadcasts.

The third source of information was the coolies who almost daily entered the compound to haul away garbage and empty the reeking cesspools. These gentlemen, for obvious reasons, were given a wide berth by our guards. Significant news from Chinese guerilla bands in the area was carried into camp by these couriers, in their nostrils, mouths or concealed in the loathsome night soil kangs (drums).

As internees brought garbage to the coolies at the bins located in each housing area, small wads of paper bearing the precious inscriptions were surreptitiously transferred. Letters were also smuggled out of camp in airtight metal containers dropped into a barrel of fresh sewage!

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