[Excerpts] ...

[...]

Everything was based on or mirrored England, including the Tianjin Grammar School, run and administered by Englishmen and based on the British educational system. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon British children used the Grammar School as a feeder for the years of `going home [i.e. England] to school’; the other British used it as a copy of the public schools they could never aspire to, and it served other nationalities who were to be inculcated into the British way of thinking. The standard curriculum, with examinations leading to Cambridge University’s school certificate, which were held each December, was used in all schools. The pupils of the Tianjin Grammar School, British and foreign alike, started the day with prayers from the Book of Common Prayer and sang Hymns from Ancient and Modern, the school song was `Forty Years On’, so drummed into me, time and time again, that seventy-five years later I can still remember the words.

[excerpt] ...

Chinese students at mission schools run for Chinese children followed the same curriculum. This was guided by a principle unchanged for nearly a century: give these boys (girls were always an afterthought) a solid education in their language and in ours – English. Instruct them in the British system and bind them by a link that could not easily be severed. American mission schools taught an American curriculum and other countries generally applied a similar philosophy. The Chinese realised that the only universally recognised datum of achievement was English and the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate, thus, due to demand, a curriculum based on achieving that aim was increasingly adopted in French, Irish, Dutch and German-run Roman Catholic Mission schools, as well as the Protestant mission schools, although these latter were few and far between.

[excerpt] ...

The first few weeks we lived in Weihsien was a period of adjustment for everyone. I ran around freely with little parental supervision and played with the children living in and around the neighbouring blocks; in fact, those first three months I tended not to wander too much from our room. The organising of schools was put into the `difficult’ tray, it was going to be too hot and there was no obvious building to use.

[excerpt] ...

When the school started again in September the question of `where’ raised its head. The hospital was a proper hospital now and an alternative venue was needed. As the Church was only occupied on Sundays, it was deemed that the Church pews would be suitable. So I started again under Miss Rudd, who retained her ability to trip one up with her walking stick, but had now added the ability to lift one up by the hair if one was being exceptionally thick or obstructive. Each class was allocated two rows of pews with two more rows between each class. It just did not work, as we told the officiating adults, but the views of young boys that run contrary to those of adults are generally discarded. The noise of voices went down to the altar, whilst the voice of the preacher went up to the back.

Teachers working at one end of the pews could not be heard at the other end.

That experiment lasted three weeks before it was officially accepted that it was bedlam and declared, `Good idea but failed.’ Thus us kids were back on the `streets’ again.

[excerpt] ...

But before the Church School idea had happened, sports had started to be organised by everyone. Softball was played by most.

The Catholic priests fielded several teams, some of which were very good, probably as they were Americans and had been playing softball all their lives.

The remaining nuns formed another team.

The adults and children over twelve played theirs in the big field near to the Church, whilst those younger played in the small South Field.

We also invented a game generally played in the light summer evenings on the main sports field: two teams were chosen and each team had a `home’ in the penalty `D’ of the hockey markings. The idea was to get `home’ while the opposite team had to try and stop you, and if they did you were taken back as a prisoner and had to hold on to the previous prisoner. If one of your own team cut the prisoners’ line, all those freed prisoners started again. It occupied us all for a couple of hours, made sure we were tired when we went to bed, and in spite of fights, arguments and occasional cheating we enjoyed the diversion very much.

[excerpt] ...

One thing that most of the families did was to subscribe to the Peking Chronicle, an English-language newspaper printed in Beijing, and edited by a German editorial team. Reading it through one could estimate the progress of the war. It, however, had a far more essential function when torn into small squares — toilet paper was as ever in short supply. We boys often did not have the time or inclination to go back to our huts to get some and, while definitely avoiding stinging nettles, tended to use softish leaves, equally good to our minds.

[excerpt] ...

On 9th September 1943 trucks came in the front gate bringing prospective internees.

There were boys and girls, some younger than me, and a few teenagers, accompanied by adults: all in all a total of 200. We soon learnt that they were members and staff from the China Inland Mission School at Chefoo. They had previously been confined to the school premises, Temple Hill, Yantai (Chefoo), and had left Chefoo a couple of days earlier by a tramp steamer to sail round the coast to Qingdao, and then a four-hour train journey to Weihsien.

The schoolchildren were moved into Blocks 23 and 24, just vacated by the nuns.

The married teachers, especially those with children, were allocated hut rooms rather like ours.

[excerpt] ...

By now the teaching staff of the Chefoo School had got themselves organised. They decreed that as they were an intact complete boarding school, and that they, the teachers, were responsible for other people’s children, Chefoo School should try to continue as it had before in Yantai. And, as before, there would be no fraternisation with children of `commercial’ parents — social classes would be kept separate. To a large extent, this was already the de facto position: the Chefoo scholars had been strutting around as though they owned the world. An attitude that did not settle well with those who had been in Weihsien six months longer.

Grubby fists came into play, and the missionary children were taught the facts, but this, of course, drove them into the hands of their teachers, who were the instigators of the `separation’ in the first place. The only exception would be on the sports field, with supervised games. This policy was imposed strictly by Chefoo schoolteachers. I frankly thought that they were being idiotic, but gradually the real reason behind it all emerged: the Chefoo teachers felt that schools like Tianjin Grammar School and Beijing American School had too many Catholics, and even people of mixed race, and that the purity of their Protestant charges was endangered.

I always found this attitude difficult to understand, because they were forever emphasising that they were missionary teachers, loving everyone. Like all stupid policies, it would not last and was finally overturned eighteen months later.

[excerpt] ...

Even I could understand the concern Mum had about clothes, as both Roger and I were rapidly growing out of ours. While swapping or getting given items for Roger, now a two-year-old, was relatively easy, my age made it another matter.

Boys are never very caring of their clothes, and I was no different: the needle and thread was in constant use, and it became necessary to unpick knitted garments so they could be re-knitted into a larger size. I was living too rough a life for clothes to have much life in them, and previous owners had been much the same. Climbing trees, buildings, and squirrelling under barbed wire fences was not the same as sitting ‘quietly’ on a hard school bench.

[excerpt] ...

As June 1945 dawned, my friends and I remained totally without discipline, as the heat and lack of food rendered the adults lethargic. Those blackboards once destined for the school, and which hadn’t proved of much use, as there was no chalk, had all ended up burnt as firewood. So no chance of lessons. Paper and pencils were unobtainable.

The Chefoo School, though, functioned as normal, and still considered themselves above us ‘town urchins’; they maintained their self-proclaimed status as superior ‘public schoolboys’. To prove our superiority in all things mischievous, several of us conceived a cunning plan. There were several cesspits in camp, which were emptied by Chinese coolies allowed in for the purpose. One of the American children, one Art Kelly, had fallen into a cesspit early on. Fortunately, his sister had seen the accident and had called their mother, who got him out, but he stank for days and had to live with the name ‘Smelly Kelly’ for the rest of the war.

After this, wooden covers were made and fitted over all the cesspits. But the incident had given us an idea.

One cesspit, near the hospital, was not far from one of the paths that went round inside the walls of the camp, along which the Japanese guards patrolled at night. The path was defined by white-painted stones so the guard could see the way. In the twilight one evening, several of us got together and moved the white stones, diverting the path from its original trajectory, which bypassed the cesspit, so now it defined a gentle curve straight towards it. We removed the covering boards too. We imagined the guard’s face when he stumbled and fell, and thought the incident would be very funny. It was only a pity that we would be back in our huts with our parents if the plan came to fruition, but nevertheless it had been fun to do, and not that easy to move the stones without being seen. I went back to our hut and had supper of soup and a crust. Then I went to bed and forgot all about the cesspit and the path, as I think most of us did.

Next morning I woke to the sound of Dad shouting in annoyance. Apparently, he had gone across to collect breakfast to find the Kitchen in uproar. I was surprised, for he seldom got really cross, but I was not long kept in the dark.

‘Ronald, did you or your friends have anything to do with moving the stones on the path by the hospital?’ he demanded at once.

I was not quite sure how to reply, so stayed quiet. Were you involved?’ he said again, suspiciously.

‘What stones? Mum put in, giving me a chance to stay silent.
‘Those white stones that outline the path for people to see at night,’ Dad explained.
‘Well, what happened?’ Mum inquired as she dished out our millet porridge, but for once I had lost my appetite.
‘Those white stones were moved so that the path, instead of running past the cesspit went straight into it,’ Dad told her, ‘and the boards were removed as well.’
‘Does it matter that much?’ she asked.
‘One of the new young guards was nearly killed last night when he fell in.’

Foolishly, I blurted out,
‘Did a guard fall in then?’
‘He did and he would have drowned if his rifle hadn’t stuck across the pit and given him something to hang on to.’
Mum giggled and I did too. ‘You mean one of the guards fell in and had to stay there hanging on to his rifle,’ she laughed. ‘Serves him right.’
‘Not really. The poor fellow was stuck for two hours until the next guard patrol found him up to his shoulders in the cesspit contents, so I believe he is very lucky to be still alive.’
‘He must smell awful.’ I breathed happily. Our plan had succeeded. A perfect conclusion.
‘Maybe he does, but his superiors are not amused and have reported the incident to Ted McClaren to carry out a full investigation. The Discipline Committee intends to do something about it.’
I now saw why Dad was so cross and my heart dropped. There was going to be real trouble.

....

We had to suffer some punishment to mollify the Commandant. But our street credence soared, and all the adults suddenly acknowledged us.

The Chefoo schoolteachers warned their pupils that we were agents of the devil and must be ignored.

Encounters were definitely to be restricted to games on the sports field, and then, without exception, under supervision.

[excerpts] ...

The warmth brought the scorpions out from the remaining walls, the presence of which had been used as an excuse for the Japanese to demolish some of the walls, when the real reason was that the camp wanted use of the bricks.

The current craze was scorpion fights; they would not cross a ring of ash, so we boys we selected a scorpion, and the dangers made the whole process more exciting.

We used to pick the creatures by going in over their heads, where the sting in the tail did not reach. There was a skill in this, and whilst I never got stung others did.

We kept our scorpions in reclaimed jars, holes punched in screw top. The procedure was that two picked out their scorpions and placed them in the ring, the scorpions then attacked each other and when one was dead the owner of the other got points.

Mum never found out about scorpion fights because she would have created a dreadful fuss.

At the end of the day of scorpion-fighting the winning owner, if lucky, got a boiled sweet.

The sad part of this game was that none of the scorpions lasted very long. A champion rarely survived more than three or four fights. It was a pity but we felt that we were doing the camp inmates a favour by ridding the area of scorpions.

[excerpt] ...

I was rarely in our two rooms in Block 13 during the day.

After breakfast and roll call, I was off somewhere in the camp running wild without supervision.

Meals, however, were too important to miss and my friends, like me, ate in their own huts, so we all went back for lunch, our main meal and supper, usually some kind of soup and bread. I was not allowed out after supper except on the light summer evenings when there were semi-organised games on the sports field; otherwise I was taught various games of cards.

[excerpt] ...

Other mothers must have had similar experiences; with the walls joining the blocks and making the camp into a series of little compounds, it was difficult to see what was going on. Thus, in early May they decided that organising the children into some sort of school to occupy them, particularly the boys, was essential, if only for the adults’ sanity.

There were about 200 children out of around 2,000 inmates, mostly English and American. The only spare area was in front of the hospital, the bottom two floors, which were being renovated.

Our first teacher was a nun who got us to sit down, but as we had no paper we were taught algebra by drawing equations in the sandy ground. The children from twelve to fifteen were worked harder, but they did get scraps of paper to write on.

Over sixteen had to work around the camp as the men and some women did.

As the weather grew hotter all lessons were taught outside, often sitting under the trees. Then we had a harridan of a teacher, Miss Rudd, who had a shock of snow-white hair, was slightly lame and used a walking stick. One could not get away from her, as she had the knack of flicking her stick to hold the ferrule end and then catch your ankle with the curved handle. Anyhow she started us on Latin verbs. I got quite used to etching the ground with a stick with Amo, Amas, Amat...’ but somehow it did not hold my interest as sums did.

By late May all the leaves were out on the trees and us nine- to eleven-year-olds were detailed to collect leaves from each of the different trees. There were over 100 types and I collected nearly that number. These were the trees that had been planted to assist in the long-forgotten mission schools’ botany classes. They also served to make a great contrast to the treeless plain outside the camp.

In the trees were also a lot of birds, including the golden oriole. Thinking ahead, I could see another teacher, another day, saying `...and please collect as many different bird feathers as you can.’

The teachers felt that they had to encourage us and devised small prizes. Someone had realised that the odd food parcel from friends and later the Red Cross parcels contained a bar of chocolate.

Most bars would break into ten squares, and a square of chocolate was a wonderful prize for a ten-year-old. A policy with which I heartily agreed. Especially as I was usually the winner.

[excerpt] ...

Once the commandant saw that the children were under some sort of control, he gave orders for paper and pencils to be made available. Drawing was then encouraged and art teachers came out of the woodwork. There were rules, though. The Japanese would not allow anything to be drawn of the outside of the camp. Drawing of the watchtowers or of the guards was forbidden.

We could draw only trees, bushes and birds in the middle of the camp; we would draw portraits, but nothing of military value. I was never very good with the birds, flowers or the bees but quite tolerable on buildings and perspective.

[excerpt] ...

Then in July the Japanese, who disliked gatherings of adults and children, stopped our lessons, fearing they were in preparation for some kind of organised disturbance. I was very happy to go back to running wild throughout the camp, now I knew my way around and was a wiser boy after two months’ self-education. But the adults soon got weary of mobs of uncontrolled children and petitioned to allow Scouts, Guides, Brownies and Cubs to be formed. Rather surprisingly this was granted, on condition that their activities mainly took place in the South Field. There was an ample number of people who had been Scoutmasters, or in the case of the younger priests remembered being Rover Scouts. I had an advantage in that I had my own copy of the handbook, which I guarded carefully. We had no uniforms, but the ladies looked around at their hoarded `might be useful things’ for felt to embroider badges, which we wore on our ordinary clothes. The pattern could not be the same as Baden-Powell had designed, but our `Cub’ badges ended up eight-sided with Weihsien’.

The Japanese thought this a marvellous idea and provided the lone occasion when an outside photographer was allowed in to take `team type’ photographs, so that the Japanese could show the world that they were treating Allied internees correctly. Dad helped to set up the Scouts with Mr O’Hara; both had been in Tianjin, where they had been respectively Deputy and Head Commissioner of Scouts for North China before the war. Mr Kerridge, another pre-war Scoutmaster, often gathered us in groups under the plane trees, which were planted five feet or so in from the walls of the Field. The Scout movement failed by the winter as there were suddenly a lot more children and there was no adequate accommodation to protect meetings from the cold weather.

[excerpt] ...

As boys we were always looking for a sport we could practise, and the latest phase was to tease the guards.

One of their Sergeants, a big swarthy bloke for a Japanese, who used to wear a ridiculously small forage cap on a large shaven head, was often baited.

He seemed to know only one phrase of Chinese — ‘Bushinde’ — which he would yell out at us; it meant `Don’t do that!’ or `You can’t do that!’ Very soon, whenever we saw him, we used to form a circle, out of arm’s reach, and taunt him with the word before running off. At first he resented the nickname and would get furious. But after a while he seemed to accept it and almost liked it, I suspect. Another nickname was coined when an adult described a guard as King Kong, as he reminded her of the gorilla of that name in the 1930s film.

Not that taunting was restricted to harassing the guards. There was an American missionary family in Block 15 with three young children, and they would start the day rolling around on the dirt outside their rooms while saying their ‘prayers’.

This inevitably got around, so a bunch of us used to get there before breakfast and start rolling around in the mud mimicking them. They invoked the `freedom of religion right’, and six ten - or eleven-year-olds were duly paraded in front of the Committee and sentenced to be caned if we kept doing it. So that ended us baiting the ‘Holy Rollers’.

...

Finding something to do that was acceptable was growing ever more difficult.

A month to go to Christmas. Mum sent off Christmas cards, which Dad had made with a hectograph (stencil), which he had constructed using an old half-inch-deep baking dish. He copied the design on to pre-stamped post cards, which the Japan censor allowed. [excerpt] ...

Adults were still trying to organise lessons for us children, but the problem was largely the lack of paper and textbooks. Chefoo School maintained its isolationism and in fact tried to run a camp within a camp.

Life is too short for petty squabbles, but the adults seemed loath to disturb the status quo.

Infighting was not confined to policy over schools.

I was playing with Hazel Hoch, who was my age, and her younger brother Johnny near Block 18 when their mother came over and reported that Mr Winslow had a fight in the kitchen with Ahmed Kamal, a Turkmenistani, and that Mr Prior had tried to separate them only to have a bowl of hot curry poured over his head, and that there was now curry everywhere. Mrs Hoch then said she had fainted, and then went on to say that Miss Lindsey, a nurse, had hit Mrs Kelly with a broom and the latter had retaliated by throwing hot tea into Miss Lindsey’s face. That squabble was over a bed space, so both ladies had been moved into new dormitories.

[excerpt] ...

Mum sometimes went to the general swap store, called the ‘Elephant Bell’, which was to be found at the back of Block 24. All the children were growing and there were not enough bigger clothes to go around. Footwear presented a particular problem. The store originally started to help people who wanted to exchange sizes, but it soon developed into people charging for items, using the money to buy eggs and other necessities.

[excerpt] ...

Days were just passing by and our food was deteriorating in both quantity and quality. Mum and Granny spring cleaned the huts and washed winter clothes, as the temperature would hit 28°C by the end of the month. The current problem was again clothing. Children grow, and when Mum got out the clothes that I had been wearing the previous year, they were too small. Patching of clothes was ever more necessary, and we faced the issue of shoes for growing feet.

Toe caps were chopped off to make room for cramped toes.

[excerpt] ...

Towards the end of June, starting with all the medical staff, there was an outbreak of diarrhoea of epidemic proportions. At the same time, the weather broke and there was a day of heavy rain, a real downpour. So many were sick that roll call took a couple of hours. The next day the Japanese medical team arrived.

The Japanese were paranoid about a cholera outbreak. So we were all lined up outside the hospital, everybody had a glass rod shoved up their behind; then after a test of the surface the glass rod it was wiped in alcohol and then shoved up the next candidate. There were at least five teams and the whole process took all day, although as originally planned the men were to be first, then the women and then those under fifteen.

But the children under seven started bawling for their Mums and chaos reigned. One certain thing you could say is that it was unpleasant while it lasted, and I got rather tired of looking at bare behinds.

But probably not as unpleasant as when we got inoculations for whatever was the current threat of disease. As an example, shortly after the cholera scare, there was a big line-up for a typhoid inoculation, but one had to gauge one’s place in the queue carefully, as needles were in short supply. The needle was changed about every 100 inoculations.

[excerpt] ...

There was a big showdown outside Block-24, which now held adult women. On a cold wet morning, having been counted at roll call, the women immediately went back inside. King Kong saw them and ordered them to stand for half an hour in the wet.

They retaliated by dancing and skipping. King Kong went apoplectic, jumped on to a little platform and addressed them in Chinese, saying that he had been greatly insulted; if we had been in India, the authorities would have hung them up by their thumbs.

He knew that they called him names, but they were lucky that he did not take one of them and shoot them as an example for causing a Japanese to lose face.

King Kong then went into Mrs Buist’s block which was across the Rocky Road from ours, and ordered her to stand on parade for roll call. Mrs Buist, a Salvation Army officer, refused to leave her three children, the eldest of whom was six. King Kong called her an ‘addled egg’ in Chinese.

Next day King Kong took roll call again and ended with ‘OK, ladies thank you.’ He had decided to be polite and ignore insults. The previous day he had arrived at the roll call saying, ‘I’ll dig the old sows out of their beds if they are not already standing to be counted.’

However, in early December, a Japanese guard went up to Mrs Howard-Smith, a nurse, and slapped her face when she was not lining up to his satisfaction outside the hospital. Ted McClaren reported it to the Commandant.

King Kong was livid and upset, and said that if he was reported again he, King Kong, would have to commit hari- kari and it would be on McClaren’s conscience.

The next day King Kong brought a dozen bottles of beer to men working in the bakery.

They reported that he was staggering, but they accepted the beer. On the way back to the guard room, we watched him pull out his sword and have a fight with a tree. A few days later one of the guards got very drunk, went into Block 24, sat on a box and said he felt sick.

One of the ladies got him a bowl, he heaved violently, lay down on Miss Dorea Harper’s bed and went to sleep. He had to be removed by Ted McClaren, helped by another Japanese guard.

[excerpt] ...

...

Somehow, the evening roll calls always took longer. On 16th August, at the 7 p.m. roll call, boredom had again set in: not only did the number within each group have to tally, but then the guards had to add up the totals. Any doubt and the whole camp had to be re-counted.

The electric wiring in the camp was looped about anything and ran at varying heights. It was particularly low in front of the hospital (Block 61).

To relieve the boredom of waiting during roll call, the Chefoo School students, mainly the twelve- to sixteen-year-olds, used to jump up and touch the wires.

One day the current was obviously ‘on’, as someone got himself burnt, but another, Brian Thompson, being very tall, had reached up and just gripped the wire — he was instantly electrocuted. Dr Grice was called and then Dr Robinson (Kailan Mining) and Dr Howie (Chefoo), because they were further away; the three carried out artificial respiration for nearly three hours, but to no avail. Brian’s funeral was the next day, but Brian’s Mother, who was in the camp, ruled that it would be private, for Chefoo only, the first and only restriction placed on attendance at a funeral, but then the parents were missionaries.

[further reading] ...
http://weihsien-paintings.org/books/NoSoapLessSchool/index.htm

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