Post Mortem texts from Emmanuel Hanquet's computer ...

Après son décès, P-E Lagasse nous a fait suivre quelques textes ayant un rapport avec la Chine ---

- Les Samistes au camp de Weihsien, 1942 - 1945 [click here]
- Raymond de Jaegher
- Albert Palmers
- Hanolien - 1939 ---
- Hongdong et Hanolien ---

From Emmanuel Hanquet's computer, written in May, June --- 2007,
transalation by Janette Ley-Pander

By the middle of March the Japanese Police came to see the Samists, to announce that they would all be sent together to a place situated in the north of China.

I myself was picked up one morning by two Japanese Policemen who accompanied me to Taiyuan. There they left me in a Japanese hotel, where foreign voices were heard making quite a row. From my little room I could finally make out a few spoken sentences and mostly Flemish songs, and came to realize that this was a contingent of Scheut Mission fathers, Belgians as I was, who had been stationed at Tatung, in the north of Shanxi.

The following day we were all put on a train that took two days to get to Peking. There I came across Samists who had been working in Suanha: Paul Gilson, Michel Keymolen and Nicolas Wenders. Passing through Paoting we had picked up Raymond de Jaegher and Herman Unden, but only in Peking did we all regroup. At the Peking train station an important contingent of Americans and British came on board. We then went at a slow pace on to Weihsien, where trucks were waiting to drive us into camp.

Our arrival was chaos, except for those of us who knew someone who had arrived earlier. Everything had to be organized, just as if it were some new village. We had to decide who among the civilians would take on responsibilities, also in a lesser way which ones would be able to organize our own life inside the camp. The Japanese left us free to organize ourselves as we wished. So, particularly at the very beginning, people were arbitrarily appointed to take charge of housing, discipline, kitchens, hygiene, health, education -almost 300 children had also arrived in camp- and we had to plan spare-time activities, religious services, provide mending if necessary.

Buildings at the lower level of the camp were reserved for the Fathers of various missionary groups. We (the Samists) were thus assigned to two small 3x3 m. rooms in Block 48. This small block held another identical room that was allotted to the Trappists: they were three, two Belgians (one of them Father Struyven) and a third, who was very popular, for he had become a black market expert, trading with the Chinese very next to our place. This was Father Scanlan, an Australian.

I shared a room with Raymond and Michel. There wasn’t much space, but Raymond had brought two big trunks, these were put end to end so that I could use them as a bed for the first few months, before moving on to Block 56. The neighboring room was occupied by Nicolas, Albert Palmers. and Paul Gilson.

We were located in a busy place to the east of the camp. Not much further away stood the electric-wiring cabin for the whole camp. This allowed us to keep watch on the guard on duty, and to find out when he plugged in the electricity. When we moved to Block 56 our rooms were connected. In the first one were Herman, Raymond and Albert. In the second, me (this time I had been able to dig up a metal bed frame) and Michel. Nicolas had the next room to himself.

A small shelf in the first room allowed us each in turn to celebrate mass. At that time concelebration had yet to be devised, so for mass we measured a thimbleful of wine, and used a small host. Every month, Father Schnusenberg, a German priest who accompanied the Swiss Consul, brought us a bottle of wine for mass and hosts in a metallic box, and always asked for the box back. This way he was sure that the messages that had been placed in the bottom of the box had been well received.

In winter we celebrated mass as soon as 6 o’clock in the morning by the glow -a weak little glow- of an oil lamp. With Albert we had observed the coming and goings of the guard responsible for switching on the electricity, and decided to take turns to put the switch on half an hour earlier. For a few weeks all went well till one day Albert came back to our rooms running and out of breath: he had been spotted by a guard who followed him right into the first room. Albert was taken to the guard house where as punishment he was subjected to having his fingers severely hurt. He was then released.

I could insert here circumstances surrounding a recent visit by Albi de Zutter. He was my young pupil in Weihsien camp, 12 years old, whereas I was 31. He and his older brother John were Belgians, but due to their father’s career had been born in Tsingtao on the Chinese coast, and had been brought up in English. Their mother was Russian. (Albert de Zutter rectified this, saying he and his brother John had been born in Shanghai, and had moved to Tsingtao when he was 2 years old and his brother 4 and a half).

I had occasionally kept in touch with the family, through correspondence, but this was long ago. And now thanks to a chat-list found on the web, we were once again in contact, exchanging small messages. But then came a very frank message: he was coming to Belgium to visit me, and wanted to see me for a couple of days, just to talk.

He was feeling very confident during his visit and wanted to note down all I was relating on a big writing pad. He was eager to know all about me and my family’s origins. I finally asked him just why he was interviewing me, was he going to publish anything about me. This was perhaps his aim, as he had been the editorial director of a Kansas City diocesan newspaper. But he put things right. He just wanted to compare his life with mine, which had strongly impressed him during our Weihsien Camp years. He had really admired our work, as we five Samists were always keen to be useful, were always smiling and hard-working.

In short, he confided that he would have wanted to follow in my footsteps, and had thus completed college studies with the Benedictines in the United States. Later though he had married, had had four children, nine grandchildren, was now retired, and just wanted to compare his life with mine. I was very touched by his trust and loyalty after all these years.

On April 4th 2007 we bid farewell, as Leopold Pander came to drive him to Brussels. There he intended to rent a car and drive down to Nice to visit his father’s cousin, a lady six years his senior.

It would be interesting to now describe the activities chosen by the Samists, or rather imposed on them during these 30 months of our cooped-up life. We were all required to do our part, but were quite ignorant of what our jobs were to be. Albert Palmers and Herman Unden promptly decided for the bakery, and ended up working there. Every three days they had to get up at 6 am to be on time at the baker’s. This benefitted all five of us Samists, as one or the other could bring back a loaf of bread as compensation. Thus we never went hungry. In the beginning the bread was quite nondescript. But later on a Belgian chemist was able to produce yeast from sweet-potatoes, and our bread became very eatable.

Toilet maintenance drew the particular attention of Raymond de Jaegher. He had observed that the garbage men coming to empty the cesspools were Chinese and this suited him fine, as he wanted to find a way to remain in contact with the outside world. He and Michel Keymolen teamed up, and one could see them both continually on their way to the johns to either clean up, or to be sure everything stayed clean, distinguishing themselves by only carrying a mop on their shoulders.

How about Nicolas Wenders? I don’t remember very well, but perhaps he worked in one of the kitchens, or in the boiler room. As for myself, Emmanuel Hanquet, I readily accepted a job in Kitchen n°2, once every three days, where we prepared meals for 600 people. I was part of a very close-knit and joyful team and finally found myself leading them as “chef-cook”. We even had a team song, inspired by a nursery rhyme taught to Protestant children in Sunday School: “The best book to read is the Bible…” which we all sang in unison, all the while stirring in our enormous “kuo”, large cast-iron cauldrons that could contain as much as 6 to 12 pails.

Thereafter I had to leave this job due to health problems. The following winter I agreed to chop wood for the hospital kitchen, work that I could do as I wished on a bit of ground next to Block 56, where we lived. But raw materials were a problem as we only had old tree stumps to chop; we used tools made of metal pipes to which we clinched an axe blade. This was very tiring work, and gloves were a must.

Finally, in the following months I got to make noodles with an ancient roller-machine found in the attic of the old Presbyterian school. After some time we found out how to handle it, and at last with my colleagues Langdon Gilkey and Robin Strong we could provide fresh noodles to one of the three camp kitchens daily.

In the very last months of camp life I worked at the butcher’s: a little room where we kept our meat supply. The meat was brought into the camp by the Chinese, and was then stored by the Japanese on their side.

Working at the butcher’s meant being dexterous, and one had to avoid wounds, as these severely infected our fingers. As soon as the meat arrived we selected the best pieces for the hospital kitchen. We tried to divide the remaining parts equally for the three camp kitchens. I had worked for a long period of time in kitchen n°2, the most important one, and there we cooked all of the meat all night long, in the largest of the cauldrons, to soften the meat scraps. Then in the morning we skimmed the excess fat which we could use for frying food. One of our specialties was “lu-tou-burger” a kind of hamburger where meat was replaced by soya sprouts called lu-tou in Chinese.

Families I met:

I had a personal friendship with the Baeten family, Belgians from Shanghai, late-comers to Camp. There were two children, a boy, and a girl Irene. I mostly took care of the boy. He must have been 16 years old when he arrived, but appeared to be closer to 14. His surname was Georgiles, his English father’s name, who had acknowledged him before Charles Baeten had met and married his mother. The younger sister was the couple’s daughter. The boy was called Johnny and was the source of quarrels between his parents. I gave him Latin lessons and we often went for walks in Camp when at home the atmosphere became too tense. The couple had much difficulty in finding some intimacy, as all four lived in the same big room.

Other Samist brothers also took care of various Christian families, and many of the young boys took part in the Scout Troop we had set up; they were thus kept busy and learned to better adjust themselves during their leisure hours.

Another boy was Vova Bonner, named after his Polish mother. She had married an American who wasn’t interned in Camp. The child was intelligent, but had nervous mood-swings. His mother told me that he had once swallowed a piece of his exercise book and felt quite ashamed. He came to our Scout Troop and I managed to win him over. The Scouts had many essential tasks, and one of their activities was to merit their cartography badge, which consisted in drawing up a map of the camp. This he did very well, using a pencil and respecting the scale. So, 50 years later, at a meeting of ex-Japanese camp prisoners of Asia, I was astonished to see him arriving accompanied by his mother, his wife and his daughter. They had come from the United States and had beforehand warned the organizers that they would participate (the reunion was called “Once upon a Lifetime”) only if they were sure of meeting me!

We had a happy emotional encounter. He had become a professor of theology at a Protestant University. Later on he came to visit me in Belgium with his wife, and I gladly accompanied them on a bit of sightseeing here in Belgium, notably Bastogne and it’s Mardasson.

Some years later he arrived alone for a visit, announcing that he had re-married. This time he was in Europe to find out about his parents. They were maybe from Romania. All he had to work on was a photograph of his grand-father in uniform, taken in some Romanian town. After his trip to Romania he came back to see me, very happy to have successfully found the information he needed; he was thankful to have been able to search the parish registers… And some 5 years ago I received a letter from his wife, announcing her husband’s death.

And this reminds me, as I am writing, of Norman Cliff. End of May, his widow sent a message to Mary Previte saying Norman had died in his sleep. I learnt of this thanks to Leopold Pander.

Written in May-June 2007. Father Emmanuel Hanquet died in February 2008, aged: 93.

Raymond de JAEGHER

(Written between May and June 2007)
Translated By Gay Talbot-Stratford

My first memory of Raymond was during one of his visits to Peking. He usually stayed at the Mission House of Suanha where Paul Gilson was in charge. Paul had kindly agreed that I could stay there too, while I was studying Chinese at Hua Wen Sue Siao.

The Samists is a Belgian order of priests and although Raymond was not yet ordained, he was the first member of that order to be sent to China. The Vicar General wanted to send Raymond to convince Father Lebbe that our vocation as assistants to the Chinese priests was a valid one. So Raymond was assigned to the diocese of Ankuo, where Father Lebbe lived and served. Mgr. Suen was the Bishop. It was he who ordained Raymond .Mgr was one of the first six Chinese bishops to be consecrated. After two years, Paul Gilson and Nicholas Wenders joined Raymond. They were appointed to serve in the diocese of Suanha, and I arrived in China a few years later ,in 1939 or 1940, shortly before the war in Belgium. My confreres questioned me on the state of the Samists order in Belgium, and on seminary life in that villa of roses, in Herent.

By this time, China was already at war, and we worked in territory occupied by the Japanese. To provide us with some freedom of movement, the missionaries in Peking had arranged with the Japanese authorities for ‘shinshin’ passports. These were official documents signed by a Japanese Admiral, who was himself a Catholic, explaining that we were Catholic missionaries, whose only objective was evangelisation.

Missionary life continued in a routine way, although we were often prevented from leaving the area. In my case, I was arrested for one hundred days, but I will expound on this episode at another time. None of us ever imagined that we would be interned in a camp at Weihsien in the province of Shantung, or that we would remain there for two and a half years. We were brought together in this camp; there we lived, and came to know one another.

We were housed in two connecting rooms for six months, while Paul Gilson was still with us, however, Paul agreed to return discreetly to Peking to oversee the affairs of the diocese. We were then moved into three tiny rooms which led into each other. The first one overlooked a small terrace on the ground floor. Albert, Raymond and Herman lived in this one; I shared the second , which was smaller still, with Michel; Nicholas lived by himself in the third ,which was even smaller.

Raymond soon became a personality in camp. He spoke Chinese, and wrote it well. His English was excellent so that he developed ties with everyone. Moreover, he was a good communicator, and very soon, he had friends in many different groups. For example, since he was fluent in Chinese, he met with American professors from the University of Yenching, and took part in their study circle devoted to Chinese language and literature. Raymond was able to help some American nuns who had remained in the camp when the majority of the priests and nuns had been transferred to Peking.

To his internee friends he soon became known as a special delivery man. The Chinese postman, who brought mail to the camp commandant, would leave his bicycle with its large pouch, close to the courtyard reserved for the Japanese detachment. Raymond seized the opportunity, to slip letters which were handed to him by internees, into the bag. Of course, he always included a monetary donation for services rendered, with the correspondence. He was the one who planned the only successful escape from the camp. In order to do this, he had to make contact with the Chinese. The only ones who were allowed to enter the camp were the ’honey pot’ teams, who emptied our cesspools regularly. Thus it was that Raymond accepted the job of caring for the latrines, and seeing to their cleanliness. The escape was a success, but Raymond ,who had spent months preparing every detail, was not allowed to take part in it. Father Rutherford, who was in charge of the Church parish in the camp, was afraid that Christians would suffer reprisals at the hands of the Japanese. So it was that Laurie Tipton and Arthur Hummel took his place. Arthur Hummel was American ambassador to Peking during the 80's. He has since died.

Raymond became friends with two young ladies. I remember the one who worked in the sewing workshop. We nicknamed her the ’Bluebird’ because her surname was Bird. She was very pleasant. During that last winter, she made me a wonderful windbreaker out of an old grey coverlet. We saw him walking with another young lady who was a teacher at the Chefoo school. Confidentially he told us, that he was giving her religious instruction and preparing her to be received into the Catholic Church. On the day she was to be baptised, The Principal of the school, known as Pa Bruce, presented her with the difficulties he saw arising from the step she was taking . She defended her decision saying that nowhere in her contract did it state that she had to remain a Protestant. To his credit, Pa Bruce kept her on staff. Later, after camp, she entered a Carmelite convent in Bruges where she remained for some time. She became blind.

After our Evacuation by Air to Peking, Raymond spent some time in Peking, then he returned to Ankuo. Very soon he became involved with the secret anticommunist resistance movement. Raymond was sure that there was a need for an Asiatic alliance against the Chinese communists. This made him ‘persona non grata’ in China. This clandestine activity interested him greatly and took first place in his work.

During the years that followed, he travelled to Vietnam where he established a Chinese school at Cholon, and met with President Ngo Dim Diem and his family .He visited Taiwan as well as the United States. When Cardinal Yupin was invited to go to the States, to attend conferences and to give lectures, Raymond was the one who accompanied him. Raymond created a network of friends and acquaintances and enjoyed corresponding with them. He liked to send photographs which were captioned and dated. I was made aware of this when I went to New York after his death, to take an inventory of the contents of his office. I sorted and brought back more than fifty kilos of material to the Samists’ house in Brussels.

#

Albert Palmers

Hanlonien

( Reminiscences written between May and June 2007)
Translated by Gay Talbot-Stratford

After five months of Chinese studies in Peking, I left by train for Hongdong in Shansi. The journey was made easier for me by a companion, a fellow Christian from Shichiachuan. The trip should have taken three days, but for various reasons, it took a month. Trains did not run at night during the Japanese occupation and there were sporadic attacks made on the railway by the communist eighth army. Also, it was the rainy season , which brought flooding.. (I believe I have recounted this before, so I will go directly to my arrival in Hanonien .)

Hanonien was a small village clinging to a mountain , fifteen kilometres from Hongdong. The Bishop, with several of his priests and seminarians had taken refuge there; in what one could describe as a sort of no man’s land. This place was not ideal , since it had been built for a one priest. It was overwhelmed by the influx of refugees from the city; fifty people in all.

Like all the mission stations built by the Dutch , who were the first missionaries in the area, each compound was enclosed by a wall which provided some protection; from the Japanese who appeared during the days, and members of the communist eighth army who arrived at night.

A hamlet close to Hongdong

One morning, a man came to the door, bringing his wagon with him. He was to be my guide. We secured my luggage onto the wagon; this consisted of two trunks and a suitcase. There was just enough room in the front for us.

The road was made of hardened earth, and while the land was flat , we rolled along, that is to say, we maintained a speed of ten kilometres an hour; but once we began the climb upwards, the winding track became narrower and narrower, ending in a small circular compound which contained the mission station. Most people here were Christians.

The only buildings to be seen were carved entrances into the soft sides of the mountain . The people who lived in them were called cave dwellers, or troglodytes. These dwellings were easily built; with pointed roofs and an interior space of fifteen to twenty metres. The facade had a front door and a window of slatted wood lined on the inside with rice paper.

The first item in the house was a large cast iron cauldron which was used for cooking as well as heating the family bed, called the”kang’. The bed was sixty centimetres high and covered with bricks. Beneath this layer, was a space, which was connected to the chimney, so that those who slept on the kang would be comfortable during the winter months., They all slept side by side, wrapped in their featherbeds.

The mission consisted of single storey buildings around the sides of the courtyard. The first was for the priests, the second for the staff and the mules. The seminarians lived behind in a cave, with a flat roof. They slept on kangs on either side of the centre hall. For our morning ablutions, we used small enamel bowls. Two porters made the trip down to the stream for water, morning and evening.

My room s were opposite the Bishop’s on the other side of the courtyard. I was allotted two small rooms: one for my study, and a smaller one for my bedroom. The latter was sparsely furnished with a bed, a chair, and shelves built into the far wall . The window looked out on the courtyard, it was papered over like all the others.

In my study, there was a square table and a wooden armchair, also two side– boards with carved doors which served as cupboards. I placed my trunks along the walls, and covered them with spreads. This meant that there were more places to sit, and made the room more welcoming. I now had all the comforts of a scout camp.

We ate together in the main hall called the k’oting in Chinese. This was in the middle of the building, next to the Bishop’s rooms. Usually, there were five or six of us including the parish priest, and two or three priest who were professors.

We were served simple Chinese food: in the morning we had ‘Mantows’(Steamed white bread) and we drank hot water. From time to time, we had pickled vegetables as well.. At noon, we went to church, to pray in the manner of the Franciscans, that is to recite five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys with outstretched arms in the shape of a cross. This took fifteen minutes, then we had lunch which consisted of a bowl or two of noodles with carrots ,spinach, or turnips. At the end of the meal, we had bouillon with vegetables and sometimes, a pear, or other fruit for dessert.

It is high summer. We all wear Chinese gowns in white or grey the clothes worn by the middle classes. From the time I arrived , I was made to feel welcome by Monseigneur Petrus Ch’eng, who was about sixty years old . He was a small old man, with a friendly expression. I sensed th at we would get on. In fact, I was invited to work in his diocese as his secretary. (At the time it was an apostolic prefecture.) With a base of Chinese, I would be able to help him with French and English .His Latin was better than mine; he spoke elegant Latin, and he knew the formalities of style when beginning and ending official letters. This was useful since all communications with the Vatican was in Latin.

After several interviews with the Bishop, it was decided that I should take up my studies again with Father Martin Yang. He was a professor at the seminary, and the most highly educated of my Chinese confreres . For more than a year, I spent an hour with him each day, learning Chinese. Though he was only a little older than I, he was very focussed on studying. Martin insisted that I practice brush strokes each day, copying characters on to lined paper. He became a real friend, and I often mentioned him in my letters to the Sam in Bruxelles, to the point that the Vicar General felt obliged to warn me of the dangers of having a special friend. (Different times required different ways of behaviour.)

On the advice of the papal Nuncio, Martin came to France with another confrere called Barnabas Lou, in about 1949 or 1950, to escape the Communists.

At the time ,I was resident priest at the Dominican convent of Saulchoir near Paris, so I was able to meet up with them again. (Incidentally, it was during my return to Bruxelles from Paris that I met Madame Marteaux and her son in law. She was the widow of the retired Minister of Health, and she was a Communist. I had the opportunity of dining with her several times, in her superb apartment on Beliard Road in Bruxelles.)

If I had time after lunch, I went to the courtyard frequented by the Seminarians to practice my Chinese and compete in a game of volleyball. They were excellent players, and were happy to have me join one of their teams.

In 1941 I led the older seminarians to the regional seminary at Suanhua. Since its foundation it had been run by Nicholas Wenders. Michel Keymolen taught there as well. This was an opportunity for me to have a brief holiday with my confreres.

It took three days for us to reach Peking, and after a short stop at Paul Gilson’s, another day, to arrive in Suanhua, close to the border with Mongolia.

The country had been at war ever since 1937, and the Japanese controlled all means of communication in the north of the country. They, the Japanese, were reputed to be less than tenderhearted towards the Chinese. That is why the superior of the seminary had asked me to accompany these young Chinese men. (Many years later when I made my second return visit to Hongdong, I met some of them. They were now much older, and promoted to important positions in the diocese.)

I was accompanied by a servant, who knew Chinese ways. He looked after my mule and my luggage; most important of all ,he knew the way. I forget the name of the village, but I remember that as we came around the slope of a little valley, we suddenly found that the road was cut in two by a recent rainstorm, and my mule leaped from one side to the other, depositing me in the stream. I ended up in a hip bath, but otherwise unscathed.

When we arrived at the village, the leader of the Christian community took me in hand. He had organised everything for my stay in the village.

There was a small chapel with a sacristy . This room became the lodging for visiting priests. It was sparsely furnished. There was a cupboard for the sacred vessels, a bed, a table and a chair. I brought my bedding with me. My helper made contact with the members of the Christian community who provided meals and water. At that time, and in that part of China, it was unthinkable to have running water; it was even less likely to have tap water. The amenities were those of the Middle Ages.. Water was drawn from wells or from the river, and it had to be boiled for drinking.

The Christians came in turn to greet the priest, bringing their children with them. I really enjoyed this time. It gave me the opportunity to get to know the people and to improve my Chinese. The catechist and I prepared for the next day’s liturgy, including a baptism. There were times for confessions and I entrusted to the Saviour any sins which I had not understood.

The welcome of these country people had been magnificent. They put themselves out to provide a good reception, and that evening by the light of oil lamps, the elders returned to chat with the missionary from so far away.

During 1941, I was sent to the same villages several times which allowed me to become familiar with the people.

During the summer the bishop called me to tell me that there had been an attempt to set fire to properties belonging to the church in town The buildings were left in the charge of two elderly watchmen. He asked me to accept the appointment as parish priest in town. He thought that a foreigner might carry more weight in dealing with the Japanese and so avoid a repetition of these incidents. Being a loyal Samiste, I accepted the position.

So here I was, on the move again, going between the seminary and these old buildings close to town, where the bishop and some priests would reinstall themselves, then moving on into town whee the presbytery was an old building with a pointed roof, like the ones seen in the countryside This presbytery was big enough and boasted a balcony, which overlooked a double room. The study was opposite, and a bedroom was on the left, separated by a partition of wood and paper.

I kept an office in the seminary next to the bishop as well. He had asked me to be the procurator and oversee the finances of the diocese . I was responsible for the accounts of each parish, Mass offerings, and other subsidies. I was also in charge relationships between the bishop and the priests. I rode my bicycle almost daily ,travelling between the town and the seminary.

In the province of Shansi there were two kinds of currency in circulation: the yuan which was legal tender in the territory administered by the Japanese, and the fapi in the area occupied by the guerillas.

We received an annual subsidy from the office of Pontifical Charities. This was sent every summer, and was transmitted via the Franciscan Procurator in Tientsin. Since there were few trustworthy banks in the region, financial transactions were made with the help of merchants who travelled to Tientsin to buy merchandise. Thus I was in touch with two or three shops. I gave them a signed cheque, and they gave me the money equivalent in the local currency.

With the backing of the Franciscans, the cheque was honoured . In this way, the merchant could travel in safety, having nothing more in his pocket than a note signed by me.

I had a book of cheques numbered between one and fifty which I kept in a drawer in my desk. Since the servants were trustworthy, nothing was locked, although my room was padlocked if I was away.

One day I received a three monthly statement from the Procurator in Tientsin. I calculated that they had honoured two cheques more than the numbered ones.(I am telling this story to illustrate that even in the middle of a war, commerce still functions well.) In fact, the two stolen cheques had been used at five or six shops in succession, and each shop had stamped the back of the cheques. By retracing the chain of stamps back to the first one, the thief was self evident. With sadness, I discovered that the thief was none other than a fellow priest, who had betrayed my trust and had entered my study during my absence.

Life in town was not busy and quite dull. Since the arrival of the Japanese, ten percent fewer people lived there. The only shops open were on the main road. On the other hand, I had to protect numerous buildings all along the north wall of the town In the centre of them was a church built by the Franciscans at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the right side was a courtyard, flanked by buildings on all sides. This was the residence of the Bishop and some priests.

On the other side of the church was a vegetable garden, which was surprisingly large for a town; beside it was a shed. One day, when I was compiling an inventory of what was on the shelves of the shed and I found kilos of coffee hidden in a wicker basket.. In the kitchen garden, there was a well which contained water to a depth of ten metres. This served as my refrigerator during the summer months when I let down several bottles of bottled water to keep them cool. Beyond this garden, there was anther courtyard, and a building used as a girl’s school. If you retraced your steps, to the south of the church, there were two courtyards, flanked with buildings on both sides which formed the boys college of Saint Peter. The Principal was Father Yang.

When I had the time, I inspected different places, removing the dust which had accumulated over several years. I found bundles of clothes without any identification labels. Among them was a long navy blue coat which I appropriated as a spoil of war since I was sure that the owner would never come back to claim it. This was before the onset of long hard winter.

Among other things, I discovered instruments from a physics laboratory, which probably came from the Protestant school at the east end of town. Our secondary school never did have a lab, and anyway it was now closed. So I paid a visit to the authorities at the Protestant school to return their equipment.

#

Hongdong et Hanlonian

Translated by Gay Talbot-Stratford

In theory, I was to be his secretary, but he spoke and wrote Latin better than I did. He knew how to begin and end a formal letter to Rome particularly well; so in these instances, I prepared the rough copies only. However, he needed my help for letters in English and in French. He enjoyed conversation, so whenever there was the time, I took advantage of the opportunity to listen to him recounting part of his life story. He was a great admirer of Father Lebbe’s.

Mgr. Tch’eng had been the Principal of St. Peter’s College, the secondary school of the diocese; but now he lived as a refugee in Hanlonian, as I did. Monseigneur‘s health was poor; he was ravaged with diabetes which necessitated frequent meals and a special diet, including snacks of milk and toast.

When we were put under house arrest in December 1941, he was transferred directly to the prison in Linfen, together with the Procurator, General Father Li, and the Vicar General, Father Kao. The cells were two metres by three, and there were three or four prisoners to a cell. The toilet was a bucket in one corner.Mgr. Tch’eng did not survive the rough treatment for more than a few months. He died in Linfen on the 15th of March.

This sad news was whispered to me by a Christian neighbour in the Residence. I was the only priest allowed to visit Mgr, and I was always accompanied by a guard. I decided to go to the police station to ask permission to reclaim the body and give him a decent burial. But how was I going to let this information slip out casually to the police chief ?

On the way through the main street, I concocted a plan. When I arrived at the station, I stated quite simply that Mgr was dead. ‘How do you know?’ said the Commandant in astonishment. ‘I heard some one behind me on the street murmuring about this death.’ I said. Discomfited, the chief said he was going to find out what had happened.

The next day I received word from the him.’ Make your arrangements to have a wagon at the police station by 15 hours to take delivery of the body of Peter Cheng who was one of the enemy.’ Fortunately there was a Christian who lived opposite the entrance to the Church. His name was Kao. With the permission of my guard, I went to visit Kao, and asked him to come to the police station the next day, bringing his wagon with him.

Padlocks were removed from the Cathedral for the occasion, and the police chief allowed me to arrange for the funeral.

At nine o’clock, the evening before , I entered the Cathedral accompanied by another priest, to try and open the coffin in order to identify the remains as being those of Mgr. Tch’eng. I recognised his face, thanks to the medals hanging on a chain around his neck.

I gave instructions to Christians from far and near, that only men should attend the funeral. Actually, women were fearful of contacts with the Japanese anyway.

By ten o’clock the next morning, the Cathedral was full. The Solemn Funeral Mass was celebrated by three priests. Afterwards we were permitted to leave the town in a funeral cortege to the Christian cemetery half a mile away, behind the Church in Suen Chia Yuan.

I invited the Japanese Commandant and his entourage to tea at the Presbytery, while the Christians brought the casket first into the courtyard of the Holy Childhood Centre (an orphanage perhaps?) Then, on to the cemetery. This strategy allowed us the opportunity to bathe the body, and place it in a decent casket provided by a wealthy Christian. This is how we discovered that the body was covered with lice.

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