[Excerpts] ...

[...]

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 workforce as our school was a poor substitute in terms of manpower.

Other people who carried the work load realized that with our coming, [the Chefoo kids came when the Gripsholm folks left ...] 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.

[excerpts]

Even though our shoes were saved for the winter, by the last year some had to get by with layered cloth top nailed onto wooden soles.

Before long, shirts and pajamas were made from old curtains and mattress covers, and even blankets were cut up to make trousers.

“Prickly seat” became more common than prickly heat. Since tablecloths were rather out of place in camp and were a dispensable luxury, they were cut up for underwear. In a day when there was no such thing as colored underpants, I was glad I wasn’t the boy that had an embroidered wild rose right on the seat of his briefs.

Our teachers carried a heavy work load with the laundry since there was very little soap, and what there was, was very inferior. The brushes soon lost their bristles, and many a knuckle was bruised on the ribs of the washboards. White shirts became but a memory as no clothes were spared from the graying common to Weihsien garments. “Give us the soap, and we will finish the job” was an often heard slogan around the laundry tubs in a part of the hospital basement.

The laundry was one of our chores.

Three days a week a dawdling line of the younger children could be seen weaving its way back from the hospital to our rooms in Block 23, with basins of wet washing on our heads or in our arms.

One time I tripped and had to detour by the pump to give everything another rinse and wring out before delivering the goods to the teachers for hanging out on the line. Some days when we had to wait for the washing, a few of us who were either braver or more morbidly inclined would let our curiosity get the better of us. The laundry was near the camp morgue. When we knew there was a body in the morgue awaiting burial, we would lean in the small window at the back, and using a long stick to lift a corner of the sheet, see who it was that had died. The room was fairly dark with only the one small window, and one time, just as the stick was making contact with the sheet, a man opened the door and the edge of the sheet fluttered upward. We didn’t wait to see any more and took off without looking back.

[excerpts]

The boys and girls in the other schools set the tables and clean rooms.

Here the staff do their chores and spread bread. It is quite a business to clean your room before school in the mornings. We are also limited in the number of pieces of bread that we eat; the Preps eat nine a day. At supper they are allowed one every five minutes, and each is very particular that no one gets over his share.

We are having the most interesting meals, tou-fu (bean curd) in a large loaf for dinner. “Of course we see no fruit, though we have a lot of vegetables and often have raw cabbage and carrots for a salad.

I am sure that no one has talked so much about food for years. We spend absolutely no money outside the compound more than is really necessary. We are ripping up war knitting, scarves, etc., and making them into cardigans for the children. The staff are busy knitting stockings and other necessities.

[excerpts]

Every one of us in camp had our regular chores, from sweeping floors to peeling potatoes. Literally jammed in between all this we pursued our lessons on trunks and boxes round the walls of our all-in-one classroom-living-room-dining-room-bedroom.

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/hanquet/book/Memoires-TotaleUK-web.pdf

#