[Excerpts] ...

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Father De Jaegher played a key role in organising the only escape from the camp, and was a significant adviser to the camp’s management committee in general matters of dealing with the Japanese.

As the Allies’ war progressed against the Japanese, Father De Jaegher noted a decline in the guards’ morale. He advised the committee on how to treat with Chinese Communist-led forces. These forces, towards the end of the war, began encircling the Wei-Hsien area.

His advice to the committee possibly averted a massacre of the camp’s inmates. He recommended the camp leaders not to provoke a revolt by the camp’s inmates as suggested by the Chinese Communists in a secret communication to the camp.

He warned a camp revolt could lead to the gathering Communist forces – who were no friends of nonChinese (contained in the camp) and the Japanese guards – massacring both the inmates and the Japanese.

He counselled that the camp patiently wait for Allied liberation.

His suggested strategy was accepted by the camp’s leaders. They were guided in that decision by Father De Jaegher and others analysing the information they were gathering from secret radio monitoring and incoming documentation being brought in secret messages by the Chinese toilet coolies.

His advice was later proven to be well-founded. In the last days of the repatriation of liberated internees from the camp, Communist forces blew up the key Wei-Hsien railway infrastructure.

This forced the Allied forces to fly out the last remaining Wei-Hsien internees.

[excerpt]

Another matter that enraged the Japanese was that two of the inmates, Arthur Hummel Jr [later the US Ambassador to China in the 1980s a British man and Laurie Tipton, , escaped from the camp in early June, 1944 and were never recaptured.

They had been planning their escape with the full assistance of Father De Jaegher for more than 12 months but there were several postponements because of Japanese patrols, a full moon, or poor escape conditions.

One night everything went well and away they went. I did not know any details at the time of their escape but I remember them arriving back at the camp shortly after our liberation.

When Mr Hummel and Mr Tipton arrived back at the camp, they were given heroes’ welcomes and carried shoulderhigh by the inmates. I listened avidly to the tale of their escape from the time when they further darkened their heavily tanned faces and wore long Chinese gowns to look like Chinese.

After escaping from the camp, they met some Chinese Nationalist guerrillas by arrangement who hurried them away and hid them. Their escape aim was to contact Chungking, which was then the seat of the Chinese Nat ionalist Government in unoccupied China, so that the western Allied forces could be informed of deteriorating prison conditions because it was believed the Allied forces had no recent knowledge of our plight. Mr Hummel and Mr Tipton told us how they spoke by radio to Chinese Army authorities in Chungking, which was also the headquarters for the Allied forces seeking to liberate China from the Japanese. The United States authorities obviously became concerned about our conditions in the camp because we were rescued by American soldiers two days after the war ended.

We were very glad to be so quickly rescued because the Japanese always told us we were going to be killed whether Japan lost or won the war. It was always in the back of my mind that we may be shot.

I am convinced that had the Japanese main islands or our part of China been invaded by the Allies, we would have been shot without hesitation.

As it was, the sudden unexpected capitulation of Japan prevented this. I was always frightened of the machineguns on the walls. They used to point at us and I never knew whether they would shoot us because the guards often said they would if the war ever went against them.

I remember saying to my mother on one occasion: “I think they’re going to kill us this time” and I thought to myself: “I’m only young, there’s so many things I want to do before I die and now I won’t be able to.” Thankfully, they did not fire. I did not regard the guards’ threats as idle talk at the time and I still don’t. When you have a gun pointing at you, you tend to listen carefully to what is said.

Between June 1944 and our liberation on August 17, 1945, Mr Hummel and Mr Tipton served alongside Chinese Nationalist forces in Shantung Province and regularly communicated with Father De Jaegher in the camp using Father De Jaegher’s messaging system.

They sent news of the war and helped arrange for the urgently needed medical drugs smuggled into the camp hidden in Red Cross parcels.

Part of the story told to cover up Hummel’s and Tipton’s escape was that they were in the camp toilets during head counts but the camp management committee, to prevent reprisals, reported them missing the day after they escaped.

Our food ration was withheld for a day or two after the escape.

From then, the Japanese were especially alert to prevent escapes and stopped any inmate out of his room after dark.

For instance, my elderly uncle Edward was heading for the toilets one night when he was challenged by an irate Japanese guard who stuck his rifle into his stomach and demanded in Japanese to know where he was going. Edward expected nervously to be shot because he couldn’t remember the Japanese name for toilet. He knew that it was similar in sound to a stringed musical instrument and he went through: guitar, ukulele before he hit upon the correct one, banjo. Benjo is Japanese for toilet.

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/ForgivenForgotten/Book/ForgivenNotForgotten(WEB).pdf

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