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Committees were formed and I was named to the General Affairs Section.

The children eventually went to school under the German sisters from Tsingtao. Groups from Peking, Tientsin, and all parts of North China brought our total number in the course of days to 1,800. Three kitchens fed the mob and general and decided dissatisfaction prevailed to the end over the poor and scanty amounts of food provided by the enemy administration. Sanitary condit ions became appalling, work became heavier, for we were compelled to do all phases of heavy duty: ditch digging, pumping water, clearing away tons of garbage, carrying flour, all baking and cooking, carrying supplies, hauling coal, and minor brick construction work attached to rooms and chimneys. We had our own carpenter and iron repair shops and forged our own materials for various uses around Camp.

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Elden was usually up first, starting our outside fire, a communitybuilt affair of mud and bricks. The rest of us arose in time to dress for roll call, before which I often had fifteen or twenty diapers and other things washed and hanging on the line. My wife, Lois, was in bed for two and a half months with pleurisy, but as she gained strength she took over some of the washing and ironing in the morning hours. The guard appeared and one of us simply told him the number of people in our small compound of five rooms, after which he disappeared, much to our peace of mind. Having our own stock of cereals and eggs, we never went to the community dining hall for the usual breakfast of bread porridge, but prepared our own, and in good weather ate outside in the fresh air.

The girls collected dishes, Marian (Mrs. E.C. Whipple) or Elden started washing them, and sometimes I came in for the drying. Our central living day ’dining room came next for the sweeping and mopping, and our two bed rooms were set in order before Elden went off to work in the carpenter shop or to pump water, while I chased off to headquarters. Marian collected bottles and bag, and journeyed to the hospital for the days ’ supply of eggs and milk, paid for by the internees. When she became strong enough, Lois continued with house work, though the baby took up most of her time. I moved around in my capacity as a General Affairs Committee member, from canteen to shoe shop to library, putting in a nail here for the ladies in the sewing room, or scrounging a box from the rear of the canteen to make additional shoe shelves for our industrious and capable Flemish Catholic shoe repairers.

Elden served more nobly on the Music Committee. “ Thus noon came upon us and we consumed weak soup, a little potatoes (rare), a little meat, and a little tsai ” (vegetable) in some sort of gravy, supplemented with baked bread, in munity dining hundred others, The dishes, our own, our own the comroom, with eight plus uncounted flies ! were washed outside by the faithful ladies, and we returned home for a brief rest. Elden and I resumed our appointed tasks in the afternoon, returning for tea. Elden ’ s brew of black tea always tasted so good that some friends from different parts of camp came daily at that hour to see us! Music practice, baseball, or making coal balls out of coal dust and mud took up the rest of the afternoon.

Supper, the youngsters brought back from the community kitchen in kettles, and we enjoyed (but for the flies) this meal outside also. The dishes washed and the children in bed, Elden and Marian went off to visit Mr. and Mrs. McNeil of the Nat ional Bible Society of Scotland, while Lois tended the baby and read, and I watered the garden; or we all went to a concert.

We usually turned in for the night about ten o ’ clock, after coffee or some drink and sandwiches, unless we had business at the wall, in which case we retired about half an hour later! So ended the day!

[further reading]
http://weihsien-paintings.org/books/HeritageOfFaith/WhippleWWII(web).pdf

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