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As people realized that internment could go on for a long time and that the quality of camp life depended on their own efforts, they got down to work. The Japanese limited their own involvement in the internal work of the camp, stating that their two responsibilities were to see that none escaped and to supply coal and wood for cooking and heating and “adequate” food.

Adequate was an overstatement, as their basis for calculation was quantities for two meals a day. Weihsien was really a world in microcosm with at least fifteen nationalities represented. The majority were families associated with foreign business enterprises, but the largest occupational group were missionaries, belonging to various Protestant mission boards or denominations. There were 400 Roman Catholic priests and nuns, although all but 30 of the priests were transferred to Peking not long after our arrival. Their going was a great loss to the camp work force as our school was a poor substitute in terms of manpower. Other people who carried the work load realized that with our coming, the ratio of children to the total camp population had risen to about one child to two adults, entailing heavier duties for older people. But since we were all civilians, we fared better than the military POWs.

We were even given freedom to organize our own activities, being for all practical purposes a self-governing community, with committees elected by internees. Camp was managed by nine committees: Supplies, Quarters, Employment, Engineering, Discipline, Medical, Education, General Affairs, and Finance. The senior ruling body in camp was called the Discipline Committee. The chairman was Ted McLaren of Butterfield and Swire, a British business concern with a long history in China. That committee was made up of a number of business people and missionaries, including some of our own staff. They were the group who spoke on behalf of the camp to the Japanese rulers and also were our mouthpiece to talk with Mr. Egger, the Swiss Consul, who was given permission on rare occasions to visit the camp.

Every able-bodied person was given regular work to do. In the kitchen most people worked a twelve-hour day shift and then had two days off. Many of the older boys took turns at pumping water up into the water tower for the camp supply. We younger children did things such as transporting water from one side of camp to the other and carrying the washing, which our teachers had tried to scrub clean, often without soap or brushes. We also sifted through the ash heaps to try and find pieces of coke or unburned coal, and gathered sticks and anything else that would burn, to try to keep warm through the winter. Undetected by the teachers or Japanese soldiers, we sometimes sneaked into the Japanese part of the compound and climbed the tall trees looking for dead twigs or branches.

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