Re: Boy Scout goup

 alison holmes

Jul 19, 2002 19:30 PDT 

 

No attachment came with this message!

----- Original Message -----

From: Zandy Strangman

To: Internment Camp

Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 5:28 PM

Subject: Boy Scout goup

 

 

Hi Everyone,

Can anyone help identify the individuals in this latest Scout group photo?

It apparently was shot at the same time and location as those previously circulated by Christine. But this time we think we have 7 positive and 2 possible IDs. In my opinion, the abundance of trees suggests the location is camps 'Main Road'.

The photo came to me per courtesy of Janette Pander. (my neighbour in camp)

 

Joyce......Yvonne thought you would have a 'special' interest in this photo copy I showed her, yesterday, and she intended to 'MAIL' you a photo-stat of it.   I convinced her this way would be quicker and clearer but that was before I 'struck a snag' forwarding it on, to the Weihsien site. Rejected for it's size or something to that effect!   So, here goes a 2nd time.

 

Fred.......is your brother Bobby one of the boys on the right hand side?

 

Thanks for taking the time to look at it..............Zandy Strangman

 

Re: Boy Scout goup

 Fred Dreggs

Jul 20, 2002 00:16 PDT 

 

Hi Zandy,

Can't answer your question as there was no photo attachment. Perhaps it is coming via Mars?

Regards,

Fred

 

RE: Boy Scout goup

 Ron Bridge

Jul 20, 2002 00:58 PDT 

 

The Copy of the photo was missing from msg received by me. I have 12 pictures Scouts/Guides/cubs/brownies but they are small and very faded if you are talking about those with the trees and number on the wall behind the groups they were taken in the grounds near the hospital.

Rgds

Ron Bridge.

 

 

Re: Boy Scout goup

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 20, 2002 02:35 PDT 

 

Thanks to all of you who came back informing me that 'no attachment 'came thru. but my ' sent box' for my 3rd attempt now shows it with the proverbial 'paper clip' motif. Here's hoping!!!!

Be patient, I'll get it to you some how.!

 

more jogged memories

 Leonard Mostaert

 

 Jul 20, 2002 02:55 PDT 

 

      All these little things have become so vivid to me when the subject is mentioned in Topica. Someone mentioned birds.....My father caught a dove, it must have been sick, and kept it in a cage in our room. Soon there was another dove that showed up, they must have been married, and Father placed it in the cage with the other one. These were "Red Burmese" doves as we found out much later. How the doves arrived from Burma I don't know, but there they were, and it is a wonder we did not eat them. When we left the camp, Father took the doves with us and they lived on happily in Tientsin. as they just did not want to leave us, even after a few attempts to let them fly away far from the camp, they still beat us home when we arrived at our block. There must have been a streak of homing pigeon in those birds.

    All the newcomers to this site should view  www.netzone.com/~adjacobs/compare.htm  this is the comparison by Mr. Wagner of the living conditions of Weihsien and Crystal City where the American/Japanese were interned. Makes sobering reading !

Leak Street

 Leonard Mostaert

Jul 20, 2002 03:00 PDT 

 

 

     Then there is another one......

     There was a bit of a joke around camp on our constant diet of leeks, everyone seems to have become very sick of them, except me and I still like them. Someone put up a sign at block 33 in the form of a street sign....Leak Street. A surprise for all was when a Japanese guard pointed out the correct spelling should have been L E E K ! How embarrassing.

 

Can U Help

 Ron Bridge

Jul 20, 2002 13:25 PDT 

 

I have had an inquiry from Kay Canning in Scotland, she was Katherine Margaret Allan ( B 1942) in Weihsien and was with her 2 brothers William Douglas Allan and Robert Jeremey Allan ( Born 28Jun44 in Weihsien) they were with their parents John and Mat Allan lived in Block 21 Room 5 ( same block as Bobby Simmons) she seems to reacall playing with someone called Oliver who had a slightly deformed hand. Anybody shed any light on this I have seracehd the data base and cannot find a boy named Oliver.

Rgds

Ron Bridge.

 

RE: Can U Help

 Christine Talbot Sancton

Jul 20, 2002 18:17 PDT 

 

Dear Ron: I can't answer your question, but I have been looking for Kay Allan for years as our family was very close and she and I are the same age.

Please can you send me her info so that I can get in touch with her myself.

This is great news for me.

Christine Talbot Sancton

 

Re: Boy Scout goup

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Jul 20, 2002 18:53 PDT 

 

Thanks Sandy. Yes Yvonne did tell me about the phto and my brother Eddie is thrilled at the thought a getting an old boy scout photo. Unfortunately your transmission to me did not work so I will wait for Yvonne to give it to me. Thanks very much. Regards. Joyce.

 

More good old days

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 21, 2002 02:38 PDT 

 

Hi David,

Your nice email of the 19th stirred up more fond memories of action on the ball field and together with Mary Previte's contribution on Mary Scott and reference to the " Priests Padres ", makes giving you both a brief reply, sort of difficult.

First of all, could you please clear up in my mind, the date the Chefoo kids arrived in camp?   You see, I think the Chefoo crowd only arrived sometime after the majority of the Nuns and Priests had departed, and therefore 'unfortunately' you missed out on the best and most spectacular Softball games that were played, particularly in our first 6 months of internment.

 

It is a well known fact that the Catholic 'Padres' were a 'pretty' good bunch of softball players. With Fr Whellan pitching, Fr Joe Fontana 'catching', handsome Fr Andy Penfold on 1st and the 'flashy' Fr. 'Windy' Kline ( played some 'pro' baseball before joining the priesthood) playing 'short stop' etc., they were almost 'unbeatable'.   The biggest attraction, at that time, was the 'Padres' vs the 'Camp', and these games were usually real tight and low scoring affairs.

One of the best, I think was the last one, which was nil all at the bottom of the 9th and with 1 out, we managed to get a man(possibly speedy Aubrey Grandon) on 3rd with a couple of stolen bases.

Up to the 'plate' stepped Jimmy Pyke (our P.E. teacher at old P.A.S. pre 1943.) and slammed the longest' sacrifice drive deep to Center Field, almost to the guard tower, and you guessed it, brought in the winning and only run. What a finish it was, it couldn't have been better scripted. I will never forget it.

Fred.....your room's rear window looked out over that field, do you remember that game?

 

Mary Scott ....I must admit, I had forgotten the name but with your ( Mary Previte ) account and 'discriptions' , I most certainly can recall the "5-foot ball of fire" 'character'. How could I put it without sounding rude, she was sort of ' 5 x 5' ? (ooops)Let's say she was on the solid side, ok? Have I got the right one?

I also remember watching 'this person' trying to organise a girls game but was a bit short of players. For the fun of it, I put up my hand . Much to my surprise, I was accepted but was made to play left handed. Throwing was a real problem !

That's my 'silly' bit of trivia but it's true.

 

David, I'll have to defer answering the rest of your email, 'cause I've just been 'paged' .

Bye the way, which email address are you using currently?

 

Cheers for now............Zandy

 

Scout group photo

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 21, 2002 05:04 PDT 

 

Hi Joyce ,

Everyone must be 'sick to the back teeth' of reading about this photo that stubbornly ' never appears'. I can't see any reason for it not getting thru, as I had no problem sending it to someone else, not on the Weihsien site.

So this is my final attempt to get it thru electronically, I've asked Janette to re-forward it from her end, again.

Zandy

 

Mary Scott's book

 Mary Previte

Jul 21, 2002 15:59 PDT 

 

Mary Scott's book: Kept In Safeguard was published in 1977 by the Nazarene Publishing House in Kansas City. It was a missionary book...one of six which was published that year and read by Nazarene for credit points in our mission award system for the churches.

The toll free # of the Pub House: 1-800-877-0700

Mary Previte

 

Chefoo Scool's arrival in Weihsien

 Mary Previte

Jul 21, 2002 16:39 PDT 

 

Mary Scott was a stocky five feet tall.

The Chefoo Schools contingent arrived in Weihsien in September 1943 -- about  a week before a group of American and Canadian prisoners were released in a  prisoner exchange. Among those released were Chefoo students Jack Bell and  Grant Hanna. They travelled home on the Gripsholm.

 In his book, COURTYARD OF THE HAPPY WAY, Norman Cliff describes the day the  Chefoo Schools arrived. I quote a poem about that day directly from Norman's  book. By the way, I hope all of you have a copy of Norman's fascinating  story. You can order it directly from him. He's a member of our Weihsien  Topica network.    Norman writes on page 65:

 

    " The story of our arrival in Weihsien as seen by the local inhabitants  is recounted in the following poem, entitled 'The Two Hundred and  Ninety-seven.'

 

"Hooray! The Chefooites have all arrived at last!

Right heartily we cheered them as through the gates they passed,

They tredged up Guardhouse Hill, their baggage in the lead,

We 'Servers' nudged each other, 'Great Scott, more mouths to feed!"

That's not a nice expression but our rations were so low

And they had come from what we'd call luxury, you know.

They joined the Tsingtao Kitchen, school-children big and small;

We fed them on bread porridge, and they ate it, one and all!

We felt sorry for them when we filled their cups with bitter tea,

But they said, 'If you can drink it without sugar, so can we.'

Then came the real calamity, the camp ran out of yeast.

Our manager said, 'Doughnuts! Make twelve hundred at least!'

The boys soon took to 'Pumping' and other hard work too;

Some girls became dishwashers, others joined the kitchen crew'

We've grown fond of these school-children who so bravely stood the test

And should they ever need our help, we'll gladly do our best!'

(G. E.  Norman)"

 

Norman remembers that we were served leek soup, cornflour and waster custard  (didn't we call that blanc mange?), dry bread and tea that day.

 

Mary Previte

 

Re: Notions of Freedom

 alison holmes

Jul 21, 2002 16:49 PDT 

 

What a pleasure it is to read people thinking and asking questions. How right Dwight is to speak to the mixed bunch in camp and the significant differences in experiences and what was gleaned from them. I was most touched by Laura's account of her father's painting, a bleak landscape, no way in or out of the house, no nourishment, no light...all good things unattainable. How desolate...and yet how beautiful that she/you and your sister could give him the materials to become more aware of where he was standing at that particular moment of despair.

I think there is a lot to be said about the effect on children of their parents' experience...how could this not be so? It is bound to have a bearing on the field, though of course, need not control the field. You bet I tell children and grandchildren about Christmases when we had no more than a balloon and a cup of cocoa...but that doesn't have much effect on their Christmas preparations!

I suppose what we are all talking about is the cruelty of unnatural limitation........and to a certain extent, that limitation is experienced everywhere. Just as the depression was an example of the extremities of supply and demand, so the war and the camp was an example of taking limitation to the extreme. And we struggled for survival more obviously, more aware, then, than perhaps we are now that the organizing principle of current society is driven by the concept of survival. This is probably not the place to enlarge on the limitation we experience and impose in our unconscious and conditioned way in twenty first century America..........but as for Weihsien, so for now. Healing has to come to all who are scarred by limitation. It has to come on all levels.

On the physical level we will rejoice once again on August 17th. We are doing it on the emotional level as we swap memories. On the mental level we do it when we look at what qualities lead to that limitation, what qualities developed in that situation, what qualities are being utilized now. There are victims, there are survivors, and there are mediators, utilizing everything sent our way in order to build awareness. I'd like to mention once again the value of Victor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning" As a psychiatrist who was a prisoner in a Nazi camp, he was able to discover and formulate the structure of conscious living. He was so very aware of all the different levels, even of the level of the Eric Liddell's in his world ('the best of us did not survive'). I have seen this book work well with those with Post Traumatic Stress. And on books, Joseph Chilton Pearce's "The Biology of Transcendence" show both scientifically and humanly the wondrous equipment we have been endowed with, the actual physiological sequence of circuitry in the body which shows we are designed to handle experience in a particular way. In demonstrating that it also shows that as members of the human race we are handling it in a less than skilful way. Misusing the equipment we have leaves us stuck in the interplay between the mammalian and reptilian brain, in having emotional fixations on a physical focus. He encourages us to use all that we have been given for life abundant.

My very best to all of us who are looking for pattens, potentials, possibilities, who are using that kernel to make bread! Alison

 

Re: Mary Scott's book

 Stan Thomas

Jul 21, 2002 18:03 PDT 

 

A couple of used copies of May Scott's book are available on the internet.

See below.

                         Stan Thompson

 

Scott, Mary L. Kept In Safeguard Mary Scott Tells Of Her Experiences In Old  China Nazarene Publishing House 1977 paperback with 116 pages and b&w  photos. Tipped in author inscription. Fair. Cover has creasing, back cover  is soiled, tipped in note sheet and owner's address label. Missionaries,  Nazarene, China ISBN 0-8341-0462-8 Bookseller Inventory# 8497 US$ 8.00

 

SellerPacific Rim Used BooksPhone360 293 9788 and 7919 Address1717 Commercial Anacortes WA 98221 Fax360 293 7824

Email-@fidalgo.net

 

Terms Credit cards, checks, money orders. Please use e-mail for questions  concerning stock & shipping. Shipping for the first book of average weight  is $3 for insured 4th class book rate with a delivery time of 5 to 7 days.  Priority mail insured shipments for the average book are $5 with a one to 3  day delivery time. International shipments range from $5 for the first book  with a 30 to 90 day shipment time to $9 for global priority with a 5 to 7  day shipment time.

 

Scott, Mary L. Kept in Safeguard Nazarene Pub. House, 1977 Very Good. First. vg, paperback, 116 pgs,  shelf wear Book # 1005671 Price: US$5.00       Conco Books, 3421 Geary St. SE, Albany, OR, U.S.A.,  97322.

Phone: 1-541-926-0478. Fax: none. Email: concob-@proaxis.comIf  you  would like to purchase a book: Send check to: Conco Books 3421 Geary St. SE  Albany, OR 97322 Allow 10 days for shipping. We accept Visa and Mastercard.  We guarantee our books and accept returns within 10 days for any reason.  Postage $4.00 First book, $1.00 each additional More in-depth description  upon request. All orders are subject to prior sale. On completion of a  purchase with a credit card, your order goes directly to the bookseller.

The charge is made to your credit card only when the bookseller ships the  book to you. The book should arrive within the time frame that you choose  (stated in "business days"). Purchases may be returned to the bookseller  within 14 days of receipt for a refund/credit for items that are not as  described or that did not arrive. Customer satisfaction is guaranteed by  our booksellers.

 

Re: More good old days

 David Birch

Jul 21, 2002 20:34 PDT 

 

Zandy,

 

Boy, I can see I really missed out by not being better acquainted with you at Weihsien! Do you remember Kenneth Bell? Or Torje Torjeson? They were both my age (I was born in Nov '31) and were really athletic fellows. I was okay when I worked at it. They were "naturals." Torje used to get me away from books--I did a lot of reading--and got me really enthused playing what might be called "sand-lot basketball." That is, we'd chase around bouncing the basketball and trying to get it away from each other and into the basket on that clay court outside Block 61. That of course was by the hospital. And those of us who lived latterly in the hospital building had our roll call twice a day in that location. I'm working on another story which I'm calling, The Night the Stars Began to Fall. It's of my recollection  of VE Day and the emergency, middle-of-the-night roll call we had. Definitely one of the more unusual of my boyhood experiences!

Zandy, you are welcome to any of my stories if you'll be patient enough to wait for them to arrive one at a time. And so are any others of you who may be interested. Right now I'm just sending them out to my friends for the asking. I have a friend, however, who is has his degree in creative writing from the University of Victoria (British Columbia) who says he would like to help me get my material published. They are informally copyrighted with me as the copyright owner. But I of course have the liberty to give copies to my friends.

I think you should write up some stories too. From that brief account of that fabulous game that went all the way to the bottom of the ninth inning, I'm very sure you have something that would make a gripping chapter in a book for virtually any age group. Tell you what! Let's trade story for story. I'll polish mine up one at a time. You do the same. And after a while I'm quite certain we'll have at the very least, a highly readable collection of each other's memories of Weihsien compound when we were boys.

Keep the memories flowing. You're really "priming some pumps!"

David

 

ps I use either e-mail address. But when you send to me at silver-@shaw.ca it will be private. When you send to weihsien@topica  it goes out to anyone who wishes to "tune in" as it were. I keep the yahoo e-mail address because so many of my correspondents have it. However, Yahoo carries a lot of advertising, and I get a bit tired of seeing it sometimes.

You can reach me privately at silverbirch or privately at gdavid-@yahoo.com.

That may seem as "clear as mud" but anyway, the main thing is KEEP IN TOUCH. I really enjoy hearing from you. If you send me your mailing address, why not send it to the silverbirch location. It should be reasonably private. And I'll mail some stories out to you. I do not yet have a scanner so cannot send them the easy way.

 

Re: Jack Graham and the radio tube he smuggled from the Japanese quarters

 David Birch

Jul 21, 2002 20:35 PDT 

 

Mary,

Thank you.

I will try to contact Graham. I wonder how many know that he was a third generation Graham in China, his father and grandfather both having served with the CIM as missionaries. Graham's dad and my dad were contemporaries at the Language School around 1928.

Jack, himself, my contemporary at Chefoo and Weihsien, and roommate for a while across the hall from Patrick and Jessie (Cassells) Bruce, had a gentle nature (down deep) and I clearly recall him kneeling beside his bed, earlier on, when our room was across the hall one floor lower. Mr. Stanley Houghton had come in to our room and had said,  Boys, if you've never prayed before, pray now. We all- about four to six boys in that room got up and knelt beside our beds and prayed silently but with real feeling for Brian Thompson who lay dying one floor below while the Weihsien medical team kept up artificial respiration until around ten o'clock that night.

Graham also sang with a true alto voice in those days. I sang treble.

I liked Jack Graham and still do. He was fun-loving and a leader of sorts although I did not choose to follow his lead. However, he seems to have engineered one adventure in which I wound up bearing the brunt of it. The last time I heard directly from Jack Graham was in about 1946 or 1947 when he sent me a friendly handwritten letter from Wheaton where he was enrolled in the College along with several other Chefoo alumni including Stanley Thompson and Torje Torjeson. The three of us had been members of the same class all the way from Primary (for at least some of us) to Lower One, some seven or eight years.

Thanks for letting me know where the retired colonel, US Army, now lives. Graham, if you get to read this, please contact me at: silver-@shaw.ca.

Sincerely,

David Birch

 

Old China Hands Archive and Exhibition

 Greg Leck

Jul 22, 2002 11:25 PDT 

 

 

Is anyone planning to attend the Oct 4 and 5 opening of the Inaugural Exhibition of Old China Hands Archive at the California State University at Northridge?

Greg Leck

 

Bad Guy

 Laura Hope-Gill

Jul 22, 2002 13:25 PDT 

 

Dear Everyone,

I have received an email forwarded by Des Power from a man named Frederick  Park. He tells Des that he is working on an oral history of Weihsien  internees through Clemson University. However, this individual "stalks" me  from a distance and I fear this is just another way he's invented to involve  himself in my life. Please, if he contacts you, asking for information about  me or my family, kindly withhold. I'm sorry to sour the list with this.

Sincerely, Laura

 

Re: Bad Guy

 Dwight W. Whipple

Jul 22, 2002 13:30 PDT 

 

Thanks for the heads-up, Laura. Will certainly comply with your wishes.

~Dwight Whipple

 

RE: Bad Guy

 Ron Bridge

Jul 22, 2002 13:57 PDT 

 

Sorry to hear Laura is being pestered.

There have been a couple of people usually claiming to represent an obscure research project sometimes UNIV based in the UK who have contacted ex-PoWs/internees asking after doing an oral history and then asking for money usually around US$750 to "take the evidence" so all beware.

 

Re: Bad Guy

 Natasha Petersen

Jul 22, 2002 15:07 PDT 

 

I will be on the look-out for this man. He will get no information from me.

Natasha

 

Re: Bad Guy

 Mary Previte

Jul 22, 2002 17:10 PDT 

 

Please be careful, Laura. These weird-os can be dangerous. He will get no  information from me.

 

    I was outraged recently by a letter from a group claiming to represent my  interests -- yes, asking for money. The request gave me the uneasy feeling  that the group had taken my name and address from one of our Weihsien  connections.

    Mary Previte

 

Re: Bad Guy

 Laura Hope-Gill

Jul 22, 2002 21:58 PDT 

 

Dear everybody,

Thank you so much for your kindness-- it's terrible to hear of people charging internees money to share their  stories. 

Freaks are plenty, and it reminds me to be thankful for good kind people like  yourselves, which brings me to ask about the acts of kindness you all  experienced and witness during the internment. I have my grandmother's story  of the tomatoes appearing magically at her door when her children were badly  in need of vitamins. And there's Gilkey's account of the monk's pretending  to pray while actually gathering eggs under their robes. . . what others?

 (if you should hear from bad guy, please forward the msg. to me so I can add  it to a file I'm advised to keep--as you know, no action can be taken since  there's no physical threat, just eerie behaviour).

Best to you all,

Laura

 

Re: Boy Scout goup

 Fred Dreggs

Jul 24, 2002 00:34 PDT 

 

Hello Zandy.

Received your scout photo OK. It certainly came out clearly. No, my brother Bobby is not in that photo.

As to the ball-game at camp. Yes, I seem to recall that particular game as being very exciting and the talk of the camp for quite a while. As a matter of interest, the window in our "cell" was busted by a softball a couple of times and wooden slats had to be affixed but I have no idea how that was arranged given how hard it was to get wood, also glass was impossible to get so my Mum covered the window with cloth.

Just a bit more Weihsien camp trivia!

Cheers

Fred

 

"Pineapple"

 David Birch

Jul 24, 2002 11:28 PDT 

 

Zandy,

Do you remember the baseball ump known as "Pineapple?"

I recall him as a colourful, rolly-polly little man whom we all turned to to see what he was going to call the play - in those marvelous 'big league' games such as Britain vs America. Pinespple must have known what he was doing because there wasn't a great deal of arguing with him! And yet he always had a friendly, sort of mischievous little smile playing about his lips. He was, I think, a bit of a 'legend' in his time.

David

 

Re: "Pineapple"

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 25, 2002 02:17 PDT 

 

Thanks to ALL who have come back to me with their generous I.D. contribution on the Scout photo which seems to have generated some further interest. To Greg Leck.........Thanks for your 'Email and introduction' and background info.   I had not heard of the Lincoln Avenue Camp, before.

Incidentally, Desmond Power 'spent some time' at both Pootung and Lunghwa camps before joining us at Weihsien-----he would be a rich source of info for your project.    Getting illustrative material for it, now, might prove difficult I'd imagine. The photo came to me from JANETTE and LEOPOLD, so permission for it's use would have to come from them, I feel.    Good luck with it , anyway.

 

Re.... answering your questions, on "when was it taken?......pre or post Liberation?......anyone having a camera in camp? and the development there of, etc ?

I'd like to call upon JOYCE and RON for some assistance here.   Eddie Cooke (Joyce's brother) is one of the scouts in the picture and therefore, the best person to tell us when it was taken .

RON's recent email with attachment ( which I was not able to access ) is probably the same series of photos that Christine Sancton kindly circulated back in March.. If so, I agree they appear to be taken at the same session, and at the same location. But the number 18 in the background certainly looks more like a 13 in the Cub group.

As far as anyone having cameras in camp? That was a distinct possibility, but I don't think they would have been foolish enough to use it. As for developing the film? I think that unlikely, also, as I can't remember any X-rays being processed in camp. Maybe JOYCE or FRED can throw some light on that one.

 

Last but not least, DAVID.........   Yes, I remember the ' rolly polly ' ump. And I think he was one of our Hawaiian band members? I think ?   Once again Joyce or Fred or Ron could confirm that .

 I've got much more for you David but I've just been called for supper, so will have to get back to you later.

Best regards.............Zandy    

 

Internment Camps in China

 Greg Leck

Jul 25, 2002 09:24 PDT 

 

As for photographs of the camps, one of the reasons they are rare is that in 1942, at least in the Shanghai area (and I would presume in Tientsin, Tsingtao, and Peking areas - perhaps you North China hands can confirm this) the Japanese promulgated that all cameras (as well as radios, firearms, binoculars, and other items) be turned in to them. Receipts were issued but for the most part these items were never recovered. I have a copy of receipts issued for a camera and an automobile.

Lincoln Avenue Camp was located in Shanghai on a compound formerly used as housing for Bank of China employees. It was something of a hospital camp with large numbers of ill, elderly, or infirm internees who where not rounded up until very late in 1944.

Desmond Power knew my family in Tientsin when they lived there in the 1920s before moving to Shanghai. He is a rich source of information and has been of the utmost help to me in my project.

There are photographs out there of the camps. Japanese photographers took many photos for propaganda purposes but my efforts at tracking down any information the Japanese hold has been unsuccessful to date. Photographers after the war visited Chapei, Pootung, Lunghwa, Weihsien, Stanley, and Yangchow C, and perhaps more. Photographs of Lincoln Avenue and ASH camp exist as well. In Shanghai, photographers from the Bubbling Well studio of Oskar Seepold took a large series of photographs of Lunghwa and Chapei.

 In any event, if anyone can tell me who took the photo and when, I'd appreciate it.

Greg

 

Re: Internment Camps in China

 Dwight W. Whipple

Jul 25, 2002 11:29 PDT 

 

Fascinating! The photos must be in government archives somewhere. Anybody know a government official who could help out?

~Dwight Whipple

 

RE: Photos.

 Ron Bridge

Jul 25, 2002 13:52 PDT 

 

They are all of the same series and I am certain taken in 1944. I believe that the camera issue is solved by them being taken by a Japanese Photographer for an article on are we not doing a lot to keep them live their normal lives. I have a copy orf a Peking Newspaper Article published about that time extolling the virtues of the kind way in which the Japanese were keeping those interned. The Numbers were on the walls on the south wall near the tennis courts by the hospital.

Rgds

Ron

 

Re: Photos.

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 26, 2002 00:57 PDT 

 

Ron.....It's obvious the only ones in a position to answer the questions of when, where and by whom the pictures were taken, would be Fr. Hanquet, Eddie Cooke or yourself, who were actually at the scene.(And facing the cameraman.)

Upon closer scrutiny of the cub photo, the space and type of surface seems to confirm the tennis court area but what is the reason for the number 13 or 18, being on a perimeter wall??? How many more numbers were there?

I can't recall any numbers anywhere, not even on the ends of our blocks, so I've got no argument on that point.

Your theory of a Jap photographer taking the series of photos for propaganda purposes sounds feasible but how did the photos get distributed amongst some internees ???

Regards,

Zandy

 

Re: "Pineapple"

 Fred Dreggs

Jul 26, 2002 02:43 PDT 

 

Zandy,

I hadn't given the person nicknamed "Pineapple" any thought whatsoever for

50 odd years when now, suddenly, the name emerges and brings back memories.

Yes, as I recall, he was a member of the band which played for our dances.

Very enjoyable indeed. Do you remember Aubrey Grandon singing his favourite song "South of the Border" accompanied by this band? In 1944 Aubrey caught up with Des Power, Tony Lambert, Brian Clark and myself when we(Des,Tony and I) were sharing a flat at Notting Hill Gate, London, and we all had a fantastic, unbelievable time reminiscing for hours and hours. Nostalgia is certainly a wonderful thing!

Cheers

Fred

 

Fw: photo Hanquet

 leopold pander

Jul 26, 2002 04:22 PDT 

 

Hello,

A short message I've just received from Janette,

We will keep you informed --- as soon as we've seen Father Hanquet

Best regards,

Leopold

 

----- Original Message -----

From: LEY Pierre

To: PANDER LEOPOLD

Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 12:22 PM

Subject: photo Hanquet

Could you send word to "topica" that we are now asking Father Hanquet for all the details concerning his photo, and any others,also if he remembers anything about Japanese photographers in camp (?!)

As for Father Verhoeven, we'll ask him too, and we are trying elsewhere...

In his book "The Enemy Within" F. de Jaegher tells about Japanese propaganda photographers active and very present when the Allies were waiting at Peking railway station (chapter 8, 3rd. paragraph)

Till next!.... Janette

 

RE: photo Hanquet

 Greg Leck

Jul 26, 2002 06:16 PDT 

 

I have photographs of Allied internees at the huge Santo Tomas internment centre in Manila, Philippines, but have yet to uncover any from China. In Shanghai the photographers climbed trees to get better shots as internees were marched from the Anglican Cathedral to the Bund.

Greg

 

correction

 Fred Dreggs

Jul 26, 2002 22:56 PDT 

 

In my message toZandy, the date catching up with Aubrey Grandon should have read 1947 and not 1944.

Fred

 

Re: "Pineapple"

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 28, 2002 03:47 PDT 

 

David and Fred,

I had also forgotten all about ' that character ' called "Pineapple" until David mentioned him, the other day, as a ' no nonsense ' type of umpire. And I've since been 'wracking' my brains trying to recall the name of ' The daddy of all NO NONSENSE umpires ' we had in camp (until the US repatriation in '43.). He was a real 'rough and tough' ol' US Marine from the Peking legation detachment, who also played a 'wicked game 'of Ice hockey on the same 'interport team' my father played in, in the 30's. ( Those of our age group would remember the 'interport' series between the 3 main Chinese cities, but Tientsin and Peking seemed to figure in it the most.) Carl or Karl RUMF (no relation to Hazzie Rumph.)is the closest I can get.

He would have been aged about 50, then.

Well, the big game I can recall, was not a softball game but a true baseball game. Yes, ' a few' went over the wall, but solid 'hits' were few and far between, that afternoon.

I was just 14 and managed to look inconspicuous up against the centerfield guard tower. And even from that distance his piercing ' sstttrrikke' or 'baaalll' and accompanying actions, is something I have never forgotten.

David ....those 'big league' games you mentioned were actually referred to as the 'major league' with teams that were most prominent, being known as 'the Stokers' , the 'Cooks' and the 'Bakers', 3 that come to mind. And earlier in our internment we had the 3 Kitchen teams. But when the Peking kitchen was vacated to accommodate the Italian contingent, we were reduced to the Kitchen 1 playing Kitchen 2, as the 'main game in town'.

Of course I must mention we had the 'minor league' as well and also the junior games, where I started .

You are not the only ones to enjoy a bit of reminiscing! And more than enough from me.

Oh! By the way Mary.... 'TOUCHAY'   " stocky' WAS the word I was looking for!

David......

I haven't forgotten about finishing that email reply to you. It's just that I've go to get SOME 'shut eye'.

Cheers......Zandy

 

Boyscouts photo

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Jul 28, 2002 20:35 PDT 

 

Zandy,

The boy next to John de Zutter was called "Porky" and the boy next to Father Hanquet is "Sotolongo". My brother does not know their real names, nor does he know the date of the photograph. Also, he said the baseball umpire was in fact Huzzi Rumph's father. The other umpire "Pineapple" was so-named because the Weihsien band was called "The Pineapples" .

All this info comes from my brother Eddie.

regards to all

Joyce

 

Re: Boyscouts photo

 Zandy Strangman

Jul 29, 2002 00:45 PDT 

 

Joyce,

Thanks for that bit of info. I thought that was 'Porky', as well. But without his trademark ' slouch cap ' , I wasn't sure.

Many-is-the-time he demanded, "Don't call me Porky, my name is George Watts! " So he kept getting Porky to the end.

Never heard of Sotolongo!

Besides Haazi's immediate family of 4, there were 2 other Rumpfs. I presume a couple. (she was W. Russian.)

Neither of them was the baseball umpire, I mentioned . As I said I wasn't sure of his surname. It was something like Rolf or Ralph. It could have been Karl Roulf and closer to 40 than 50 in age. And definitely one who was repatriated in '43.

 

After nearly 60 years, I guess we can expect to be some what ' foggy' in our recalling powers.

 

Cheers.........Zandy

 

Re: Weihsien internee sketches

 alison holmes

Jul 31, 2002 08:12 PDT 

 

Is there anyway that you can scan the sketches for us? I have checked in via the Internet to issue no 20 of the Bamboo Wireless and found no pictures. We are getting a wonderful collection of visual reminders together. Tremendous! Thank you. Alison

 

RE: Weihsien internee sketches

 Greg Leck

Jul 31, 2002 08:27 PDT 

 

I think that photographic material often disappears from web pages that are designed to be temporary, such as a newsletter issue.

I do have a copy of the issue which has the sketches - they are all children if I recall correctly. I don't have a scanner but could try to take a digital photograph of it and send as a jpeg to those who are interested.

(You can't send attachments via Topica, can you?)

However, Ron Bridge, editor of The Bamboo Wireless, may have an easier way to post them. What say you Ron?

Greg

 

Re: Weihsien internee sketches

 Dwight W. Whipple

Jul 31, 2002 08:36 PDT 

 

If you find a way, I would love to have copies sent. These are marvellous reminders of camp and are ringing so many memory bells. Last night I showed the ones I have to my 97 year old father who could identify them readily.

Keep them coming!

~Dwight Whipple

 

RE: Weihsien internee sketches

 Ron Bridge

Jul 31, 2002 12:48 PDT 

 

There is no problem re scanning except time and that is in very short supply at the monet due to the Court Case in the UK High Court over those that HMG have denied being Brtiish. I do no plan to fall off my perch fpor a while so I will get to it but I fear that the tpica site may not handle the size of sketches as problems over Leopold panders paintings.

Rgds

Ron

 

RE: Weihsien internee sketches

 Ron Bridge

Jul 31, 2002 12:48 PDT 

 

Further to my previous having read Greg's letter due to ABCIFER Site limitation we take out the pictures after three issues.

Simplest thing is for anyone intersted to sedn me their mailing address by e-mail and I will photocopy what I have and send it to you they are all of children and not have been properly identified thus I do not think that they would help too much. I do not think that they are children who were at Chefoo School.

Rgds

Ron

 

Re: Weihsien internee sketches

 alison holmes

Jul 31, 2002 13:01 PDT 

 

Are photos and sketches the same thing? I am interested in sketches, in any artistic representations that came out of the camp. If they can come now or later that's just fine...we Brits are so grateful for the work you, Ron, have done for us and are doing for others. So don't let this turn into the last straw that knocks you off your perch. Best, Alison

 

Re: Weihsien internee sketches

 Dwight W. Whipple

Jul 31, 2002 16:30 PDT 

 

No hurry, Ron, but I am one that would like photocopies of what you have.

~Dwight

 

Re: Weihsien internee sketches

 leopold pander

Aug 01, 2002 23:48 PDT 

 

Hello Ron,

Janette is very interested in getting the pictures ... So am I ---

Thanks in advance,

Leopold

 

Re: Story about Weihsien rescuer posted on JapaneseAmerican Vet website

 Dwight W. Whipple

Aug 02, 2002 20:54 PDT 

 

Thank you for the great story and pictures!

~dwight whipple

 

Re: Story about Weihsien rescuer posted on JapaneseAmerican Vet website

 leopold pander

Aug 03, 2002 00:23 PDT 

 

Thanks for the tip. We got it "loud and clear" !

Leopold

 

---

 

                                    (c) 1996 Corel Corporation Limited

TAD NAGAKI: Japanese-American Hero Behind Japanese Lines in World War II

by Mary Taylor Previte

 

 

Tad Nagaki was full of memories when I tracked him down fifty-two years later.  I cupped the long distance phone to my ear and listened to his voice. Wave after wave of memories blurred my eyes.    I was a wide-eyed 12 year-old again listening to the drone of the airplane far above the concentration camp.  Racing to the window, I watched it sweep lower, slowly lower.

 

It was a giant plane, emblazoned with an American star. Weihsien went mad.  I raced for the entry gates and was swept off my feet by the pandemonium.  Grown men ripped off their shirts and waved them at the sky to flag down the low-flying plane.  Prisoners ran in circles and punched the skies with their fists.  They wept, cursed, hugged, danced as the B-24 circled back,  its belly open.  Americans were spilling from the  skies, drifting into the fields tall with ripening gaoliang  grain beyond the barrier walls of the Weihsien Concentration Camp in China.  The Americans had come.  1945, I was a child prisoner in that concentration camp.  Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center. That's what the Japanese guards called it.  Tad Nagaki was an American  hero in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), one of the seven-man Duck Mission that liberated 1,400 Allied civilian prisoners there.  For five and a half years, my brother and sister and I had not seen our missionary parents.  August 17, 1945.  I shall never forget that day.  Tad Nagaki was the Japanese-American interpreter on the rescue team. In a cross country search I tracked him down -- I found them all -- in 1997, fifty-two years later.  By then, Tad was a widower, 78 years old and farming corn and beans and sugar beets in Alliance, Nebraska.  I had to pull. Tad is comfortable with the solitude of his tractor and his fields. These  OSS men were trained to keep secrets. I was not.  I was a woman from New Jersey-- full of questions. So I pulled -- with half a continent between us -- trying to be polite,but tumbling the questions like a breathless child.  Today, I call that rescue a suicide mission -- six Americans and one Chinese interpreter against how many armed Japanese guards in 1945.  Slowly, slowly,  Tad Nagaki talked about that windy day, the low-flying drop using British parachutes so the Japanese would have less space and time to shoot the rescue team.  It was only his second parachute jump, he said. I remembered out loud the crowds of child prisoners.  Oh, yes, we trailed these gorgeous liberators around, begged for their insignia, begged for buttons, begged them to sing the songs of America.   

They were sun bronzed American gods with meat on their bones.  My 12-year-old heart turned somersaults over every one of them.  We followed them day and night like children following the Pied Piper.  What did it feel like? I asked Tad Nagaki. Like being put on a pedestal, he said. That was the understatement of the century.  We made them gods.  Tad remembered a girl cutting off a chunk of his hair so she'd have a souvenir. What Tad Nagaki didn't say -- that's what surprised me.  Didn't he know that as an ethnic Japanese, if the Japanese caught him in 1945, he'd be the first they would torture and would kill?  Didn't he know their most ghastly interrogation techniques would come first?   Didn't he know -- of course, he did -- the ritual executions of Americans, would follow -- oh, yes by the Japanese warriors code of Bushido, which prescribed execution by beheading?   I shudder still to think of it.  And in Burma or in China, what if American soldiers thought you were the Japanese enemy?  I asked. I never gave it any thought, he said. I was American. He made it sound so simple.  I was American.  I kept prodding. In war, he said,  if you Àre going to think about that, you Àre not going to make a very good  soldier.

So how did a Japanese-American soldier -- mistrusted as a Nisei and limited to pruning trees and landscaping the grounds on a wartime military base in World War II -- arrive in an elite team of Japanese Americans serving in the China-Burma-India theater?  How did he becomepart of the first espionage unit the United States used behind Japanese lines? Minoseke Nagaki, Tads father,  emigrated from Japan to Hawaii in theearly 1900's when  American employers were recruiting Japanese to work inthe mines, forests, and  canneries.

 

Tads father worked first on plantations in Hawaii then moved to the mainland to work on the railroad.   By 1906, 13,000 Japanese were working on the railroad.  Pay was 95 cents to one dollar a day.  The Central Pacific Railroad climbed the High Sierras, wound through the Donner Pass and stretched through Nevada.  Along the way, small groups of Japanese remained inland to open restaurants, laundries, and slaughterhouses, to mine coal and copper, and to farm.  Minoseke Nagaki settled in a valley with forty or fifty Japanese families near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and, like many Japanese men, he sent to Japan for a picture bride. The law then said Japanese were not permitted to become American citizens.  But he started farming.  He grew a family. Tad and other Japanese-American children started speaking English when they went to the two and three-room schools around Scottsbluff, but someone started a Japanese language school in the summers so Nisei native U. S. citizens born of immigrant Japanese parents -- would also read and write Japanese.  This gift of two languages would shape his future. War was brewing across the ocean.  Tad Nagaki was drafted into the Army in November, 1941, the first of the Nagaki brothers to go.  Born in Nebraska, he was America.  His Japanese-born parents considered it Tad's duty to go.  Tad was 21.   Men of the Scottsbluff Elks Lodge sent him off and the other 18 draftees from the valley with a buffet supper.  The Nagakis celebrated with a good by get together. Tad would defend America. It was a simple equation: You love your country, you must be willing to fight for it.    

But for Japanese-American soldiers it was more than that.  Military service would  prove their patriotism.  It would show America. Tad Nagaki's mother posted a proud sticker in the farmhouse window, boasting that her boy was serving his country. 

Pearl Harbor  Any American who was alive on December 7, 1941,can tell you where he was when he heard the news.  Joseph Harsch of The Christian Science Monitor wrote from Honolulu, Planes with red balls under their wings came in through the morning mist today and attacked America's great mid-Pacific naval base and island fortress here.

If Japan's sneak attack at Pearl Harbor shook America with anger and shock,   Japanese-Americans felt instant terror.  Many smashed their Japanese recordings and burned or buried letters from kin folks, books, ceremonial dolls, Buddhist family shrines, and Japanese flags. Japanese had killed or wounded 4,612 Americans, many of them buried under the waters of Pearl Harbor.  REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR -- the slogan fanned the flames.  In the war hysteria, the Rose Bowl football game was moved out of Pasadena for fear of an air raid.  Burma Shave signs sprouted along highways: SLAP THE JAP.  Some Asian-Americans began wearing I am Chinese or I am Filipino pins; they would differentiate us from them.  When a nation is attacked, how does it judge loyalty?  Before long, the Selective Service System classified Nisei -- enemy aliens not subject to military service.  Some were mustered out of the Army and sent home.  

Some were disarmed and assigned to menial labor.¹ Tad Nagaki didn't notice any change of people's attitude towards him at first-- not until his training buddies in the signal corps were all shipped out -- and Tad was not.

 

Like everyone else, Tad was itching for action.   He had always dreamed of flying.  He passed his physical and collected recommendations to become an air cadet.  Then came  the personal letter from his commander: They could not accept him because he was  Japanese American.  Shipped to Ft. Thomas, Kentucky, he now was assigned to a barracks with about forty Japanese-Americans.  Other American boys were doing important stuff -- going to war, fighting for America.  Tad and his buddies were pruning trees and landscaping the post, loading food onto troop trains.  But what kind of job was  that for a gung-ho American soldier when a war was going on? 

 

February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order, evacuating people of Japanese descent from coastal areas.  Just before the war started, a tiny handful of Army Intelligence specialists was alerting superiors of the importance of training Japanese language interpreters to master the incredibly complex Japanese language.  But could youth of an alien race -- only one generation removed from the land of their ancestors -- be trusted in battle or in top secret intelligence work?  While one hand of the Army was removing Japanese-Americans from the west coast, another was searching for qualified Nisei for its language and intelligence effort.  In San Francisco, the Army opened a small-scale language school in a converted hangar at Crissy Field, The Presidio.  It hand picked fifty-eight  Nisei for its first class -- sitting on apple boxes and orange crates.  When the top brass finally saw its value, the school was transferred to Camp Savage, Minnesota, where it was reorganized as the Military Intelligence Service Language School.

 

In 1943, as Tad Nagaki and Nisei volunteers from the relocation camps were increasingly frustrated to spend the war trimming trees and loading food onto troop trains -- two years of menial labor --  the War Department posted an announcement on the camp bulletin board.  It was a plan to accept volunteers for a special Nisei combat unit.  Every  chance we got, we had tried to get into a combat unit, he says.  They kept saying, No. Now Nisei from Hawaii and across the mainland rushed to volunteer.   Half of the mainland men volunteered from America relocation camps. Absolutely, yes!   Duty, honor, and country.  They would fight for America. At Camp Shelby, Mississippi, the Nisei formed the 442nd Regimental (Go for Broke) Combat Team. The average I.Q. of the entire  442nd was 119, nine points higher than that required for Officer Candidate School. 

The 442nd's shoulder patch sported a hand holding high a torch of liberty against blue sky.   Deployed mainly in Europe, they would earn that patch.  The 442nd would become the most highly decorated American unit in World War II, receiving 18,143 individual awards, not including Purple Hearts which are estimated at 3,600.  

Skeets Nagaki, Tad's older brother, served in the 442nd. Just as Tad Nagaki was joining the 442nd in July, 1943, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) asked for Nisei volunteers for highly secret intelligence work.  More hazardous than combat, some of them were told, a one-way ticket. Ó À   At a height of 5'5", Tad wasn't thinking about being a hero, but this choice was better than pruning trees.

 

He enrolled and found himself selected for an elite team of Nisei in OSS Detachment 101.  Of the twenty-three men who started, only fourteen made it.  Some people dubbed the OSS   Oh So Social -- because so many came from the Ivy League. There was nothing Ivy League about the Nisei group.  Tad Nagaki was a farm boy from Nebraska. Three were from California and the rest, from Hawaii.

 

Oh So Secret was a better nickname. The assignment was hush-hush from the start.   Rule Number One: You didn't ask questions. You didn't write home to Mom about what you were doing or what you had seen.  The team was bound for no-one-knew-where.  

Whatever was going on involved more than one service.  If you asked an insider, he might tell you the OSS was a crazy mix of the FBI and the Office of Naval  Intelligence rolled  together, plus Errol Flynn in one of those war movies where he parachuted behind enemy lines and took on the whole enemy army by himself.

 

The OSS trained the Nisei team first in radio school in Naperville, Illinois, then the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Fort Savage, MN, then six weeks of survival and demolition at Toyon Bay on Catalina Island.  They toughened up with fitness training in the mountains, exercised with water drills from LST boats.  They could survive by fishing or shooting mountain goats.  Catalina Island was ideal for coastal surveillance and commando training.  It was 1944.  After begging for action since 1942, the Nisei were about to get their chance.

 

In December, 1941, Japan had moved to protect its gains in Southeast Asia, cut off Allied supply routes to China, and gain additional rice and oil by invading the British colony of Burma.   It took them only three months to capture Burma, a country about the size of Texas.  War in this China-Burma--India theater would be fought over control of supply routes to China.  In Burma, troops fought Guts War. You melted with intense heat. You slogged through monsoon rains and jungle rot.  Your gut gushed and your body melted with tropical diseases. Your feet blistered with long marches.  You fought off -- slapped off -- leeches, poisonous snakes, and biting insects.  Supplies often came only through parachute drops.

 

Burma churned out an unpredictable mix of jungle war, mountain war, desert war, and naval war.  It was a death match of hand-to-hand combat appropriate for the Stone Age and air transportation, whole divisions and their artillery and vehicles flying through the sky,  a marvel even for the 20th Century.  Soldiers landed by glider on remote jungle strips.  Troops inched through acres of muddy paddy-fields under solid sheets of  monsoon rain that rotted their boots as they moved.  Boats probed mangrove swamps. 

 

Dropping into Northern Burma in January 1943, OSS Detachment101 was the first espionage unit the United States used behind Japanese lines. Deployed in China, Burma, and India, it had 250 officers and 750 enlisted men trained in parachuting, radio operations, infiltration, survival training, hand to-hand combat, cryptography and guerrilla tactics.  An American-led intelligence outfit with unconventional methods, it was led by Carl Eifler and William Ray Peers.  But what an inhospitable place for Allied soldiers who were inexperienced in jungle warfare!  Repelled as they were by the tribal practice of collecting ears of the dead, Detachment 101 needed native talent.  To recruit the local Kachin tribesmen and gain their trust, they slept in villages and took part in village festivals, watched Kachin musical processions, joined their games, foot races and feasts.    They lead 10,000 Kachin tribesmen -- Kachin Raiders -- from villages, mountains, and jungle hideouts against the Japanese in Burma.  With support of the Kachins, U. S. troops could feel the jungle was on their side. They used the jungle grapevine. They pinpointed enemy targets for Allied bombers.  By late 1943, Detachment 101 had eleven radio stations reporting regularly from Japanese controlled areas. In 1943, when the Japanese announced that captured flyers would be given one way tickets to hell, Detachment 101 and their Kachin Raiders began rescuing downed crews.  Morale of Allied airmen in the Tenth Air Force many of them flying over The Hump improved.  Detachment 101 rescued some 400 Allied flyers. If Detachment team was glued together with the unparalleled brotherhood that men find in battle, they were also bonded as blood brotherhood hell-bent on proving their patriotism.  Every one of them knew when he volunteered that it was much more dangerous for him as a Japanese-American than for others.

 

Late in 1944,  Tad Nagaki arrived in Myitkyina (pronounced mich-chi naw), Burma, at a bend in the Irrawadi River.  Myitkyina was the strategic key to the entire plan in the north.  It had the only hard-surface, all-weather airstrip in Burma north of  Mandalay.  This was the airfield the legendary Merrill Marauders had seized.  From there, Nagaki helped establish headquarters in Bhamo.  Burma was his introduction to living in straw thatched huts (bashas), riding bare back on cargo-bearing elephants, slathering insect repellant, and eating K-rations,  C-rations and native rice and chicken curry.  The Nisei plunged into the work of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, hit and-run harassment operations, translating Japanese documents, preparing propaganda leaflets, interrogating prisoners, and building air fields.  Calvin Tottori, a member of the Nisei team, documents their exploits in a fascinating collection of unpublished memories, The O.S.S. Niseis  in the  China-Burma-India Theater.  Dick Hamada attached to 2nd Battalion in Central Burma.  He recalls: Second Battalion was constantly on the move, setting up ambush, using punji (smoke-hardened bamboo spikes) set on both sides of the trail to impale the enemy. The  punji were crude, but very effective.

 

After one skirmish with the enemy, the Kachin Rangers brought some clothing and captured weapons.  I inquired, How many enemy soldiers were killed? Twenty, said the  soldiers.  When doubt spread across my face, they quickly took 20 ears from their pouch.  From that day on, I never doubted their claims.

 

The team was supposed to interrogate Japanese prisoners.  I never had the chance, Tad Nagaki says. They resisted capture with fanatical zeal.  Surrender would bring shame to their family and country.   The Japanese always committed suicide, he recalls, blew themselves up with grenades.

 

Being mistaken for the enemy was always a possibility.  Nisei  Lt. Ralph Yempuku  was assigned to the 1st Battalion Kachin Rangers under Captain Joe Lazarsky.  The Kachins hated the Japanese.  Japanese had tied villagers to trees and bayoneted them to death.  The Kachins were initially very wary about me because I was a Japanese-American, Yempuku recalls. On the first day, Captain Lazarsky paraded me in front of the whole battalion introducing me as an American and ordering them to study my face so that I would not be mistaken for and shot as an enemy Japanese.

 

I told them Lt. Yempuku was, like the rest of us white men, Lazarsky says.   Lt. Yempuku lead his own company of Kachin guerrillas in ambushing and attacking Japanese-held villages behind enemy lines near Lashio and along the Burma Road.

 

Every Nisei knew, death would be better than capture. Cal Tottori's first mission was to gather intelligence on Japanese troop movements in the area north of Maymyo.  Since there were only two of us, we were expected to protect each other.  I recalled what we had been told over and over during our training -- always save the last bullet for ourselves.  Combat bred its superstitions. After the first recruit was wounded,   Tottori's team felt very strongly that a tattoo on one's body had some mystical power of protection.  In a moment of sheer madness, we had a Burmese priest (pongyi) do the tattooing on us, Tottori recalls.  Mine was a Burmese tiger on my left forearm and is a constant reminder of what I went through in that country.

 

Nagaki plunged into his assignment of training two platoons, Kachin tribesmen in the north and Shan in Central Burma.  It was a breathtaking mix of combat danger, Red Cross coffee, and colossal boredom.  In the field, he parachuted behind Japanese lines to monitor Japanese troop movements and gather information.  At headquarters in Bhamo, he processed reports.

 

As the war wound down in Burma in the summer of 1945, Detachment 101 Niseis, battle-hardened in India and Burma, were deployed to China, to report to OSS Detachment 202 headquarters in Kunming.  Tad Nagaki, who had been driving tractors on the farm in Nebraska since he was twelve years old, drove an Army 6x6 truck in the

truck convoy over the Hump to China on the Burma Road.

 

Mercy Missions

 

As America closed in on Japan in late summer, 1945, reports reached American headquarters in China that Japan planned to kill its prisoners.  Rescue became a top priority.  American commander, General Albert Wedemeyer, directed agencies under his control to locate and evacuate POWs in China, Manchuria, and Korea.   He pulled together seven-man rescue teams, including medical, communications specialists, and interpreters.  OSS had two assignments: rescue prisoners and  gather intelligence.

 

OSS organized eight rescue missions, all under code names of birds:  Magpie (heading to Peiping), Duck (Weihsien), Flamingo (Harbin), Cardinal (Mukden), Sparrow (Shanghai), Quail (Hanoi), Pigeon (Hainan Island), and Raven (Vientiane, Laos).  The 4th Air Force was ordered to provide the necessary staging areas.  The teams took off  from Sian (today called Xian).

 

Nisei Dick Hamada was a member of the team that parachuted into Peiping (Beijing) to liberate 624 Allied prisoners including survivors of the Doolittle raids on Tokyo.  à Nisei Fumio Kido parachuted with the team that rescued American General Jonathan Wainwright, hero of Bataan, and 1,600 other Allied POWs in Mukden.  Cal Tottori was a member of the OSS mercy mission that flew to Taiwan to seek release of Allied POWs there.   Ralph Yempuku parachuted into Hainan Island with the team that evacuated 400 starving prisoners there.  On August 17, 1945, Tad Nagaki parachuted from a B-24, named The Armored Angel, with five other American heroes to rescue me and 1,400 other prisoners from the Weihsien Concentration Camp in China Shantung Province.

 

Tad Nagaki  and members of these rescue teams were honored with the Soldier's Medal for heroism.  He was one of about 25,000 Japanese-American men and women who served in U.S. Armed forces during World War II.

 

The Nisei bought an awful big hunk of America with their Üblood, said American General Joseph Stilwell, who commanded U.S. forces in the China-Burma-India theater.  You're damn right those Nisei boys have a place in the American heart for ever.

 

Post script: Tad Nagaki says he's not a hero.   He says he did what any American would have done.  After helping to establish an OSS base in Tsingtao, China, he returned to America in 1946 and married his Nisei fiancé, Butch.  He had met her on a blind date while he was attending Military Intelligence Service Language School in Minnesota.  Butch and her Issei parents had been imprisoned in the Poston relocation camp in Arizona.  After America changed its laws in 1950, Tad Nagaki's parents became American citizens.  They never returned to Japan.  Today, Tad Nagaki farms corn and beans in Alliance, Nebraska, not far from where he grew up.  He is 82.

 

Members of OSS 101 Nisei team were: 1st Lt.  Richard Betsui, 1st Lt. Junichi Buto, 1st Lt. Chiyoki Ikeda, 1st Lt. Ralph Yempuku, Tech 4 Thomas T. Baba, Cpl. Dick Hamada, S/Sgt. Susumu Kazahaya, Pvt. Fumio Kido, Pvt. Wilbert Kishinami, S/Sgt. George Kobayashi, Tech. 5 Shoichi Kurahashi, Pvt. Tadashi Nagaki, Pvt. Takao Tanabe, Cpl. Calvin Tottori.

 

3840 words

 

February 21, 2002

Dwight O. King, EditorÜ

1800 Park Newport, #203

Newport Beach, CA  92660

 

Dear Editor King:

 

I offer you the enclosed article for Ex-CBI ROUNDUP.  It is the story of Tad Nagaki, a Japanese-American soldier who fought behind Japanese lines in Burma with OSS Detachment 101 during World War II.   He was one of a team of six Americans who liberated the Weihsien Concentration Camp in China in 1945.  I was a prisoner in that  camp.

 

Photographs are available. Thank you for your alert against fanning the controversy about the Japanese internment camps in the American West.  I have avoided fanning those flames.  Please let me know if you'd like me to modify the length or emphasis.  The story contains 3,840 words. May I send you the manuscsript by e-mail or disc to facilitate your printing?

 

Sincerely,

Mary T. Previte

856-374-6100 (w)

856-428-4909 (h)

mtprevite@aol.com

351 Kings Highway East

Haddonfield, NJ  08033

March 3, 2002

Dwight O. King, Editor

Ex-CBI Roundup

1800 Park Newport, #203

Newport Beach, CA 92660

 

Re: Photographs to illustrate story about Japanese-American hero

 

Dear Editor King:

I have enclosed three photographs to illustrate my story about Tad Nagaki, one of OSS detachment 101's Nisei team in Burma and China, a story scheduled for your June 2002 issue.  I am hoping to get from one of this Nisei team -- and am waiting for -- one more dramatic photograph of  starving Australian prisoners liberated from the Japanese concentration camp at Hainan Island by members of one of USA's humanitarian rescue teams.

 

Group picture: OSS Detachment 101 Nisei team.   Names are noted on the picture. 

SOLDIER:  Sgt. Tadash Nagaki interpreter, and T/4 Raymond N. Hanchulak, medic, are awarded the Soldier's medal for heroism in Shanghai, 1945, for their part in liberating 1,400 Allied prisoners from the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center in China's "ÌShantung province, August 1945.

 

FOUR HEROES OF DUCK MISSION: After liberating the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center, August, 1945, Ensign James T. Moore, Sgt. Tadash Nagaki, Major Stanley A. Staiger, and Raymond N. Hanchulak helped establish an OSS base in Tsingtao, China. Thank you for honoring these heroes by printing their story. Please return these photographs.

 

Sincerely,

Mary T. Previte

h:856-428-4909,    w:856-374-6100

Please add to end of story, MARY PREVITE is an Assemblywoman in the New Jersey Legislature.

351 Kings Highway East, Haddonfield, NJ 08033

 

Thanks for your diligence in this whole project!

 David Birch

Aug 04, 2002 12:20 PDT 

 

Thank you Mary.

 

David Birch

To JAVA Members and Friends:

 

       Wish to point out a very interesting article

on JAVA website about

Tad Nagaki, an OSS operative, written by Mary

Previte, a NJ

Congresswoman,who was rescued from a Japanese POW

camp in China by this OSS

team .

It is a feature article for the month of August 2002

on JAVA website ,

www.javadc.org.

 

                                 Grant Ichikawa

 

Re: Story about Weihsien rescuer posted on JapaneseAmerican Vet website

 Gladys Swift

Aug 04, 2002 18:11 PDT 

 

There are three messages "Story about Weihsien rescuer posted on Japanese American Vet website" sent to my email. Why? Unfortunately I can't read the story because my macintosh computer doesn't do it. Please explain to me. What is the "tip"? Gladys

 

If you'd like to write to or phone our liberators to celebrate August 17...

 Mary Previte

Aug 06, 2002 19:22 PDT 

 

Hello, Everybody,

 

    Remember fifty-seven years ago?   If you'd like to write to or telephone  the brave men who liberated Weihsien, August 17, 1945, here are their  current addresses and telephone numbers.   I know they will enjoy hearing  from you. Tell them briefly what you remember, just the way you post these  wonderful memories on our Topica bulletin board.

                                                                              

                                                                             

                                   WEIHSIEN RESCUE TEAM (DUCK MISSION) --

current addresses

 

Mrs. Raymond Hanchulak (Helen)                      

Phone: 717-472-3520

P.O. Box 4

243 Laurie Lane

Bear Creek Village, PA 18602

 

James J. Hannon    Birthday: November 12, 1919

Phone: 760-364-4580

P. O Box 1376,

Yucca Valley, CA 92286

 

James W. Moore     Birthday: October 5, 1919

Phone: 214-341-8695

9605 Robin Song Street

Dallas, Texas   75243

 

Tad Nagaki          Birthday: January 25, 1920

Phone: 308-762-2968

5851 Logan Road, Alliance, NE 69301

 

Mrs. Peter Orlich (Carol)   

Phone: 718-746-8122          

15727 20th Road

Whiteston, N.Y. 11357

 

Stanley A. Staiger     Birthday: December 30, 1917

Phone: 775-825-3766

Village of the Pines

700 E. Peckam Lane, Apartment 259

Reno, NV   89502

 

    Mary Previte

No news from Topica.

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Aug 14, 2002 23:40 PDT 

 

I have not received anything at all from Weihsien Topica for about two weeks. Have I been inadvertently deleted from this network? Am I missing something? Please help. Joyce Bradbury.

 

Re: No news from Topica.

 Mary Previte

Aug 15, 2002 00:17 PDT 

 

I haven't had any Topica messages either. Is everyone on vacation?

Mary Previte

 

messages

 Natasha Petersen

Aug 15, 2002 05:54 PDT 

 

Hello everyone,

Joyce B. and Mary P. wrote on 14th and 15th resp. in regard to "no messages". Mary Previte, yours from the 6th was the last message on Topica. All names are on "ON".

Natasha

 

Re: messages

 David Birch

Aug 15, 2002 11:40 PDT 

 

Hullo Natasha,

   Hope you receive this. Hope everyone else does too!

Zandy Strangman sent me an e-mail not long ago to my other e-mail address: (silver-@shaw.ca ) and mentioned that our weihsien folk seemed rather 'quiet'

lately.

   Maybe everyone's 'out in the sun' enjoying summer holidays. Who knows?

   Thank you Natasha, for keeping this important connection open. I feel certain that many others of us are as grateful as I am for what you are doing.

   Thanks again, Natasha. And blessings to you!

Sincerely,

David Birch

(gdavid-@yahoo.com), and

(silver-@shaw.ca).

 

Re:Re: messages

 Theresa Granger (M. Sharp)

Aug 15, 2002 11:57 PDT 

 

I was curious about the gap in the e-mail chain, too. Although I was no there, I enjoy reading the history behind it. My mother, aunt, and grandfather were internees. My two uncles and grandmother went underground during this time (my grandfather was American, grandmother was Japanese - but moved to China during WWI) to escape the Japanese Army, who wanted my uncles to join.

 

Besides the wonderful conversations I read, I am learning a history that is better provided than from the books. I am also learning about my mother as well as all of you.

 

thank you all for sharing!

Theresa Granger

Re:Re: messages

 David Birch

Aug 15, 2002 12:24 PDT 

 

You're welcome, Theresa!

And thank you, too, for letting us hear from you.

Looks as though we are getting through. Warmest blessings to you and your loved ones.

David Birch

(gdavid-@yahoo.com), and

(silver-@shaw.ca).

 

Re: Re:Re: messages

 alison holmes

Aug 15, 2002 12:51 PDT 

 

It always seems to go in fits and starts...a long hiatus followed by somebody wonderful coming in with something new....and I for one am grateful for the 'down times' as emails can mount up!   It's good there are archives so that we can look back for information and not have to repeat ourselves.

I have particularly enjoyed the art work that has come our way.   Thank you , thank you. And I am sure we will all pause on Saturday and relive our memories.

 

My Liberation Day commentary for newspapers around New Jersey

 Mary Previte

Aug 15, 2002 19:33 PDT 

 

Hello, Everybody:

Here's one variation of an article that several major newspapers in New  Jersey have published this week. On Saturday, I hope you all take time to  remember that miracle day, August 17, 1945. Mary Previte

 

        IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO SAY THANK YOU

 

                 by Mary T. Previte

 

    If I could pick one month to wrap my arms around America, it would be  August.

 

    I fell in love with America fifty-six years ago. Americans were spilling  from this low-flying B-24 bomber, dangling from parachutes that looked like  giant poppies. They were dropping into the fields outside the barrier walls.

I dashed to the barracks window in time to see the American star emblazoned  on its belly. God's rescuing angels had come. Six gorgeous American men,  sunbronzed, with meat on their bones.   It was August, 1945.

 

    "Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center," the Japanese called our  concentration camp in China. I was twelve years old. For three years my two  brothers and sister and I had been captives of the Japanese. For five and a  half years warring armies had separated us from our missionary parents.

 

    But now the Americans had come.

                                   

   

    Weihsien went mad. I raced for the entrance gate and was swept off my  feet by the pandemonium. Men ripped off their shirts and waved at the bomber  circling above. Prisoners ran in circles and pounded the skies with their  fists. They wept, hugged, cursed, danced. Wave after wave of prisoners  swept me past the guards into the fields beyond the camp.

 

    A mile away we found them -- six young Americans, all in their twenties  -- standing with their weapons ready, surrounded by fields of ripening broom  corn. Advancing towards them, intoxicated with joy, came a tidal wave of  prisoners. We were free in the open fields.

 

    Back in the camp, we trailed our angels everywhere. My heart flipped  somersaults over every one of them. We wanted their insignias. We wanted  their signatures. We wanted their buttons. We wanted snips of their hair.  We wanted souvenir pieces of parachutes. They gave us our first taste of  Juicy Fruit gum. We children chewed it and passed the sticky wads from mouth  to mouth.

 

    We made them sing to us the songs of America. They taught us "You Are My  Sunshine, My Only Sunshine." Fifty-six years later, I can sing it still.

    As the decades passed, I could never understand why six Americans would  parachute in a suicide mission to rescue 1,400 people they didn't even know.  It was beyond my imagination. I wanted to know these men. I wanted to know  what makes an American hero.

 

    Four years ago, in a string of miracles I tracked them down: Major  Stanley A. Staiger;   Ensign James W. Moore; 1st Lt. James J Hannon;    T/5 Peter C. Orlich, radio operator; Sgt. Tadash Nagaki, interpreter;  T/4 Raymond N. Hanchulak, medic. Imagine it! After more than 50 years! Four  heroes and two widows, all in their 80s now -- in Pennsylvania, New York,  Nebraska, Texas, Nevada, and California.

 

    What words would ever be enough to thank a man who risked his life to  give me freedom, to give me all the opportunities America gives its children?

Talking to them by telephone, sending them cards, didn't feel like thanks  enough.

                       

    So I started my pilgrimage -- crisscrossing America to visit each one of  them face-to-face to honor them. From New York to California, I went looking  for the soul of America. And it is beautiful!

 

    Each one is different: Tad Nagaki, a Japanese-American farm boy who  didn't speak English until he went to school. Jim Moore, a former FBI agent  and the son of missionaries to China. Jim Hannon, an adventurer who  prospected for gold in Alaska. Major Stanley Staiger, an ROTC student  snatched from his third year at the University of Oregon. Raymond Hanchulak,  a boy from the coal mines and ethnic enclaves of Pennsylvania. The youngest  of the team -- Pete Orlich, a kid with a scholarship to college whose family  needed him to work, not go to school -- who memorized the eye chart so he  wouldn't be excluded from the rescue team because he wore glasses. Pete  taped his glasses to his head when he parachuted down to liberate the camp  that day.

 

    Some folk tell me America has no heroes. I know they're wrong. I see  the face of heroes in the weathered faces of these six men and the thousands  of American men and women who look like them. These are the heroes who saved  the world.

 

(Mary T. Previte is a New Jersey Assemblywoman. She keeps in constant touch  with her six World War II heroes.)

 

Fw:

 alison holmes

Aug 16, 2002 09:51 PDT 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alison Holmes

To: weih-@topica.com

Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 9:20 AM

 

Dear Joyce, I have cleaned up my inbox by putting all the pictures into a file but I seem to have lost one of them in the transfer....the little one of the view outside the camp walls with a dog?donkey? standing by the road. Could you possibly resend that one to me? Thank you so much. Alison

Re: My Liberation Day commentary for newspapers around New Jersey(question)

 Peter Talbot

Aug 16, 2002 13:30 PDT 

 

Mary, As I was only five at the time I can not remember, but I do believe that one of our saviours broke his leg. Is this true?? Peter Talbot.

Christine Sancton and Gay Stratford were my sisters.

 

Re: My Liberation Day commentary for newspapers around New Jersey(question)

 Gay Talbot Stratford

Aug 16, 2002 17:19 PDT 

 

Peter dear, He fractured his collar bone. Your loving sister. G

 

Re: My Liberation Day commentary for newspapers around New Jersey(question)

 Mary Previte

Aug 16, 2002 19:34 PDT 

 

Dear Peter,

 

    Lt. Jim Hannon was injured in the parachute drop -- an injured shoulder,  I think. Hannon tells me that he had to push Eddie Wang, the young Chinese  interpreter, out of the B-24 when Wang froze with fright. Hannon was well  trained as a parachute jumper, but pushing Wang out ruined the start of  Hannon's jump. They tell me the start of a jump is everything.   August 17  was a windy day and the team jumped at only 400 feet in order to give the  Japanese less time and space to shoot at them as the rescue team floated to  the ground.

    Mary Previte

 

Re: Re:Re: messages

 leopold pander

Aug 17, 2002 00:05 PDT 

 

Hello,

This e-mail system is fabulous !

Thank-you Theresa for your message. In a very few words, you explained what could be written in a book of (at least) 501 pages!! Your family history seems to be more than interesting. I am certain that I'm not the only one who would like to "understand" more about our recent history.

à bientôt,

Leopold

 

Re:

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Aug 18, 2002 00:11 PDT 

 

Dear Alison.I cannot think of one of my pictures depicting an animal.The only one I can think of is one done by Father Verhoven of farmland outside the walls with a little dog with a curly tail on the right hand foreground. They were sent by Leopold Pander. It is picture No.X. I do not have it on computer so I cannot scan it to you. I am sure Leo would happily oblige. Regards. Joyce.

 

Re: Re:

 leopold pander

Aug 18, 2002 01:23 PDT 

 

With pleasure .... ... a nice day too you all !            Best regards,            Léopold.

 

Re: Re:Re: messages

 Mary Previte

Aug 18, 2002 17:11 PDT 

 

Leopold, your letters to our liberators left them ABSOLUTELY THRILLED!

Bless you! Actually, when I phoned everyone on the liberation team this  week, they told me several of have written to them. Sakes alive! Carol  Orlich, widow of Peter Orlich, even described to me the parchment-like paper  you wrote on, Leopold.

 

She told me "It's so thrilling to get these letters." She tells me she shows  them to her children and grandchildren and her "girl friends," with whom she  lunches now and then. She keeps and treasures every one of these letters and  articles.

 

All of them seem to keep these in memento boxes.

 

I chatted with all but one of the liberators to say thank you this week and  to reminisce. This time I quizzed them about what they remember now -- 57  years later. Here's what they told me:

 

JIM MOORE in Dallas, Texas:

    "After all these years, it's a pleasant blurr. The jump itself was hairy  -- a bit of a windy day and all the people rushing at us. Once in the camp  the first person I wanted to see was PA Bruce (the head master of the Chefoo  School)." Jim Moore had attended the Chefoo Schools in the 1930s and had  been taught by several Chefoo teachers who were at Weihsien. Jim speaks  often to me with deep affection for Chefoo teachers, Gordon Martin and PA  Bruce.

 

TAD NAGAKI in Alliance, Nebraska:

    "My memories are vague now. I remember coming down in the corn field and  all the people running out there. I remember the air drops of supplies and  trying to keep the people out of the way from getting hit."

 

JIM HANNON in Yucca Valley, California:

        "I remember my amazement. We didn't know what was in the camp. I  expected (P.O.W.) soldiers. What we found in the camp -- civilians and  children."

 

    You may know that Americans hastily assembled these rescue teams when  they got information that Japan might try to kill its prisoners or use them  for bargaining. They assembled 7-man "humanitarian" teams in Kunming, each  with a Chinese interpreter, a Japanese-American interpreter, a medic, a radio  operator and a couple of leaders. The book, The Defeat of Japan, gives  fascinating details about these teams. Men of one of these American rescue  teams were roughed up and came within moments of being executed by the  Japanese at one of the camps they went to liberate.

 

    Another of these teams "chickened out" of its rescue assignment. If I  hear the story right from our Weihsien liberators, that team then flew back  briefly to Weihsien and tried to say they were to be in charge of Weihsien.  Major Stanley Staiger would have none of it. Staiger headed our team, the  "DUCK MISSION."

 

    I was unable to reach Major Staiger by telephone this week. I'm worried  because a recorded message said his phone is no longer in service. I'll  definitely check this out further. Since I found him in 1997, he has been  alone and in very fragile health.

 

    By the way, a couple of the team or widows want to join our Weihsien  bulletin board.

 

    Mary Previte

 

The Fall of Japan by William Craig

 Mary Previte

Aug 20, 2002 19:40 PDT 

 

Hello, Everybody:

 

    Greg asked me for more information about the book, THE FALL OF JAPAN.  (Sorry, I got the name wrong in my earlier communication.) Others of you  may also be interested in the account of the 7-man American rescue teams that  liberated internment and P.O.W. camps throughout Asia the same day the DUCK  MISSION liberated Weihsien.

 

    The author is William Craig. Publisher is The Dial Press, New York.  Publication date 1967. The library call number here is 952.033 Cra

 

    I read the book several years ago. If my memory is correct, the story of  the "humanitarian" rescue missions of the internment camps is woven  throughout the narrative. Pages 262 and 263 describe the reception of  several of these rescue teams. Weihsien (misspelled Weischien) earns only  this paragraph: " At Weischien, parachutists found their biggest problem the  civilian internees. Overjoyed by the sight of healthy-looking civilian  internees, some of the women proved almost unmanageable in their affection."

 

    The page also mentions the team that returned without liberating the  P.O.W. camp in Keijo, Korea. From talking to our American liberators, I  believe this team flew back to Weihsien and tried to take command there.  Major Stanley Staiger of the DUCK MISSION would have none of it. The  commanding officer of that team was promptly relieved of his duties by  angered American superiors.

 

    The photos in this book -- including beheading of prisoners and  prisoners trapping rats to eat -- remind me once again how blessed we were in  Weihsien.

 

    Mary Previte

 

Re: The Fall of Japan by William Craig

 leopold pander

Aug 21, 2002 22:53 PDT 

 

Hello,

Many thanks for the info.

Looking on the "Internet", I found the book. I also ordered a publication about Hirohito writen by Herbert P. Bix.(816-pages). I still have much to learn   !!

Best regards,

Leopold

 

Re: The Fall of Japan by William Craig

 Gladys Swift

Aug 25, 2002 16:57 PDT 

 

Comment from Gladys - Your following letter confuses me at the point of rescue of the Weihsien camp. I read it several times- " At Weischien, parachutists found their biggest problem the civilian internees. Overjoyed by the sight of healthy-looking civilian internees, some of the women proved almost unmanageable in their affection."

Does this mean that women in the camp were unmanageable in their affection toward the RESCUERS - in which case the rescuers must have been "healthy-looking civilian internees" (hardly likely). Or were the rescuers WOMEN who proved unmanageable toward the Weihsien internees? (hardly likely) Since my mother, Mabel Hubbard, was one of the women in the camp, I would like to know the answer.

 

I remember coming from the United States back to China in August of 1937, with my mother on a steamer. As we docked and the gangplank went down she saw my father waiting on the pier. She broke through the restraining arms of the boat crew and dashed down the gangplank yelling "Hugh, Hugh". She had to be dragged back, to the amusement of the crew. So she could have been one of the "unmanageable women" in the Weihsien camp.

 

Re: The Fall of Japan by William Craig

 Mary Previte

Aug 25, 2002 18:30 PDT 

 

The Fall of Japan devotes only one paragraph to Weihsien. Here it is:  " At Weischien, parachutists found their biggest problem the civilian  internees. Overjoyed by the sight of healthy-looking Americans, some of the  women proved almost unmanageable in their affection."

 

I have asked the men who liberated us about this. After more than 50 years,  none of them remembers anything like that. However, Franciscan Sister M.  Servatia writes about the liberation of Weihsien in her book, A Cross in  China: The Story of My Mission, "Major Staiger asked someone to free him  from the Russian women because he had work to do." (See page 293 of her  account.)

 

Langdon Gilkey also hints at it in his book, Shantung Compound, and his  chapter about the liberation of the camp. (See page 212.) "It was, however,  the women of the camp who most instinctively recognized their divine status.  Of all ages, whether from high society or low, married or single, proper or  not so proper, all wanted nothing better from life than to adore. They  followed the pleasantly surprised soldiers everywhere, staring at them in  rapture, edging up to get a word from them, fighting for the chance to wait  on them, and pushing their equally adoring children aside so as to be able to  touch or stroke them. As always, it was wonderful to have gods in your midst  -- unless, like the writer and a few others, you lost a girl friend in the  process!"

 

    A year or so ago, Langdon Gilkey told me about that -- the name of the  rescuer who stole his girl friend from him.

    I was only twelve years old, yet I can still remember trailing these  heroes. I didn't want to let them out of my sight. We little kids got the  boring mementos like buttons and pieces of parachute. Our older sisters got  treasures like the men's insignia. Rescuer Tad Nagaki told me that one  woman cut off a chunk of his hair for a souvenir.

 

    Come on, ladies. I'd like other women in our Topic group to tell how  they responded to these rescuers.

 

    Mary Previte

 

Liberation Day in Weihsien

 Natasha Petersen

Aug 26, 2002 10:59 PDT 

 

I remember some women running onto the fields and wrapping themselves around the men who were landing. We were all beside ourselves with joy at the appearance of the men from the skies. We were also greatly surprised that we were not stopped by the guards at the gate. They moved aside and later, I believe, disappeared from view. I do not remember grownups following the soldiers in camp. The soldiers did not know where the Jap soldiers were, and what they were going to do, and naturally were most anxious not to be "bound" by loving arms.

I also remember that I along with several others was asked to serve the men "breakfast". We served what we normally had for breakfast, tea or ersatz (?) coffee. One of them turned to me and asked for cream and sugar. I reminded him that this was a concentration camp, that we had not had cream and sugar for a long period of time. I remember his unthinking remark to this day, and the feeling that it brought about in me.

 

We, the internees of Weihsien, were indeed blessed. We may have been hungry, but we were not starving, nor did we have to resort to eating rats etc. We were cold, but we did not freeze. We did have medical assistance.

 

Does Langdon Gilkey live in Charlottesville, VA. If yes, next time I am there, I will give him a call.

 

Natasha

 

new subscriber

 Natasha Petersen

Aug 29, 2002 11:38 PDT 

 

We have a new subscriber, Sid Fisher       fishe-@mchsi.com ;         I am sending you a copy of the message from Sid.

 

My name is Sid Fisher. My interest in the web site was in the discovery of a long lost relative posting to the site. Her mother is a person I've been trying to find during my genealogical research. Hugh Hubbard and his wife Mabel were internees in the camp. Mabel (deceased) and I are cousins as are her daughter, Gladys Swift and I.

 

However, I've a historical interest in WWII and would like to learn more about the camp and, in particular, Hugh and Mabel Hubbard's activity during the duration of the camp.

 

 

Natasha

 

Father Hanquet,

 leopold pander

Aug 31, 2002 10:15 PDT 

 

Hello everybody,

 

We will be seeing Father Hanquet next week for a cup of Chinese tea and some of our famous cheese pies ... " la tarte au fromage de Chaumont-Gistoux" ... a speciality of our neighbourhood.

We have so much to ask him.

 

The names of the boy scout group photograph ... also the names of the cubs !! Will he remember ... after such a long time ?

After the last time we saw him, I regularly slip in his letter-box, a print of all the "Topica" news. He does not have a computer and very much appreciates reading all of your writings.

By the way ---

 

If you have questions you would like to ask Father Hanquet, I'll be happy to print them and serve as a relay to give you the answers by return-mail! I personally always have so much to ask, and when he is there I forget everything !

Best regards,

Janette and Leopold

 

Re: Father Hanquet,

 Donald Menzi

Aug 31, 2002 13:10 PDT 

 

Tell him I appreciate his response to my question about the location of the Trappist monastery. He said it was located between two railway stations. Does he remember which station was closest to it, and is there any other village near by that would help us find it if we were travelling by car?

 

Questions for Father Hanquet,

 Mary Previte

Aug 31, 2002 15:24 PDT 

 

Hello, Father Hanquet,

 

    How lovely to have this opportunity to chat with you after all these  years!

 

    When you think of Weihsien, what memory first comes to your mind after  all these years?

 

    What part of the Weihsien experience made you afraid? Did you ever fear  that you'd never get out alive? What tested your faith the most?

 

    I think often of the grown ups who anchored us children in Weihsien. I  call then "the spirit team." You were a grown up. You may have looked at  people very differently from a child. Whom would you put in the category of  Weihsien's "spirit team"?

 

    I'd love to get your recollections of Liberation Day, August 17, 1945.

 

    Every grown up was assigned a job in Weihsien. Would you tell us what  work you were assigned to do in the camp?

 

    Thank you so much. Mary Taylor Previte

 

Re: Father Hanquet,

 Gay Talbot Stratford

Sep 01, 2002 10:40 PDT 

 

Salut Leopold,

Please greet pere Hanquet for me. My parents were Ida and Sid Talbot. Unfortunately they are both dead, but i remember father's visit to our place in block 6. Bset wishes to you and yours.

                                Gay Stratford nee Talbot

Re: Liberation Day in Weihsien

 Gladys Swift

Sep 02, 2002 18:14 PDT 

 

Just finished "Little Foreign Devil" by Desmond Power and think it is excellent reading and excellent historical record, including the liberation of Weihsien. I think Langdon Gilkey lives or lived in Chicago the last I knew.

 

Other POWs.

 Christine Talbot Sancton

Sep 10, 2002 09:17 PDT 

 

Dear Ron: Kay Allan and I are delighted to be back in touch with each other again, after more that 50 years! Thank you.

 

I am just reading "Behind the Fence" life of a POW in Japan 1942-45 by Les Chater. He lives in Ontario and co-wrote the book with Elizabeth Hamid. It is interesting, of camp life so different from ours. They were all military personnel, of course.

 

He kept a diary all through camp days and kept meticulous records of those who died. But perhaps you already know of it. I am trying to get in touch with him as I don't know if he is linked up with ABCIFER.

 

My son is just leaving for a yer in UK. I hope that he will be able to go to the Imperial War Museum and see the art work of Weihsien. Who were the artists?

 

I haven't forgotten your requestr for names from Camp. I have typed up all my mother's diaries now, so have to go through for correction and name collection.

 

Hope that you have had a good summer. Sincerely, Christine Talbot Sancton

 

Re: Father Hanquet

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Sep 11, 2002 21:53 PDT 

 

Dear Leopold. Yes please I would like photos and any reminiscences you are able to give regarding father Hanquet. Regards Joyce Bradbury.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: leopold pander

To: weih-@topica.com

Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 11:00 PM

Subject: Fw: Father Hanquet

Hello again,

    ... it is correct, that the Topica site has limited memory space ! -- sorry --

 

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----

... while talking to inmta001.topica.com.:

>>> DATA

<<< 552 sorry, that message size exceeds my databytes limit (#5.3.4)

554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

 

Whoever I have forgotten on my address-book-list can send me his e-mail coordinates. I will send him the pictures asap.

à bientôt,

Leopold

 

photographs

 Natasha Petersen

Sep 12, 2002 06:19 PDT 

 

Dear Leopold and other subscribers,

I was able to download and print four photographs. Were there more?

Natasha

 

RE: photographs

 Greg Leck

Sep 12, 2002 06:47 PDT 

 

I received four (4) photos

Greg

Re: photographs

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 12, 2002 08:25 PDT 

 

I also received four photos and am wondering if there are more, or if there is also some commentary? Thanks so much!

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

Pictures

 leopold pander

Sep 12, 2002 14:40 PDT 

 

Hello,

Six more pictures ...

Hope you get them all with a good printable definition.

On the first picture of my yesterday's mail -- from left to right -- is Catherine, (Jannet's daughter), Nicky (my wife), my chair (empty), Father Hanquet and Janette (6 years old in 1945). On the second picture, Father Hanquet is showing the location of "where" the boy scouts picture was taken and where all the group photos were shot. In Langdon Gilkey's book, there is a map of the Weihsien compound. The location, is: "South Field" with the many trees. The wall with the numbers "12" and "13" is the boundary wall of the camp. Father Hanquet told us that we used to play basket ball on the south field.

 

On the question: who took the photos ? It is a person of the Cheefoo School staff who had the camera (well hidden during our internment) and who managed getting the films from our American saviours and took as much pictures as he could. Those we have are still available on http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/sancton/index.html . I printed every one of them, enlarged on A4-paper and gave them to Father Hanquet for further examination.

 

Every picture has a story and I really hope he will help us to remember ..

I think that all the other pictures speak for themselves. Next time we meet, I'll try to take a better portrait of Father Hanquet to send on the e-mail for you.

We spent more than three hours, listening and didn't even notice the sun going down and the temperature getting chilly!

It was with regret that we saw him drive away. Yes, yes, --- at 87 he drives his own car!

 

Leopold

P.S. Janette took notes during our conversation and we will be sending more stories shortly.

 

Boy scout group photo

 leopold pander

Sep 14, 2002 09:10 PDT 

 

Hello

About the boy scout's photograph !

Of course we asked Father Hanquet --- who was who !?

 

From left to right ---

The standing row; ----------

Eddy Cooke,

David ?,

Richard Jones,

George Watts (Porky),

John de Zutter,

Gui Chan,

Mickey Marquès,

Johnny Beaten-Georgiles,

 

The sitting row; -----------

Peter Turner,

Alby de Zutter,

Father Palmer,

Cockburn,

Father E. Hanquet,

?,

?,

Front row; -----------

Jacky Campbell,

Michael Turner,

?,

Eddy Chan,

Vova Bonner.

 

The picture was taken on the South Field and the wall in the background, is the camp's boundary wall.

The photographer was somebody of the Cheefoo School staff. Who? Father Hanquet could not remember.

The motto was --- "All for one, and one for all"

 

The emblem was, a lily flower on a clover embroided by the boys' mothers and sisters. Father Hanquet explained that the Japanese forbade us to use the emblems of the Royal Families. The "fleur de Lys" is the emblem of the Kings of France and that is why the clover was used. But what the Japanese did not know, was that the "clover" was the emblem of the Scouts of France. !! The scarf, was a white handkerchief dipped into blue ink.

 

Father Hanquet writes ;

 

"The very beginning of the Scout patrol was constituted by 7 or 8 boys. Junior Chan, a Canadian-Chinese, catholic of 14 years old who could be the patrol leader, Sandy, an Eurasian, the de Zutter brothers, Belgians of 14 and 12 years, and also 3 to 4 Britons. There was a good mixture of Catholics and Protestants and there even was an Orthodox boy. With A. Palmers, we decided to give the responsibility of the group to Cockburn and we accepted to work more as assistants than as priests. "

 

Best regards,

Leopold

 

Janette, --- first contact ---

 leopold pander

Sep 14, 2002 09:34 PDT 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Pierre Ley

To: PANDER LEOPOLD

Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2002 2:57 PM

Subject: for topica

 

Hello, I'd like to thank all of you topica friends,you helped me pull Weihsien out of the storage box I had hid away in the farthest corner of my mind.

As Leopold said, Fr. Hanquet has read all of the topica letters as well as others post-sent, and would love to answer personally... he is a wonderful person with a lovely sense of humour... he will also perhaps write for topica, with Leopold and I as translators!

Conversation was non stop, questions and answers fusing, well we did take the time to eat the "tartes au fromage" !...

Fr. Hanquet very affectionately remembers Eddie and Joyce Cooke and Zandy, and yes, he did chuckle when he thought about masses beginning at 6.30am and the necessity of finding boys to help, so all the different services could finish in time for lunch! The Japanese willingly permitted all the religious ceremonies, a catholic priest (of German nationality) came regularly (with Swiss consul Eggar) bearing a communion wafer box. This box had a double drawer in which messages were able to be transmitted. The Japanese never found out.

Sadly, in this manner, Fr. H. learnt of his father's passing away.

As regard to the "Russian women..." he bristled slightly saying that no person more than another was "unmanageable in their affection" towards the parachutists, we were all and each one overjoyed. As a child of six, I remembered following them around too, but from afar and very awed!

Answering the question of the exact location of the Trappist monastery, he really cannot help more as he had never been there himself.

Leopold has already sent the annotated scout photos, Fr. H. doesn't remember the cub master's name, only that he was one of two brothers.

I hope Sid Fisher will get a personal answer, Hugh Hubbard was remembered as a very admirable person.

Father Hanquet's task in camp was to work in kitchen no.1 with him as team leader. Zimmerman, as his assistant, had a Russian wife who loved cooking and gave them full of good ideas, so very creative work was done with just beets (and all!...) and they ended up as real "chefs"! Their arms turning around with long wooden paddles in huge pots,they sometimes sang cheeky songs to tease the protestant missionaries, Fr. H. said he'd write down the words for us! The kitchen team also left meat to simmer, so they could scoop out the top layer of fat and use it as butter. A chemist who worked for Kailan invented a way to make yeast from sweet potatoes, and the bread was the best in the world!

In answer to Mary's queries, he spoke of staying on with other catholic priests (Frs. de Jaegher and Unden from Ankuo, Keymolen and Wenders who taught in Suanha seminary, Gilson procurator in Peking, Palmers and himself from the SAM missionaries, also four nuns....) When the rest of the congregation was sent back to stay interned in two convents in Peking, -so as to leave more space in Weihsien- "our" catholic priests with permission from their superiours, opted to stay on. Young, healthy and bachelors, they felt they could best serve their faith in camp.

We spoke a lot about the "spirit team". Before Chefoo arrived, the camp organisation was well under way and Fr. Hanquet took to heart to try and get the young teen-age kids out of the "mischiefs" of their age, they balked at school work, so he kept minds occupied with card games, music,(later scouts and sports) An adult, a baptist called Hubener was wonderful with his guitar... Fr. H. with Fr. Palmers and British teachers Cockburn and Mac Chesney Clarck, all ex-scouts started a scout troop... cf. Leopold!...

Father Hanquet was very happy when Chefoo arrived, the school was remarquably organised, everyone then shared the educational work, catholics and protestants, teachers of Chefoo and from Tientsin Grammar School... I personally feel that Weihsien camp was in a state of permanent grace thanks to the Chefoo missionaries and the catholic fathers. Their generosity worked wonders throughout all the difficulties, I remember being sensitive to this very tangible "spirit" feeling, and very much aware of the loss of it when camp necessarily dislocated. Weihsien was unique, compared to other family camps, like Lunghua and Stanley (our family later met with friends who had been interned there) the children were so marvellously cared for...

Towards the end of the war a resistance group was formed, bachelors only with among others Roy Choo and Wade, they were "armed", Roy with an ax... and wore their red nationality armbands (from just before camp). When the Duck Mission parachuted, all precautions were taken as no one knew in advance if the Japanese would surrender. Father Hanquet was one of the few first to greet them in the fields high with chinese maize. Staiger,walking towards the gates, then said the team had searched somewhat before they knew it was "us" because we were wearing clothes in all kinds of colours: there was nothing else to distinguish our camp from any other chinese walled village, but the Chinese only wore black or blue clothes! Well, I hope we'll get more details yet from Father Hanquet, he's still needed down here!!!

My love to all

Janette

 

Re: Boy scout group photo

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 14, 2002 09:36 PDT 

 

Thanks for the identification and information about the scout picture.

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

pander pictures

 Stan Thompson

Sep 16, 2002 08:22 PDT 

 

Thanks once more for the pictures.

Re picture no. 11 (the boy scout group in the second picture on page 1 of  the sancton pages (at   http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/sancton/index.html ), I  have the following names to offer (after consulting with my brother Paul;  and indirectly with Norman Cliff):

 

BACK ROW (viewer's L>R)   / ??? / David Birch / Paul Thompson / Alec

Luxon / Stanley Thompson / Torje Torjesen / ? Kerry /

 

MIDDLE ROW    / Hakon Torjesen / James Taylor / George Bell / Mr

Stanley ("Stan Man") Houghton / Murray Sadler / Stephen

Houghton   / Peter Bazire /

 

FRONT ROW (squatting)   / Robin Hoyte /   ? Warren / ??? /

 

Perhaps David Birch can fill in some of the blanks.

       If indeed Eric Liddell had been our scoutmaster, and Stanman had  taken over the job, that would confirm the date of the photo as "Summer  1945". (or did Liddell serve as a sort of 'Assistant Scoutmaster for  Sports' for several of the troupes ?)

                                                         Stanley Thompson

 

Father_Hanquet

 leopold pander

Sep 17, 2002 09:52 PDT 

 

Hello,

Here is the first letter written by Father Hanquet in English.

---

"First of all, I want to thank Leopold Pander and all the friends who, with him, brought their news and comments to "Topica" in order to communicate and give fun to all of us, readers of this "chat".

 

Personally, I am an old "china hand", since I went to China in 1938. I was 23 years old, and remained there till 1948. Hence my sojourn in Weihsien camp from March '43 till October '45.

 

At that time, I was working as a catholic missionary and parish priest in Hong Dong, Shanxi, as the only foreigner working in the diocese.

 

In the beginning of March '43, I was told by a Japanese police officer that I had to leave my work for a few days in order to participate in a meeting of foreigners in Taiyuan (the capital of Shanxi province). When I asked the police officer how long it would last, he answered evasively. I knew one thing only: I could take but one suitcase with me.

 

Although watched by the Japanese police and although I had already been a prisoner in Hong Dong for 4 months --- from December '41 till April '42 ---, I was free to go in and around town. So, I prepared a suitcase with a minimum of clothing for the 3 seasons to come, plus a few books.

 

Accompanied by a Japanese police man, I was taken by train to Taiyuan, a one-day trip, and led to a hotel with flimsy walls and full of noise made by the clients. To my surprise, those noisy visitors were Dutch missionaries, Franciscan fathers from the same province and a few Belgian Scheutists from Tatung.

 

About the trip to Peking, I refer to the book of Langdon Gilkey, "Shantung Compound" who explained very well their first encounter when we arrived at the Peking railway station after two days of travelling. After that, it took another 36 hours to reach Weihsien. We were exhausted but in good humour and, as most of you, in the total ignorance of what would happen to all of us. Behind the walls, we were given 2 rooms for seven of us in Bloc 46. For the next 4 months, I had to sleep on two wooden boxes since I had no bed.

 

In spite of our trouble, I had the good fortune to be with 6 other priests of our society (SAM: Society of Auxiliary Missionaries) working in Northern China. That was our first meeting. Needless to say that we were very pleased and very keen on cooperating to relieve the situation.

 

That was around the 21st of March. We were in total confusion. No one knew what to do or what was going to happen.

 

During the day, much of the "chat" was done around the church (assembly hall), since there were a few benches to sit on and it was close to the main gate. It took us a few days to find out how everything would be gradually organised. We were told to give our qualifications and our preferences for certain jobs to be assumed in the camp.

 

In our little group of priests, most spoke good Chinese and since we intended to keep in touch with the Chinese people outside, we chose to take care of the toilets. You may remember that the toilets were the only place visited by the Chinese coolies with their wooden buckets. They came everyday to empty the cesspools. Therefore, for us fathers, the toilets were a special place to meet the Chinese and talk with them. Our purpose was to get a good contact for a possible evasion.

 

Although I worked there for a few weeks, I soon left that arduous task to Fathers de Jaegher, Keymolen, Gilson and Wenders.

 

Father Palmers and Unden decided to work in the bakery. That helped our group a lot, since every three days, we could bring back a big loaf of bread that was issued as a premium to us heavy workers, going to work at 5 in the morning.

 

I myself chose to work in kitchen number one and got a job as the 5th "roast-about". Every third day, I had to work hard there, beginning at 6 a.m., and learned the job as much as possible. So much that, after ascending every rank in the team, I was finally assigned the job of "chef-cook". We were a happy team of 7, joyful and cooperating. My assistant was an American named Zimmerman who had a Russian wife who knew a lot about cooking and helped us to create and prepare new dishes. At the beginning, in that kitchen, there were no ladles, spoons and special utensils to ditch the food out, so, we had to ask the repair shop to make new instruments out of tins. The same for the covers of the "kuo". There were 5 of them, large kettles of which the bigger one contained twelve buckets of water.

 

We even had a team song, that was taught to us by a young British from Tsingtao and we sung our song every now and then, especially when we saw some protestant reverend passing alongside the small windows above our kettles. We sang it with a certain smile and even a point of derision for the Holy Book --- it goes; (like a nursery rime)

 

         " The best book to read is the Bi-i-i-i-ble      (bis)

         " If you read it every day

         " It will make you on the way

         " While turning in our kettles, (at this point, we yelled) "OUPS!"

         " The best book to read is the Bi-i-i-i-ble

         " ---- and so on ----

 

I worked in the kitchen for almost a year. After that, I was assigned to make noodles with two new friends, Langdon Gilkey and Robin Strong. Somebody had discovered in the attic of the old mission a machine that looked like a wringer for drying the laundry. The machine was made of two cylinders turning in opposite directions and closed together. After many trials of mixing flour with the right proportion of water --- neither too much nor too little --- and by feeding the device with the good mixture between the two cylinders turning slowly, we obtained noodles that could be boiled as such for a few minutes and were a regal for all of us.

 

It did not last long for me and I switched to "woodcutter", chopping wood for the stoves of the hospital. I was alone on the work that I did on a place very close to our Block 56. At the beginning, I was given an axe with a wooden handle, but we had to replace it with an iron pipe since there were no more logs to be cut. They were replaced by roots. Fortunately the sewing shop and the good Miss Scott provided me with strong gloves.

 

During the last summer in camp, I was asked to work as butcher for our kitchen. There was work whenever the Japanese issued meat, brought in their quarters by the Chinese coolies. That was another occasion to get some news from them during the rare moments the Japs were not there. The meat distribution was done in their quarters and then brought to the meat-room of kitchen number one. The quota assigned for 600 mouths to feed was miserable.

 

         One morning, in early August, I got the news from a Chinese cart man as I was asking about the behaviour of the Japanese merchants in town. The answer was clear and comforting for us: "They are all packing". So, on my way back to Block 56, I spread the news amongst my friends. One of them stopped me: "Let us celebrate", and we went to his room to get a few small glasses and a small bottle of whiskey, cheerfully adding: "If it's not true, you will have to give it back".

 

Fortunately, a few days later, the parachutists arrived.

 

         About their arrival, I must precise some details, as I was one of the first to leave the camp through the Main gate, running in the fields to reach the grave mound that Major Staiger, the head of the team, had chosen as an observatory to give his orders. "We are six parachutists and we dropped 20 parcels. Help us gather everything here". When all was assembled, after almost one hour, we started a big procession with Major Staiger on our shoulders going through the fields of Kaoliang. But, as we approached the walls of the camp, the Major told us to stay behind and let them go in first, since they had special orders for meeting with the Commandant of our camp ----

 

         As we approached, I was very surprised to see Roy Chu and some other internees, patrolling inside the camp with axe and knife. They had already taken position to defend the internees as a secret "corps franc" prepared by the strongest men of the compound. . Fortunately, nothing wrong happened, and the Japanese authority rendered their weapons without difficulty --- but since the communists around the camp threatened to take us as hostages, the Japanese guards continued to stay on duty during the nights until the final closing of the camp.

"

--- Father Hanquet ---

 

Re: Janette, --- first contact ---

 Donald Menzi

Sep 17, 2002 14:49 PDT 

 

Please ask father Hanquet if he has any memory of an American Board  missionary named George Wilder, my grandfather. He job was sharpening  knives for kitchen No. 1. He left with others on the Gripsholm, a  prisoner-exchange ship, after only 6 months in the camp so it would be  understandable if he had no memory of him.

 

Thank you, Father Hanquet, for your wonderful letter!

 Mary Previte

Sep 17, 2002 15:57 PDT 

 

What a WONDERUL letter from Faqther Hanquet full of details we children would  never have known! Father Hanquet, I do hope you'll continue writing your  memories for us.

 

This week, I reread Mary Scott's book, Kept In Safeguard. She also chose  duty of cleaning the latrines. Here's a bit of her desription: "A latrine  which we called the "cow shed" was assigned to the ladies.   Each of the six  "stalls" consisted of two narrow cement platforms on the sides on which to  stand, a cement hole for the solids and a slanted front which carried the  urine to a trough. In the morning a Chinese "night soil" coolie came to scoop  out the solids (it was valuable to him as a fertilizer). Sometimes the odors  were so pungent that our noses literally burned when we came near, especialy  in the summer.

 

    But there were very profitable lessons to be learned, even as a latrine  cleaner. My godly, sanctified ralroader father, brought up a Canadian  Presbyterian, had taught us around the family altar that a Christian can to  anything that is right to glorify God. I shall never forget one Wednesday  morning ...I was on "latrine duty" and in the midst of that unpleasant task,  I looked up and said, "Now, Lord, help me to clean these latrines in a manner  that will glorify You."

    And I felt that the Lord himself came down. Her took hold of the bails  of those two big, five-gallon gasoline cans that had been made into water  pails. He helped me carry them to the latrine. He took hold of that little,  stubby brush and together we dug into the corners and the crevices trying to  get every place as clean as we could. He got down on His knees when I got  down on my knees; and with a little old cloth, no disinfectant or soap, just  plain cold water, we got every place as sanitary as we could.

 

    When I finished, I looked back and said, "Now, Lord, does it please You?"  I couldn't see a place where I could have done a better job. I wasn't  cleaning latrines because I'd been assigned it, or because that particular  week I'd volunteered to do it. I was cleaning latrines for my Lord. That  was one of the sweetest and one of the most real experiences I've had with  the Lord in all my Christian life.

 

    But even this task was not without its physical and material rewards. As  one of the "dirty workers," latrine cleaners were allowed to take a shower  every day even during those times when others were limited to one shower a  week! "

 

    Mary Scott, a missionary with the Church of the Nazarene, ranks in the  top tier of my Weihsien "spirit team." In Weihsien, though we were complete  strangers to her, she taught us Chefoo school girls how to play softball.

 

    Mary Previte

 

Re: The Old Book Room

 Gladys Swift

Sep 17, 2002 16:02 PDT 

 

Reply from Gladys - I'm holding this letter with all its information for future use. Thanks.

 

Death of Major Stanley Staiger

 Mary Previte

Sep 22, 2002 19:08 PDT 

 

Hello, everybody:

 

    I am sorry to report the death of Stanley Staiger, the major who lead the  American rescue mission that liberated Weihsien in 1945. His daughter  reports that Major Staiger died in March. He was 84.   Major Staiger served  in China as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that later  became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

 

    Jim Moore will celebrate his 83rd birthday, October 5.   Jim (James W.  Moore) was one of the American rescuers who liberated the Weihsien  Concentration Camp. His is one of the astonishing stories of World War II.  Jim, the son of Southern Baptist missionaries to China, had attended the  Chefoo Schools and had graduated in 1936 and returned to the USA to attend  college in Texas. When Pearl Harbor was attacked Jim was in the Federal  Bureau of Investigation FBI -- and didn't have to go to war. But he read in  the Chefoo School's alumni magazine that the schools has been captured by the  Japanese and marched into concentration camp.

 

Jim joined the Navy, went to China (because he could speak Chinese), and  because he knew Chefoo teachers (Mr. Bruce, Mr. Martin, Mr. Welch) and  brothers and sisters of his classmates were interned there, he volunteered  for the rescue mission that liberated Weihsien.   He has told me many times  -- when he got inside the camp that August day, the first person he asked to  see was "PA" Bruce, the headmaster of the Chefoo Schools.

 

    If you'd like to send Jim Moore a birthday card, his address is:

 

     9605 Robin Song Street

    Dallas, TX,

   75243 USA

 

    Mary Previte

 

Re: Death of Major Stanley Staiger

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 22, 2002 20:23 PDT 

 

Thank you, Mary, for the sad news about Stanley Staiger and the interesting data regarding Jim Moore. I have forwarded your message to my brother and sister and cousin who were all Chefoo students.

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

Father Hanquet - 02

 leopold pander

Sep 23, 2002 01:38 PDT 

 

Hello to all,

 

I've just finished recopying this letter from Father Hanquet, dated September 19th

 

when Mary's sad message came in. I will print it and get it in his letter box today. He's got all the latest news from the Topica chat-list and has a magnificent time reading the "Wehisien Gazette", as we call it.    Best Regards, Leopold.

---

Father Hanquet writes :

 

" I would like to give an answer to Mary Previte about my role in the "spirit" group of the camp. I'll reply by the affirmative.

 

Yes! With Father Palmers we were the first to contact the "Education Committee" about the perversion of the young people by certain internees. Before we did anything, some parents had created a system of "proctors" going around the alleys of the camp during the long winter evenings.

 

The "discipline committee" had already taken some very afflicting but necessary measures, to protect the morality of the young people of the camp. One alley of 12 rooms was decreed "out-of-bounds" for the youngsters, since in one of the rooms, a woman was inducing the boys to visit her and --- have dishonest manners with her.

 

We recommended to the responsible people of the "Education and Discipline Committee", to organise study hours in one of our kitchens, after 6 in the evening for the youngsters aged 12 to 18. The study time lasted 2 hours and was compulsory. It worked out well although some of the adolescents complained, but they never knew who were the authors of such a measure.

 

         Another activity that we also promoted, was a leisure club open twice a week to all the boys and girls from 12 and more. We met in the evenings, and, with one of the Sisters, we had much fun teaching them how to play cards or other games. We also started discussion groups.

 

At that time, we occasionally met with Mr. Hubbard and another Reverend from the British community whose names, alas, I cannot remember. Both were excellent advisors on educational matters.

 

                  About the place where the boy-scouts photo was taken. It was in the south field during the month of September'45. It was also there that we managed to plant a tent and had a real camping time with some of our boy-scouts.

 

         I must also thank Ron Bridge (Cillies Oast, Rowborough) for his good letter of July 31st. Thanks for the details about the cubs' photo.

 

         I just received a postcard today, September 18th from Dr. Norman Cliff, "nearing the completition of 9 weeks in China. Visiting Changzhe and Taiyuan, Shanxi and Chefoo (Yantai) in Shantung".

 

Father Hanquet.

 

Re: Father Hanquet - 02

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 23, 2002 09:32 PDT 

 

Interesting to learn of some behind the scenes efforts. Thanks for all you have done, Father Hanquet, in making Weihsien a better place. Does anyone remember the "Five C" club? Perhaps it was in our Tsingtao camp but I think, rather, it was Weihsien. The five c's stood for "Concentration Camp Children's Courtesy Club," obviously an effort to help the younger children with manners.

 

I was six and seven years old celebrating my seventh birthday in July of 1943. My parents recorded my presents as follows: "tooth brush, soap box, cake of Toilet soap (Jap.), rubber ball, belt (Daddy made from brief-case strap!), bottle of ink, dark glasses, 3 bottles of pop. Guests (with gifts) included Aunty Lois (small box of candy); Mrs. Mungeam (small towel & 6 candies); Astrid Danielsen (pencil & candies); Scovil family (box of colored pencils); McNeil children (rubber ball); Aunty Lillian (12 cookies); Uncle Ralph (10 candies). Favours at the party -- palm-leaf fans. Home-made ice-cream -- the first in 4 months! (Fish was served for supper, so Daddy got ice and made ice-cream in the Connely's freezer. It was all unexpected.)"

 

This information is in my "baby book" under the heading: July 16, 1943, Dwight's 7th Birthday at Weihsien Concentration Camp (Civil Assembly Center), Shantung, China -- written in our (step)mother's handwriting. She, herself, had celebrated her 39th birthday the day we arrived at Weihsien, March 20, 1943. She died in 1986 in Laguna Hills, California. Our father is still living in a retirement center having celebrated his 97th birthday last May. He gave up driving his car a year ago, stating that he had had his driver's license for 80 years and that was long enough! Dad was an accomplished pianist and played for a lot of the events in Weihsien. He still plays for "the old people" (to use his words) in the nursing home section at his retirement place. Our birth mother died in the U.S., February, 1940 and dad packed up the four of us children (ages 9, 6, 4, 1) and went back to China to continue his work. One of my sisters and I were born in Kuling (Lushan), Kiangsi, China in 1934 and 1936. My wife and I plan to visit that beautiful place in November of this year.

 

Didn't mean to go "on and on" but these bits of information trigger a lot of memories!

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

Re: Father Hanquet - 02

 Mary Previte

Sep 23, 2002 15:08 PDT 

 

Father Hanquet:

    What a fascinating letter!   I shall keep asking you questions because  you answer with such fascinating information.

 

    Reading in my grown up years informed me of prostitutes in the Weihsien  Civil Assembly Center, but, believe me, as a child in the camp, I would have  had no idea what a prostitute is.

 

    To keep teenagers out of trouble, Eric Liddell organized evening  activities in Weihsien. Now, after reading your letter, I'm guessing that he  was occupying their time -- among other things -- to divert them from sex.

 

    Father Palmer used to stroll with one of our Chefoo girls -- I think it  was during roll call -- teaching her conversational French.

 

    What do you remember about the dramas put on in the church? I recall the  play, Androclese and the Lion, and another play about a shoemaker. Who  masterminded these miracle performances?

 

    What made you afraid during your time in the camp?

 

    I wish our Topica memory board had more members who were adults in  Weihsien who could provide the insights of adults who lived through the  experience.

 

    Mary Previte

 

Re: Father Hanquet - 02

 leopold pander

Sep 24, 2002 02:32 PDT 

 

It is wonderful to read all these messages coming out of all our memories. I remember Janette telling me something about "coloured pencils" also. I had my first "ice-cream" in camp after the Americans came with the B-29s' droppings. The 4-year old boy I was, said I preferred it hot. They all laughed. Ice-cream became my favourite. When we left China in 1948 on board the S/S President Cleveland bound for San-Francisco I still remember having ice cream every day and almost at every meal! And, when we arrived in San Francisco, I met with the first bottles of milk packed in waxed paper cubes. I got drunk with milk. I still love ice-cream though nowadays, I must not abuse of it !!

 

Leopold

 

Fw: Father Hanquet - 02

 leopold pander

Sep 25, 2002 08:51 PDT 

 

Hello,

 

When Janette read the message, she said I'd got all mixed-up with the ice-cream dream. It wasn't in camp, but in Shanghai!!

 

Anyway, it is a nice dream and I'll hold to it. I still remember that wooden keg and all those gears we had to put in movement with a big handle on the side. And then, that small cylindrical container with the divine mixture in it, turning and turning and turning. And all the ice water cubes dancing and bouncing between the wooden bucket and the metal cylinder and after what seemed to be a long wait, the ice-cream was religiously served by the master of the house. My Dad! --- who loved ice-cream too!

 

Leopold

 

Lois Walton

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 25, 2002 09:02 PDT 

 

Hi everyone

Just to let you all know that one of our Weihsien internees died this  morning, Lois Whipple Walton, age 95, following a fall and broken hip  some days before. Her brother (my father), Elden Whipple, age 97, lives  nearby and is in good health.

~dwight whipple

 

The Death Today of Weihsienite Lois Whipple Walton

 David Birch

Sep 25, 2002 19:46 PDT 

 

 

Dear Dwight,

   Thank you for letting us know of the death of your Aunt, Lois Walton.

When I was a little child, she was 'Aunty Lois' to me. Your late uncle, Lois's husband, Nathan Walton, was my father's best man at my parents' wedding on September the nineteenth, nineteen-thirty, in Shanghai. I was born on November the twenty-fifth, nineteen-thirty-one, at the Methodist hospital in the city of Wuhu, Anhwei province. My parents deeply valued the friendship of your parents and your aunt Lois and Uncle Nathan.

All I can say is, earth is poorer for the loss of a truly beautiful Christian woman; but heaven is richer.

Dwight, I'm so glad your father, Elden Whipple, Sr., is in good health. He and your Uncle Grant Whipple, are truly great men. Outstanding Christians and leaders of very high caliber. Please convey my sincere condolences to them as well as to your brother, Elden Jr., and your sisters, Lorna and Judy.

With love from

David

gdavid-@yahoo.com

silver-@shaw.net

ps. "We sorrow, not as others who have no hope."

 

Re: The Death Today of Weihsienite Lois Whipple Walton

 Dwight W. Whipple

Sep 25, 2002 22:12 PDT 

 

Thanks, David, for your wonderful words of comfort and remembrance. Tom & Bobbie Walton were also born in Wuhu. It would be great to see you sometime. The family is thinking of a memorial service at The Firs sometime in the first two weeks of October. I'll let you know in case you can come. Thanks again for your message.

~Dwight

Father Hanquet Re(s) :

 leopold pander

Sep 26, 2002 01:36 PDT 

 

Hello,

 

Here are the first series of replies to the various questions asked by the Topica participants.    Best regards, Leopold.

 

Father Hanquet writes :

"

RE: for Mary Previte,

Thanks for the news of the death of Major Staiger . As you have often mentioned in your e-mails on Topica, for me also, he was one of my heroes of my life in Weihsien camp. What a wonderful image of the American soldier he was.

I am writing to Jim Moore today and am sending my best wishes for his 83rd birthday. Thanks to you for sending the necessary details. Cheers.     Fr. Hanquet.

 

RE: for Léonard Motsaert

I well remember that little boy passing with his mother next to our house (Bloc-56), on her way to the hospital. He was a nice looking little boy with blond hair. His father also sometimes passed alongside Bocc-56 but he looked rather older than his wife. Bye. Léonard.              Fr. Hanquet.

 

RE: for Grace and Donald Hope-Gill,

I read with great interest their very moving message about their grand parents, but I deeply regret that I do not have any memory about their life in the camp. Don't forget that we were almost 2000 imprisoned there.

Best regards,           Fr. Hanquet.

 

RE: for Leopold Pander.

About the picture taken with the two escapees. Father Tchang was not living in the camp. He helped Tipton and Hummel after they left camp and the picture was taken with them, after we were liberated by Staiger and his boys.

 

Cenotaph. Message for Ron Bridges.

 Christine Talbot Sancton

Oct 13, 2002 07:24 PDT 

 

Dear Ron:

is there going to be a special representation at the Cenotaph in London this year? I heard from Brenda Garton Herrick that she was trying to get down to London for it so wondered if this was a special celebration for POWs. My son, Rob has just gone to Bradford to do his Masters in Peace Studies and could represent the family if necessary.

 

Thanks, Christine Talbot Sancton

We are celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend. So happy thanksgiving

to all and your families.I am certainly thankful for this site.

 

Archives ...

 leopold pander

Oct 14, 2002 03:35 PDT 

 

Hello, TOPICA friends

 

On the topica front, all is quiet. --- All is well in the best of worlds.

 

The first thing I do in the morning is to look in the message box for the many messages a day coming from the Topica Weihsien list. Nothing !

Nietchevo! (never mind) --- so, I went into the past.

I'm doing this specially for Father Hanquet who, at 87, does not have a computer and never will. Printing all the messages in pica-12 - with the photos -so that he can easily read you. He has a great time doing so.

Then, ., and beginning by message number one, I transferred all your e-mails one by one in a "word" document. It is very amusing to read. The year 2000 holds in 85 pages and I'm still busy at it.

What I'm doing for Father Hanquet should profit to others.

He is certainly not the only one who is computer repulsive. Many of our seniors, if they could read us on paper without looking at a horrible blinking computer screen, might enter the game and tell us stories about Weihsien. We could write them down for Topica . and for the benefit of all.

To be practical,

The year 2000 is in a zip file of 811 Ko. and my computer uses the version 2000 of MSword.

If anybody wants this file, give me the version of word processor you have and I will e-mail it to you.

There are other solutions, with the photos and press articles:

A web site (I'm not competent) or by sending a CD by ordinary mail !!

What do you think ?

 

Best regards, Léopold.

 

Re: Archives ...

 Donald Menzi

Oct 14, 2002 12:42 PDT 

 

You have saved me a lot of work, as I had planned to go back and do just what you have already done! My intention is to select from them the most interesting ones and attach them as an epilogue to my grandfather's diary.

 

Thank you.

 

Please send me the Word document as an attachment to an email sent to my email address. I think that Topica may accept attachments, but only small ones.

Once again, thanks for your extra efforts for all of our benefit.

 

Birthday of Jim Hannon, Weihsien rescuer

 Mary Previte

Oct 14, 2002 16:36 PDT 

 

Hello, Everybody,

 

    The death of Major Stanley Staiger sent me the message that we don't have  unlimited time and opportunity to thank the heroes who risked their lives to  liberate us from Weihsien.

 

    One of our liberators, James J. Hannon, will celebrate his 83rd  birthday on November 12. If you'd like to send him a card or letter, his  address is

 

    James J. Hannon

    P. O. Box 1376,

    Yucca Valley, CA 92286

 

    After the rest of the rescue team left for Tsingtao in August 1945, Lt.  Hannon stayed in Weihsien to help arrange evacuation of internees. Hannon  was the only American team member who was not a member of the Office of  Strategic Services (OSS). He was in the Air Ground Aid Service (AGAS), a  unit that specialized in rescuing downed airmen.

 

    Lt. Hannon, you may recall, injured his shoulder when he landed from the  parachute jump from the B-24 bomber on August 17, 1945. The men tell me that  a successful parachute jump depends almost entirely on a successful start.  Hannon -- unlike some of the others on the rescue team -- had trained  extensively in jumping by parachute in the USA when he joined the America  Army. But Hannon says that he got a bad start on that fateful August 17  jump because Eddie Wang, the Chinese interpreter on the mission, hesitated.  Hannon says he pushed Eddie Wang out before starting his own jump.

 

    The men have reminded me that August 17 was a windy day-- not good for  parachute jumping -- and that they decided to have the pilot descend to only  400 feet so that the  Japanese would have less time and space to shoot at them as they drifted to  the ground. Can you imagine jumping at 400 feet?! (Major Staiger told me  they used British parachutes, which, he said, open more quickly than American  'chutes.)

 

    Jim Hannon tells me that he had advised the team against jumping heavily  armed. He says he believed that too many weapons would send the wrong  message to the Japanese. So when they jumped. the team carried only one side  arm apiece.

 

    In 1944, Lt. Hannon had himself been a POW, after having been captured by  the Germans in Europe. He was held in a Prisoner Of War camp there before  escaping and walking across a chunk of Europe until he met up with American  forces. He tells me he has written a still-unpublished book and screenplay  about that experience.

 

    In California's high desert, Jim and his wife work non-stop these days on  writing and editing Jim's books and screenplays. You may find one of his  books, THE SAVAGE AMERICAN, listed on Amazon.com. As far as I know, he has  not yet published his controversial book about Weihsien. He publishes by the  name James Jess Hannon.

   

    Mary Previte

 

Re: Archives ...

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 15, 2002 08:04 PDT 

 

I, too, would like a Word document of your work. Thanks for all you are doing.

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

Re: Archives ...

 leopold pander

Oct 15, 2002 23:25 PDT 

 

Hello Dwight, Hello Donald,

The historic of the year 2000 is "on the way". Tell me how you got it? I just finished the histo-2001. It takes less memory space and will pass thru much faster. Of course, critics and suggestions are welcome. What I miss most, are the photos! --- of the today Weihsien.

Do you think we could make CD exchanges by ordinary post?

Best regards,   Léopold.

 

Re: Archives ...

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 16, 2002 08:05 PDT 

 

I wasn't able to open "2000" but it may be my inability to unzip. I'll check with my son who is more knowledgeable than I. Thanks for what you are doing. I agree about the photos. CDs can be sent by ordinary post, so far as I know.

~Dwight

 

Re: Archives ...

 alison holmes

Oct 16, 2002 15:42 PDT 

 

Dear Leopold, Please send me the year 2000. I have printed out quite a lot of the messages, but all at different times, and to have them in order without all the headers and footers would be just wonderful. Thank you so much! Alison Martin Holmes

 

Re: Archives ...

 Laura Hope-Gill

Oct 17, 2002 06:32 PDT 

 

Dear Leopold,

 

I have photos of today Weihsien! I will scan them and send them to you  presently.

Sincerely,

Laura

 

Re: Archives ...

 leopold pander

Oct 17, 2002 09:16 PDT 

 

Dear Laura,

Fantastic. I'll be waiting for them .... as well as Father Hanquet and Janette of course. If you get them on a CD, my address is:

Sentier du Berger, 15

1325   Corroy-le-Grand

Belgium.

Give me your address also, if ever you want me to send you what I could gather about Weihsien ... all on a CD.

A bientôt

Leopold.

 

Re: Archives ...

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 17, 2002 09:24 PDT 

 

Laura

I'd like the photos, too, of Weihsien today, if it is not too much trouble. Thanks!

~Dwight Whipple

 

Re: Archives ...

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Oct 17, 2002 22:18 PDT 

 

Laura. I too would like to see latest photos of Wei-Hsien please. Particularly if they are captioned or identified. We were there in 1986 but had a little difficulty identifying some areas. Joyce Bradbury

 

Weihsien photos

 Natasha Petersen

Oct 18, 2002 07:14 PDT 

 

Please let me know whether the photos are the same photos that were available to us several months ago. I am not sure who was going to scan them in for us.

Thank you,

Natasha

Re: Weihsien photos

 Laura Hope-Gill

Oct 18, 2002 07:28 PDT 

 

Dear all,

 

I have not scanned the photos yet. I took them in July. I'll need some  assistance from my more techy friends on this. As soon as I've got them,  I'll upload--and I'll look into getting a website.

Best to all,

Laura

 

Info All- JUdicial review at High Court London

 Ron Bridge

Oct 18, 2002 09:21 PDT 

 

ABCIFER v MoD

I learnt last night that judgement was to be given this morning and I was in the High Court at 10 am The Judge, Mr Justice Scott Baker ruled today that he could not change the MoD decision to require at least a Grand Parent Link. He effectively severely criticised the Minister saying that the announcement was messy and that expectations had been raised. However the Court was not trying to decide if it was Unjust only Unlawful. He did not consider it unlawful in that the Legislature decided how they wanted to spend money and that they had albeit taken some time to do so but they had not acted irrationally. Whilst the Judge would not grant leave to Appeal he did say that it would be up to the Appeal Court and that ABCIFER would have to approach the Appeal Court. He added that he had great sympathy with the ex-internees.

ABCIFER Committee are now deciding what to do next -I will keep you informed.

Ron Bridge

Chairman

Assoc British Civilian Internees Fare East Region.

 

Re: Archives ...

 Zandy Strangman

Oct 18, 2002 18:20 PDT 

 

Dear Laura,

I would also appreciate a copy of your photos, of Weihsien today, if it is not putting you out, too much.

Many thanks...........Zandy Strangman

 

Weihsien scouts

 John de Zutter

Oct 20, 2002 07:57 PDT 

 

Hello everyone! I recently tuned in to the Topica Weihsien site after a  very long absence. In the recent e-mail exchanges I recognize the names  of two people I knew in the camp, Fr. Hanquet and Joyce Bradbury(Cook).

 

My name is John de Zutter. My brother, Albert, our parents and I were  part of the Tsingtao contingent in the Weihsien camp. I was a couple of  months from my 16th bithday when we left the camp in September, 1945.

We lived in block 2 (Gilkey's map, the bottom of the "L") just above  Joyce and Eddie Cook and their parents. It was, I believe, the only 2nd  floor single family quarters in the camp. The room was surrounded by  glass windows. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer,  although we could open the windows to catch whatever breeze there was.

 

After the war we spent two more years in Tsingtao. In late 1947 my  brother and I went to the U.S. to attend school while our mother went  on to Belgium. Father stayed in China to try to wind up his business  affairs. In 1949 he left on the last ship from Tsingtao with the U.S.  Navy before the communists moved into the city, and eventually wound up  in Belgium. We were all reunited in Belgium and a year later emigrated  to the U.S. My brother is in Missouri and I live in New Jersey, about  50 miles from New York City.

 

I have been reading the recent correspondence on the website and am  delighted to hear that Fr. Hanquet is doing well and has been active in  the recent exchanges. I have fond memories of Fr. Hanquet, both as a  scout leader and a friend who took interest in us and made our lives in  the camp better

 

The discussion about the scouts brought back pleasant memories about  the scouting activities in Weihsien. I still have the green hexagonal  cloth scout badge with the fleur de lis embroidered in gold (yellow) and  "WEIHSIEN" directly below the symbol. The edges are stitched in yellow  also.

 

Some other scouting treasures I have are a Bookbinders Proficiency  Certificate signed by McChesney-Clark and J. Wilfred Cockburn.. Another  certificate for the Athlete Badge is signed by Cockburn and Martin(?).  I also have the Weihsien Tenderfoot Test signed by Emmanuel Hanquet on  May 25, 1943. The heading on this certificate is "AMICALE DES JEUNES"  below which are the words " Un pour tous, tous pour un."   I was a  member of the Eagle patrol and with the guidance and encouragement of  Fr. Hanquet and Mr. Cockburn eventually became patrol leader.

 

My scout logbook from that period describes some little tasks or "good  deeds" that we, as scouts, were asked to perform as a service to the  community: Sifted coal and carried water for man at boiler. Carried 3  garbage boxes to dump. Carry parcels for Post Office. Carried and  dumped 2 boxes of ashes for bakery. Shovel and carry coal for man at  boiler.

 

As scouts we had to know where all the doctors lived and the logbook  lists the doctors and their locations. Dr. Corkey, Block 6/1; Chan,  5/3; Robinson, 1/2; Grice, 42/5; Prentice, 50/D and Hopegill,?.

 

In some of the Topica e-mails mention was made of a picture of the  scouts that included Fr. Hanquet and a number of the scouts. I have not  been able to find this picture and wonder if the person who has it could  send me a copy at jj-@optonline.net.

 

I also would like to accept the very kind offer from Leopold Pander for  the archives in Word format. Many thanks, in advance

 

Before signing off, I'd like to say hello to Joyce who appears to be a  frequent contributor to this group.

 

John de Zutter

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Laura Hope-Gill

Oct 20, 2002 10:15 PDT 

 

In a message dated 10/20/2002 12:50:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  jj-@optonline.net writes:

 

As scouts we had to know where all the doctors lived and the logbook  lists the doctors and their locations. Dr. Corkey, Block 6/1; Chan,  5/3; Robinson, 1/2; Grice, 42/5; Prentice, 50/D and Hopegill,?.

 

Dear John,

 

Great to hear from you. Dr. Donald Hope-Gill was my grandfather.

Welcome back to memory lane.

Sincerely,

Laura Hope-Gill

 

Laura Hope Gill.

 Norman Cliff

Oct 20, 2002 13:19 PDT 

 

20 Oct. 02,

Dear Laura,

       Back in July I sent you by post some info. on your grandparents and great granparents. Did you receive this?

           Greetings, NORMAN

 

RE: Weihsien scouts

 Ron Bridge

Oct 20, 2002 14:08 PDT 

 

Just for the Record Dr Hope-Gill and family were in Block 32 Room 7.

I have Dr Robinson in Block 6 Room 4

Dr ( Mrs) Corkey Block 1 Room 2

I agree the other addresses and for info

Block 6 Room 1 was occupied by Syd Talbot and family.

 

Weihsien CAC

 Greg Leck

Oct 20, 2002 14:22 PDT 

 

Dear John,

 

I'd like to know if I could send by email a questionaire about your time in camp. There are about 32 questions (some easy, others requiring more thought) which are designed to help you recall memories. You can reply to them and answer them piecemeal, sending them as you finish, or all at once.

Or, you can look them over and we can discuss them during our visit.

 

I have a digital camera and wonder if I could take some photos of some of your scouting mementos from camp?

 

I would be more than happy to travel to your home from Pennsylvania to meet with you. Or, I would be happy to host you or meet you anywhere in between.

I leave it entirely up to you. However, I am currently getting ready for my two week research trip to the UK November 01- 16 so it would have to be sometime after that.

Sincerely,

Greg

 

Re: Laura Hope Gill.

 Laura Hope-Gill

Oct 20, 2002 14:26 PDT 

 

In a message dated 10/20/2002 4:19:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  norman-@amserve.com   writes:

 

20 Oct. 02,

Dear Laura,

        Back in July I sent you by post some info. on your grandparents and  great granparents. Did you receive this?

        Greetings, NORMAN

--

Dear Norman,

 

Welcome back!

Yes, I did receive the writings by my great grandfather Cecil and was  completely dumbfounded to read of his accomplishments. For some reason, my father never spoke of his grandfather's time in China, and my grandfather died when  I was only four or so. Thank you so much for filling in another blank.

 

Please tell us about your trip!

Sincerely,

Laura

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Donald Menzi

Oct 20, 2002 15:54 PDT 

 

Here's another thread for you.

 

Several weeks ago Jane and I attended the annual re-union of graduates and  friends of the North China American School, where a few of the 50 or so  people there also had a Weihsien connection. One of them was Carolyn  Corkey, whose father appears on the list of doctors that you sent us. I'm  going to contact her by phone, get her email address, and suggest that she  join the group.

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)

Oct 20, 2002 16:10 PDT 

 

Dear John. It is lovely to hear from you and to read your reminiscences. Do you remember being my first boy friend in school? We were about 9 or 10 then and we used to write "billet doux's" to each other? Those were the days. Eddie has told me he met up with you at the re-union. He will not be going to the forthcoming re-union. I will pass your message on to him. Eddie still has his scout book which is similar to yours. Leopold Pander has a copy of the scout photograph I think. Good luck. Joyce Bradbury nee Cooke.

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Gay Talbot Stratford

Oct 21, 2002 08:26 PDT 

 

The reason that you have two different locations for the Robinsons is, that at some point, the Robinsons and the Talbots moved to no1block into three rooms. The location was better for the clandestine traffic over the wall that mother, Ida Talbot and Robbie carried out. We children all slept in the middle room, and the packets of sugar etc was stored under our beds until distributed. One day when mother and Robbie were away, there was the dreaded knock on the outside wall, the Chinese had been sighted by the guard, who was on his way to our compound. The contrabrand was tossed over the wall to my father,Sid, who was caught redhanded and marched off to the guardhouse.

He spent two weeks in solitary confinement. At the time he had dysentary, so Robbie obtained permission to take him food and visit him. On his first visit, my father found a book tucked under the food. The title? 'My First thirty years in Singsing.' Sid had a very good sense of humour, but I wonder if it was good enough.

Regards to all.

Gay Talbot Stratford

 

RE: Weihsien CAC

 John de Zutter

Oct 21, 2002 17:15 PDT 

 

Greg

Go ahead and send me the questionnaire. I make no promises yet about how quickly I will respond. But I will give it a try.

When you get back from the UK we can decide what to do next.

Bon voyage

John

 

Father Hanquet

 leopold pander

Oct 22, 2002 01:29 PDT 

 

Hello everybody,

I received a letter from Father Hanquet yesterday morning, dated October 17th.

 

Translation in English :

 

" Many thanks for your letter of October 10th, and for the two "big" files of the Weihsien Gazette for the years 2000 and 2001. I am now "up to date".

 

I took the time to read all the messages with great attention. I very much appreciated the huge amount of memories coming from Mary Previte, written with journalistic skill.

 

I was very happy to find the prose of Albert de Zutter, a Belgian, journalist in the USA in Kansas City. I remember him very well because I gave him French lessons in camp as well as to his brother John. Both of them were scouts. I met with them again in Belgium in 1948 at their house, on the "avenue Albert" in Uccle - Brussels.

 

Also, I have kept good memories of Doctor Chan's family (Sino-Canadians), and of his sons, Gui and Eugène who both, were scouts and Catholics. I got news from the Chan family from time to time, thanks to Father de Jaegher who, visited them when he went to the USA or in Canada. I must say that Father de Jaegher was an excellent "communicator" for he took many photographs and wrote post cards to all the people he went to see. It is really a pity that he isn't there anymore because I am sure he would have taken the privilege of using the Internet without moderation.

 

Father Palmers, who died about ten years ago has had a very occupied life. First in China in Nankin where he was Archbishop Yupin's secretary, then, in Hong Kong (New Territories) where he helped at the creation of a Chinese refugee village on a rocky mountain slope. I went to Hong Kong in 1979 and, with him, visited an entire network of Catholic schools he helped to set up. There even is a "Palmers avenue" named after him. Later, in Taipei, he was a priest in the town's neighbourhood not far away from the Catholic University of FUJEN, where he created a parish centre. He regularly visited the sick people in hospital and has also written a booklet in Chinese to help the local people with the hospital's rules and help them during their stay in the institution.  

 

   These are the few memories that come back to my mind while I finish the reading of the Weihsien gazette.

 

Bien amicalement,      Father Hanquet.

 

Bonne lecture, and

Best regards,    Leopold.

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 22, 2002 08:49 PDT 

 

So interesting to read after all these years. Our two families, Whipples and Waltons, occupied Block One next to the wall from March to September, 1943. The wall provided many black market opportunities for our parents. On one occasion my father, Elden Whipple, was keeping watch while my uncle, Nate Walton, was receiving about a hundred eggs over the wall. They were caught red-handed by a solitary guard who took them into our quarters and reprimanded them severely while he was counting out the number of eggs. At the same time, my mother, Marian, and aunt, Lois (who incidentally just died last month at the age of ninety-five) were clandestinely taking a few eggs for the families unbeknownst to the Japanese guard. We ended up with about a dozen eggs on that occasion. Apparently, the guard never reported the incident because we heard nothing about it after that. The only penalty was a lecture on the spot from the guard with the help of a Japanese/English dictionary!

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

Re: Father Hanquet

 Albert Dezutter

Oct 22, 2002 11:01 PDT 

 

Dear Mr. Pander,

 

Thank you so much for sending me your translation of Father Hanquet's letter. I read it with great excitement and interest. Father Hanquet had a great effect on my spiritual life in addition to giving me French lessons in the concentration camp.

Can you give me his address? And could I see his letter in the original French?

Once again, thanks so much for what you have already done.

Albert de Zutter

7514 Locust St.

Kansas City, Missouri 64131

USA

Phone: 816-523-6972

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Albert Dezutter

Oct 22, 2002 14:48 PDT 

 

In response to Dwight Whipple's account of his family's black market operation in block 1 at Weihsien, I remember Dwight from our first place of imprisonment in Tsingtao. I also remember Barbara Walton. I thought her name was Whipple at the time, but I saw a picture some time ago in which she was identified as Barbara Walton). Anyway, I had a very brief friendship with her in the Tsingtao compound, as one day she told me her parents told her she couldn't play with me any more because I was a Catholic. We were both 10 years old. I believe Dwight was a little younger. Actually, Dwight, I thought she was your sister.

 

Albert de Zutter

 

Re: Weihsien scouts

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 22, 2002 15:11 PDT 

 

Yes, Albert, I am younger than Bobbie (Barbara Walton). Barbara's mother was my father's sister and the two families (Waltons and Whipples) were together for the whole time we were interned which is fortunate considering what happened to many families during the war. Thank goodness times have changed and the protestant/catholic relationship is very different now. Where are you now? Our families are all scattered. I and my wife, Judy, live in Olympia, Washington, USA. Have been retired for a year. So much fun to keep in touch with Weihsien friends.

~Dwight

thanks again, and again ---

 leopold pander

Oct 24, 2002 00:37 PDT 

 

It has not been written often enough.

Thank you, Natasha for getting it started.

Thank you Mary for all that dynamite you manage to find to get everybody together.

I see it --- like a train.

Prestigious.

Like the Orient Express ----

Natasha showing the way by laying the tracks and organising it all.

Mary, the "locomotive", pulling all the wagons with power and dignity and all of us the "deluxe" wagons of the Orient Express with so many memories.

Merci encore. Vous êtes tous formidables.

Best regards,

Leopold

 

Re: Father Hanquet

 leopold pander

Oct 24, 2002 08:27 PDT 

 

Dear Albert,

 

We were really very happy to receive your e-mail yesterday with the many messages from the topica site. Though I don't remember anything of Weihsien (or so little).

I just phoned Father Hanquet to tell him that we got your message and also to give him your address in Kansas City. He said that he would write to you, in French (of course). He is very busy and his days are overloaded, and, as we say in French: "il déborde d'énergie". Whenever he speaks of China, time stops, ----- and we all listen.

 

Here is his personal address:

 

Monsieur l'Abbé Emmanuel HANQUET

Rue des Buissons, 1-201

1348 - LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

Belgium

 

Best regards,    Leopold

 

to Dwight Whipple

 Albert Dezutter

Oct 24, 2002 12:23 PDT 

 

Dear Dwight,

 

I quite agree with you that the climate between Protestants and Catholics has changed substantially -- thank God!

I'm glad to read in one of your prior messages that your father, Elden Whipple, is still alive. I remember playing chess with him in a tournament at the Tsingtao compound.

You ask where I am. I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I am editor of The Catholic Key, weekly newspaper for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Now a general question. Can you or anyone tell me how to post an e-mail to the topica site without replying to a previous e-mail?

 

Albert de Zutter

 

POST

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 24, 2002 12:52 PDT 

 

 

Hi Albert

Just go the Topica List page and up in the right hand corner there is a

box with the word "Post" Just click on that and a New Message to "w

internees" page will appear. Write your message, as I am doing now and

it will be posted on the Topica List. Hope this helps!

~dwight whipple

 

Re: to Dwight Whipple

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 24, 2002 12:56 PDT 

 

I will be sure to tell my father about your playing chess with him. As a matter of fact, my brother, Elden Whipple, Jr. is coming to our house later this afternoon and I will tell him as well. Maybe it was he you played chess with, although I remember that both of them played in those days. I learned to play chess while I was in a high chair, taught by one of the older missionaries in our parents' mission, the China Inland Mission. Isn't this fun to reminisce after all these years?

~Dwight

 

Re: to Dwight Whipple

 Albert Dezutter

Oct 24, 2002 13:54 PDT 

 

Dwight -- unless your brother was a full-grown man, bald on top, in the Tsingtao camp, I'm pretty sure it was Mr. Elden Whipple. I was 10 years old at the time. As I remember, I ambushed him by forking his king and his rook with my knight, taking his rook and going on to win the game.

 

Albert

 

Re: to Dwight Whipple

 Dwight W. Whipple

Oct 24, 2002 14:17 PDT 

 

Yup, it was my Dad! Still bald on top but at 97 still keen of mind, body and soul. I don't think he plays chess anymore. But I have a great tutorial in my computer that references all the masters and critiques my moves. I have often said that if I was marooned on a desert island with another person I would want to have a chess game with me.

~Dwight

 

Fw: Post

 alison holmes

Oct 24, 2002 15:24 PDT 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alison Holmes

To: weih-@topica.com

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 2:21 PM

Subject: Post

 

 

I just tried to follow your instructions and did not find "Post" on the page. Whenever I want to send a message, I just do it on email with the weih-@topica.com address...as I am doing now....and all is well!  

Alison Martin Holmes

 

 

 

 

De: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Father Hanquet

Date: mardi 22 octobre 2002 20:02

 

Dear Mr. Pander,

 

Thank you so much for sending me your translation of Father Hanquet's letter. I read it with great excitement and interest. Father Hanquet had a great effect on my spiritual life in addition to giving me French lessons in the concentration camp.

 

Can you give me his address? And could I see his letter in the original French?

 

Once again, thanks so much for what you have already done.

 

Albert de Zutter

7514 Locust St.

Kansas City, Missouri 64131

USA

Phone: 816-523-6972

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien scouts

Date: mardi 22 octobre 2002 21:23

 

So interesting to read after all these years.  Our two families, Whipples and Waltons, occupied Block One next to the wall from March to September, 1943.  The wall provided many black market opportunities for our parents.  On one occasion my father, Elden Whipple, was keeping watch while my uncle, Nate Walton, was receiving about a hundred eggs over the wall.  They were caught red-handed by a solitary guard who took them into our quarters and reprimanded them severely while he was counting out the number of eggs.  At the same time, my mother, Marian, and aunt, Lois (who incidentally just died last month at the age of ninety-five) were clandestinely taking a few eggs for the families unbeknownst to the Japanese guard.  We ended up with about a dozen eggs on that occasion.  Apparently, the guard never reported the incident because we heard nothing about it after that.  The only penalty was a lecture on the spot from the guard with the help of a Japanese/English dictionary!

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

De: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien scouts

Date: mardi 22 octobre 2002 23:48

 

In response to Dwight Whipple's account of his family's black market operation in block 1 at Weihsien, I remember Dwight from our first place of imprisonment in Tsingtao. I also remember Barbara Walton.  I thought her name was Whipple at the time, but I saw a picture some time ago in which she was identified as Barbara Walton). Anyway, I had a very brief friendship with her in the Tsingtao compound, as one day she told me her parents told her she couldn't play with me any more because I was a Catholic. We were both 10 years old. I believe Dwight was a little younger. Actually, Dwight, I thought she was your sister.

 

Albert de Zutter

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien scouts

Date: mercredi 23 octobre 2002 0:11

 

Yes, Albert, I am younger than Bobbie (Barbara Walton).  Barbara's mother was my father's sister and the two families (Waltons and Whipples) were together for the whole time we were interned which is fortunate considering what happened to many families during the war.  Thank goodness times have changed and the protestant/catholic relationship is very different now.  Where are you now?  Our families are all scattered.  I and my wife, Judy, live in Olympia, Washington, USA.  Have been retired for a year.  So much fun to keep in touch with Weihsien friends.

~Dwight

 

De: "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

À: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: RE: scout photo

Date: mercredi 23 octobre 2002 3:42

 

Greetings Leopold,

 

Thank you very much for the archive files and the picture.  They all came through well.  I appreciate all the work you have done to all the e-mails in order into manageable files. It will make it so much easier to catch up with the prior correspondence.

 

I have no record of a Doctor Neve.    I am not at all sure that my list was complete or entirely accurate.  It was, after all, the work of a 14 year old at that time.

 

My French, after so many years of not using it, is terrible.  But I can still read and understand a fair amount.  But I would not attempt to try to write anything for fear of making too many mistakes.

 

When you see Fr. Hanquet again, please give him my regards.

 

John de Zutter

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

Cc: "Janette et Pierre" <pierre.ley@pandora.be>; "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

Objet: Weihsien

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 9:37

 

Dear Albert,

 

We were really very happy to receive your e-mail yesterday with the many messages from the topica site. Though I don't remember anything of Weihsien (or so little), Janette, who was 6 years old in 1945, has a very accurate memory of what she experienced there during the 2 ½ years we survived in camp. ---

I just phoned Father Hanquet to tell him that we got your message and also to give him your address in Kansas City. He said that he would write to you, in French (of course). He is very busy and his days are overloaded, and, as we say in French: "il déborde d'énergie". Whenever he speaks of China, time stops, ----- and we all listen.

 

Here is his personal address:

Monsieur l'Abbé Emmanuel HANQUET

Rue des Buissons, 1-201

1348 - LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

Belgium

telephone : 010-455-849

---

I still remember our Dad, pronouncing your name - de Zutter - many years ago. We were kids then, and never made the connexion as to who and where you were. From time to time, we met with Father de Jaegher who came to see us whenever he came to Belgium as many other of our Dad's friends from China. Our Dad was a banker and very confidential about things. That is maybe why he said so little about "Weihsien". I think he simply didn't want to talk about it!

---

Our little sister, Marylou, born in camp (1944) died two years ago. Janette is married with three grown up kids now (she's not yet a grandma) and her husband is a gynaecologist in a well known Brussels Hospital. I was officer in the Belgian merchant navy and, after that, did business in a wholesaling company in Brussels. I got married, no kids. Now, I'm pre-retired and live on the edge of a forest, less than 10 kilometres away from Louvain-la-Neuve.

---

Enclosed with this message, 2 photos:

You will certainly recognise the piece of parachute we received before leaving Weihsien. Janette is on one side and I'm on the other. Do you still have your piece of parachute?

The other photo, is one of a series I took when Father Hanquet came to visit us this year. From left to right, is Catherine - Janette's daughter, Nicky - my wife, Father Hanquet and Janette. It was a very pleasant afternoon and we all enjoyed listening to all the stories from China, Father Hanquet had to tell us.

---

Just a question,

With nearly sixty years in between, do you remember the Pander family when you were in Weihsien prison camp ?

Tell us more about you ?

Best regards,

Leopold

 

 

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: thanks again, and again ---

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 9:38

 

It has not been written often enough.

Thank you, Natasha for getting it started.

Thank you Mary for all that dynamite you manage to find to get everybody together.

I see it --- like a train.

Prestigious.

Like the Orient Express ----

Natasha showing the way by laying the tracks and organising it all.

Mary, the "locomotive", pulling all the wagons with power and dignity and all of us the "deluxe" wagons of the Orient Express with so many memories.

Merci encore. Vous êtes tous formidables.

Best regards,

Leopold

 

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Father Hanquet

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 17:28

 

Dear Albert,

 

We were really very happy to receive your e-mail yesterday with the many messages from the topica site. Though I don't remember anything of Weihsien (or so little).

I just phoned Father Hanquet to tell him that we got your message and also to give him your address in Kansas City. He said that he would write to you, in French (of course). He is very busy and his days are overloaded, and, as we say in French: "il déborde d'énergie". Whenever he speaks of China, time stops, ----- and we all listen.

Here is his personal address:

 

Monsieur l'Abbé Emmanuel HANQUET

Rue des Buissons, 1-201

1348 - LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

Belgium

 

Best regards,    Leopold

 

De: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: to Dwight Whipple

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 21:24

 

Dear Dwight,

 

I quite agree with you that the climate between Protestants and Catholics has changed substantially -- thank God!

I'm glad to read in one of your prior messages that your father, Elden Whipple, is still alive. I remember playing chess with him in a tournament at the Tsingtao compound.

You ask where I am. I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I am editor of The Catholic Key, weekly newspaper for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

  Now a general question. Can you or anyone tell me how to post an e-mail to the topica site without replying to a previous e-mail?

  Albert de Zutter

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: POST

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 22:17

 

 

Hi Albert

Just go the Topica List page and up in the right hand corner there is a  box with the word "Post"  Just click on that and a New Message to "w  internees" page will appear.  Write your message, as I am doing now and  it will be posted on the Topica List.  Hope this helps!

~dwight whipple

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: to Dwight Whipple

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 22:22

 

I will be sure to tell my father about your playing chess with him.  As a matter of fact, my brother, Elden Whipple, Jr. is coming to our house later this afternoon and I will tell him as well.  Maybe it was he you played chess with, although I remember that both of them played in those days.  I learned to play chess while I was in a high chair, taught by one of the older missionaries in our parents' mission, the China Inland Mission.  Isn't this fun to reminisce after all these years?

~Dwight

 

De: "natasha petersen" <natasha@infi.net>

À: <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Thank YOU

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 22:51

 

Dear Leopold,

Thank you for your kind words.  This site has been extremely interesting and educational.  I find that there is much that I do not remember about Weihsien, although I was almost eighteen at the end of our internment.  My friend who is a counselor (psychologist) says that I blocked out good and bad events. 

My thanks to all subscribers and writers.

Natasha

 

De: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: to Dwight Whipple

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 22:57

 

Dwight -- unless your brother was a full-grown man, bald on top, in the Tsingtao camp, I'm pretty sure it was Mr. Elden Whipple. I was 10 years old at the time. As I remember, I ambushed him by forking his king and his rook with my knight, taking his rook and going on to win the game.

Albert

 

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: to Dwight Whipple

Date: jeudi 24 octobre 2002 23:27

 

Yup, it was my Dad!  Still bald on top but at 97 still keen of mind, body and soul.  I don't think he plays chess anymore.  But I have a great tutorial in my computer that references all the masters and critiques my moves.  I have often said that if I was marooned on a desert island with another person I would want to have a chess game with me.

~Dwight

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Fw: Post

Date: vendredi 25 octobre 2002 0:24

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alison Holmes

To: weihsien@topica.com

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 2:21 PM

Subject: Post

 

I just tried to follow your instructions and did not find "Post" on the page.  Whenever I want to send a message, I just do it on email with the weihsien@topica.com  address...as I am doing now....and all is well!   Alison Martin Holmes

 

 

 

 

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: "sancton" <sancton@nbnet.nb.ca>; "Albert de Zutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>; "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>; "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>; "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>; "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>; "Stan Thompson" <books@ginniff.com>

Objet: Archives,  up-to-date

Date: dimanche 27 octobre 2002 17:10

 

Hello,

The archives are now "up to date".

I do hope you enjoy the reading of it.

The "zip-files" are easy to transfer to whoever else would like to read them comfortably seated in a sofa next to a nice warm fire.  (It is almost winter out here!)

Best regards,   Leopold.

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Re: Histo-2002>message 675

Date: samedi 26 octobre 2002 18:46

 

Please keep on doing it.  It's a great service;.

 

At 07:16 PM 10/25/02 +0200, you wrote:

>Hello,

>Enclosed, the messages up to number 675 on the topica list. That is about  100 pages to read.

>Question:

>Do you want me to continue the system?  It is quite enjoyable to read all  >this during the long winter evenings. I can go on - up to the most recent  >messages and send the final "histo" at the end of the year 2002.

>Best regards,

>Leopold

 

De: "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Weihsien scouts

Date: samedi 26 octobre 2002 20:26

 

It was great to hear from you too, Joyce.

I must have been a lucky fellah, having you for a girlfriend.  Was that in Holy Ghost Convent school or had we already moved on to St. Joseph, down the street?  I can't remember.

 

Talking about "those days" here is something else from that era.  It’s a picture of a group of children at my brother Albert's birthday party in our back yard at 3 Wu Sheng Kuan Rd. I think I gave a copy of this to Eddie at the TAS reunion 2/3 years ago, but I am not sure.

 

Unfortunately, we did not make a record of all who were at the party.  Maybe you can help. On the left front is Paqui Barbera.  Next, I think, is Irene ?, Unknown, John de Zutter.  On the right is Katie Belov, I think, you, Eddie and another unknown.  My brother is peeking over the cake.

I think we kids all lived pretty well in the years before the war.

With fond memories of a time long ago, my best wishes to you.

John

 

De: "Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien scouts

Date: dimanche 27 octobre 2002 0:28

 

 I have not seen that photograph but I will check with Eddie and let you know. Maybe you can scan a copy of it if Eddie doesn’t have one. "those days" were in the Holy Ghost Convent. I probably did not have a boy friend at St. Joseph's as that was supposed to be a girls' only school. Only 'little boys' (like you and Eddie) were allowed there. As a matter of fact we were only at St Joseph's a short time as the Holy Ghost Convent complained to the bishop that they were losing all their students and we all had to return to the H.G. Convent. My parents were not happy because the St Joseph teachers were American and better teachers. Some of these teachers were interned with us as you know. Joyce ----

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Archives, up to date ---

Date: lundi 28 octobre 2002 4:12

 

> Reply from Gladys - I don't get http messages on my Macintosh.  Please

>send snail mail if you don't want to type on email for me.  Thanks.

 

 

De: "Albert de Zutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Re: Aquarelles

Date: lundi 28 octobre 2002 16:13

 

Leopold:

Thanks for the Verhoeven paintings. They stir memories. Yes, they do fit on the screen. "Aquarelles" are water colours, no?

Albert

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: "Albert de Zutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

Objet: Re: Aquarelles

Date: mercredi 30 octobre 2002 11:39

 

Hello,

      That is correct.

If my computer did what I asked it to send, --- you should have 10 paintings in all.

Best regards,     Léopold.

 

De: "Laura Hope-Gill" <laurahopegill@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Archives, up to date ---

Date: lundi 28 octobre 2002 18:54

 

Dear Leopold,

I would love a copy!

Sincerely, Laura Hope-Gill

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Archives, up to date ---

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 1:21

 

Another reply from Gladys - Everything is easy if you know how.  I don't know how to transfer the "zip-files" which you say are "easy to transfer..."  Please explain.

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Cc: "Ariane & Vivitch" <yves.ley@chello.be>

Objet: Re: Archives, up to date ---

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 8:41

 

Hello Gladys,

 I asked my nephew, who is in the computer business.

So he said :  the Mac Intosh can unzip compressed files with a program called "Stuffit Expander". Once the file is unzipped (or expanded) it can be read by the "word processor" used by "your" computer. What I have to know, is the name of your word processor: WordPerfect5.1? Works?  or any other.

Once that is established, I can save the document in "my" computer so it can be recognised by "your" computer.

Shall we try?

---

Have a nice day,

Best regards,    Leopold

 

De: "Leonard Mostaert" <mostaert@hinet.net.au>

À: "TOPICA" weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Life's little mysteries

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 7:41

 

       from Len Mostaert  camp no. 248

 

      I was 9 when I left the camp, but certain things have never been made clear to me.

  There has always been the problem of not knowing how certain actions were performed, and how certain supplies reached the camp. Take, for example the slates that we used in school. how were they supplied, and by whom ? As well as coloured pencils, and other stationery items.

  How did our raw products for food preparation reach the camp ?

  How did the hospital get medical supplies and from whom? I remember getting the wrong eye medication for a problem, and my Mother yelled and screamed to someone until I received the correct medication. Who were the people concerned ?

  How did the inmates get tools and building supplies ? I remember that a very kind gentleman came to our room and built a small stove from bricks, with an empty kerosene tin as an oven. How did he get the supplies ? I also remember my father, together with George Cox, cutting down a tree at the South Field, then carrying it (with others) and hiding (?)it along the back of Block 84, where it remained for a time, with the Japs not noticing it because it was too obvious. How did the boys get saws and other supplies?

   All these things could not have been brought into the camp through peoples hand luggage, or, there must have been a trick to it all.

 

De: "Laura Hope-Gill" <laurahopegill@aol.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Life's little mysteries

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 14:05

 

Dear Len,

To my understanding, my grandparents were permitted to bring one pillow case  filled with items when they were "arrested".  My grandfather, a doctor,  filled most of the space of 4 pillowcases with medical supplies.  He also  packed a deflated football which Eric Liddell inflated later on (one of the  family stories).  A black market was also established with people outside the  gates; through this more supplies could be brought in.  There are fascinating  accounts of how the black market operated in Gilkey's book, Shantung Compound.

 

As for the trees, my grandmother told me that "prisoners were not allowed to  touch the trees" and that is probably why the tree had to be hidden.  She  used coal balls, dirt, and ashes to build fires.  When I was there this past  summer, I touched the trees.

Laura

 

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Fw: Camp numbers

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 16:05

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alison Holmes

To: weihsien@topica.com 

Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 7:57 AM

Subject: Camp numbers

 

 

I guess this one is really for Ron Bridges, that source of all detailed knowledge about camp.  Len Mostaert says his number is 248.  What was mine?   Was it based on where we were living? Did each member have a number, or were there family numbers?  Just a tiny question.  Thanks   Alison Martin Holmes

 

De: "Ron Bridge" <rwbridge@freeuk.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: RE: Camp numbers

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 18:28

 

Alison,

 You pose a question re Camp Numbers. Weihsien was different to the rest of the Japanese Camps where inmates kept their number, and in the case of Shanghai kept them as they were moved from one camp to another.

In Weihsien their were three sets of numbers always based on the Family in sequence

To quote my own case I was No 296 on entry when we lived in Blk 42 Rm 6 It was then changed to 1079 at the same address

Then after the US Evacuation in Sept43 when we moved to Blk 13 room 10/11 it became 2-104. The first digit being the Roll Call area. I still have the entire families Name Tags.

My parents and younger brother Lionel Roger were 294/295/297 then 1077/1078/1080 and finally 2-102, 2-103, 2-105

If readers let me have their numbers we might be able to work them all out but I suspect Chefoo School might be a problem.

Rgds

Ron

If any former British readers want their own or their parents passport numbers I should have them and where they were issued.

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Camp numbers

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 18:50

 

You truly are a marvel, Ron!  How old were you?  Have you always been a repository of detailed information?  Do we (the Martins) count as Chefoo school complications when we were a whole family, living in block 15 rooms 5 and 6?  I wish we had our name tags...but I think we lost a lot of those concrete souvenirs when we had to leave China again from Kuling.  I would love it if we could work out what all our numbers were.  Thanks for your input, Ron.   Alison

 

De: "Norman Cliff" <normancliff@amserve.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Info. on Weihsien

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 21:28

 

29 Oct. 02.

>From Norman Cliff:

          I want to share two matters which will answer questions which have been raised in this correspondence:

              1. Schools in the Camp.  There were the Chefoo School and a Catholic one.  In about 1944 Pryor, head of Education, approached three Chefoo to resuscitate the Tientsin Grammar School, which had fizzled out.  The three were Reg Bazire & Gordon Welch, both Chefoo teachers, and myself the senior Chefoo boy.

      We met in various wings of the church and outside, and kept it up until Liberation.

               2.  Info. on the Catholic school is in A CROSS IN CHINA by Sr. Servatia.  This can be obtained from Sister Mary Lea Schneider, Cardinal Stith Univ., 6801 Yates Road, Milwaukee, Wisc 53217-3986.

                    NORMAN CLIFF

--

De: "Albert Dezutter" <albertdezutter@worldnet.att.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com  >

Objet: Re:Schools in Weihsien

Date: mardi 29 octobre 2002 22:43

 

I remember being in a grade school class taught by a Sister Bede. Later, I completed my first year of high school with Mrs. Moore from the Peking American School, and Sister Hiltrudis and others. Our classroom was in Building 23. I did not have the impression that the school was particularly a Catholic school, although I was (and am) Catholic, and certainly Catholic nuns taught in the school, but I believe my freshman transcript was from the Peking American School.

 

After the war, when the Tsingtao American School was revived in the fall of 1946 (we did not have school in Tsingtao from 1945 to 1946), Sister Hiltrudis was again part of the faculty.

Albert de Zutter

>

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

 

Objet:

 Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former Weihsien interneesnts to mee

Date: dimanche 10 novembre 2002 22:18

 

Hello, Everybody,

 

    I have received the following e-mail from a five-person Shandong  delegation that will shortly arrive in the United States and hope to explore  the extent of information available about Weihsien for making a documentary  film about the camp.  If you are interested in talking  to them and live near  one of the cities on their tour of the USA, please contact Mr. Yuanfen Zhao  at his e-mail address noted below.  The dates and cities they will visit is  listed below.  I believe quite a few of us live near the cities on their  itinerary. 

 

    Mary Previte

 

Dear Mary Previte:

 

Please excuse my disturbing

 

I am a producer & writer of Shandong Movie & TV Producing Center, I happened learn the story of Weihsein Camp in Shandong Province in China during the Second World War and I was deeply moved. Since then I have been keeping great interest in it and collecting the information on it. I made great effort to find the survivors the men, women and children. Where they are and how they are getting along? A few days before I specially visited the site where have been the Camp and took some picture of the existing old buildings.

Fortunately I saw some old photo picture and books.

Time is flowing, while the most of the adults locked there has passed away, and the children have become old. Should it be covered by the years and forgotten by the people? So I have a dream to make a documentary to tell people the story happened yesterday.

 

Our crew is making another documentary which tells the story of the Chinese victims’ lawsuits against Japanese Government.  We 5 persons will visit US during Nov. 14 to Cec 1. When we were planning our travel, we hope to find some people who had been in the camp living in the cities we are going to visit.

We are pleased to get your E-mail by Mr. Grant in Torontor and are trying to get in touch with you.

 

Dear madam, at present the Documentary about the Weihsein Camp is only a primary plan and our travel plan is tied up. So this time we are not able to find and interview a lot of people.

 

Could you help us with these matters:

 

1.  1. Attached is our schedule. Is there any of your schoolfellow in the cities we are visiting? We’d like to interview 3 or 4 persons.

2.  Could you inform us the name list of your Alumni Association by E-mail or mail? It includes names, address, telephone or fax, and profession too for us to get in touch with them and to prepare potential interview.  If it is not convenient, could you just inform us the their names and their professions, then contact some of them by you.

 

3.  Could you give us some reference material such as old picture, news paper, the articles written by the schoolfellows in memory, tapes as well as other concerned.

 

When we back form US, if we could collect some material, I’ll write a feasible plan for your reference and for our leader to make decision. That is why I took the liberty of writing you for your help.

Anyway I hope we could make some efforts together to tell the story to our children.

 

We are looking forward to your answer.

 

 

Schadule

 

Nov. 14-15 Los Angeles

Nov. 16-17 San Diego

Nov. 20-22 Washinton

Nov. 24-25 New York

NOv. 26 St. Louis

Nov. 27 Shepherd Mic.

NOv. 29-30 San Francisco

 

 

YUANFEN ZHAO         yuanfenzhao@yahoo.com

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former Weihsien interneesnts Date: lundi 11 novembre 2002 3:01

 

My mother and father were interned at Weihsien Camp the whole time to the end in 1945 but I personally was not there.  They are no longer living.  I live within driving time of Washington DC and could meet you there on 11-20.  Gladys Hubbard Swift

 

De: "ÕÔ¶¬Üß" <wlzs001@163.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: =?gb2312?B?UmU6IFNoYW5nZG9uZyBkZWxnYXRlcyB2aXNpdGluZyBVUyB3YW50cyB0byBtZWV0IGZvc

Date: lundi 11 novembre 2002 14:18

 

Hi Gladys Swift£¬

 

Thanks for your kindly reply and we are very glad to meet you at US if possible. Pleased inform us your contact method to wlzs001@163.com. Thanks and best wishes,

 

            Dongling ZHao

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former Weihsien interneesnts

Date: mercredi 13 novembre 2002 3:36

 

Gladys:

 

    Please e-mail yuanfenzhao@hahoo.com and give the Shandong delegation a  telephone number for them to contact you.  They have e-mailed me for  information on how to contact you.

 

Mary Previte

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Fwd: CBI MESSAGE CENTER (HONOR OUR CURRENT SERVICE PERSONNEL)

Date: mercredi 13 novembre 2002 3:47

 

 

Here is your chance to tell our current service personnel you care.  Please go to the following site and sign your name to thousands of other Americans who care.

Click Here.
SEND YOUR MESSAGE

Which is;
Hyperlink = http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html


Best Regards,
CBI Veterans are Unique
Tom Miller
CBI Message Center

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet:

Fwd: Re: Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former  Weihsien internee

Date: mercredi 13 novembre 2002 4:27

 

Gladys.

Mary meant to write @yahoo.com instead of @hahoo.com.

 

 

De: "mahlon D. Horton" <berean@look.ca>

À: "Contacts Weihsien" weihsien@topica.com

?

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 3:41

 

Tried to subscribe and it didn't work.===sorry I am a big nuisance but clicking on the one-click confirmation didn't work for me.

 

Audrey Nordmo Horton

 

De: "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

À: weihsien@topica.com

?

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 4:04

 

Note to Natasha Peterson

 

I was going through the archives that Leopold Pander so graciously made  available and ran across your inquiry last March about Joan Walle.

 

The last time I saw Joan was in 1963/64 when I was living in New York  just before our family moved to the Midwest and we lost touch.

 

Her married name was Eglis and they lived in Leonia, NJ

 

I searched on the web a few minutes ago and came across this  information:

 

     Joan Eglis

     270 Glenwood Avenue

     Leonia, NJ 07605

     201-947-8841

 

If you have not already found her, I hope this is helpful

 

John de Zutter

 

De: "Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re:

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 6:38

 

Dear Audrey Nordmo Horton.

Your attempt worked as it reached me in Australia. Welcome to Topica. Joyce Bradbury nee Cooke.

 

De: "Joyce Bradbury (nee Cooke)" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re:

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 6:42

 

I note Joan Waller's address and I will pass it on to Yvonne Ozorio who was in the camp with us and she has often asked me whether I could find out Joan's addresss. We three were also good friends in camp. If we discover her web site I would love to have it. Joyce Bradbury.

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet:

Re:=?gb2312?B?UmU6IFNoYW5nZG9uZyBkZWxnYXRlcyB2aXNpdGluZyBVUyB3YW50cyB0byBtZWV

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 6:51

 

Reply from Gladys Swift - This email address gets to me fine. I look forward to hearing more about when you arrive. My phone number is 434-973-4179

 

Hi Gladys Swift£¨Thanks for your kindly reply and we are very glad to meet you a

t US if possible. Pleased inform us your contact method to wlzs001@163.com.  Thanks and best wishes,            Dongling Zhao

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet:

Re: Fwd: Re: Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former   Weihsien int

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 6:51

 

>Gladys.

>Mary meant to write @yahoo.com instead of @hahoo.com.

 

Reply from Gladys - Hahahoohoo to you!

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Shandong delegates visiting US wants to meet former Weihsien internees

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 6:51

 

>Gladys:

>

>    Please e-mail yuanfenzhao@hahoo.com  and give the Shandong delegation a telephone number for them to contact you.  They have e-mailed me for >information on how to contact you.

>

>Mary Previte

 

Reply from Gladys - Done !

>

 

De: "mahlon D. Horton" <berean@look.ca>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Re: Important New Reference Book - Encyclopedia of  Exploration to 1800

Date: jeudi 14 novembre 2002 18:24

 

Thank you very much for your information.   Audrey Horton

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: weihsien@topica.com

Objet: Telling our stories on Veteran's Day

Date: vendredi 15 novembre 2002 2:19

 

    Hello, Everybody,

 

    How many of you are tapped to tell your World War II story in nearby  schools on Veteran's Day?

   

    A wonderful high school history teacher near here hosts a crowd of World  War II veterans at his school close to Veteran's Day each year.  The old  timers arrive with their treasures -- models or pictures of the airplanes  they flew.  Some wear their uniforms -- I'm always amazed that the uniforms  still fit -- even the submariners with their feathered regalia.  The school  provides breakfast and lunch, as the old timers go to class after class after  class to tell their stories.  I've been included  in this story-fest for  three or four years now.

   

    The history teacher started the project to make sure that this generation  hears the World War II stories from real people -- not just from history  books. Realizing the value of the project, the school allows the guests to  speak in every imaginable kind of class -- not just history.  Last Wednesday,  I told the Weihsien story to teenagers in three consecutive classes for their  whole class periods.  I always punctuate the story by unfolding my piece of  parchute silk embroidered with  the Weihsien rescue scene -- the B-24 bomber  in the sky and the seven descending parachutes embroidered in navy blue and  next to each the  penciled autographs of each of our heroes -- passing it  around.  Sometimes the kids cry.  Sometimes the teachers cry.  I love doing  it each year.  But the numbers of veterans is dwindling -- just as our team  of heroes is.  

 

    This history teacher realized that fewer and fewer of the veterans each  year are able to come to his classrooms. So several years ago,  he  won a  grant to pay for video taping a large collection of these stories-- mine  included -- so that his students could hear the stories for ever.  The school  has also aired these videos on local television.  He called the series,   BRIDGING THE GENERATIONS -- an oral history of World War II.  We have such a  piece of history to pass on.

 

    A thank you e-mail from the grandson of our rescuer Tad Nagaki warmed my  heart a few days ago.  His thank you said my Tad Nagaki story published this  summer had given him information he had never before known about his  grandfather.  I urged him to spend time asking questions and looking at Tad's  old snapshots and mementos.  Most of our heroes don't talk much.  They most  certainly don't think of themselves as heroes.  In fact, it took me months of  Sunday night telephone calls to Tad Nagaki half a continent away to pull from  him the details of his life and wartime experience.  I found it worth every  minute of effort.

 

    I'm still trying to get the state Senator that represents Tad's district  to publicly honor Tad.

 

         Mary Previte

 

 

 

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: "yuanfenzhao" <yuanfenzhao@yahoo.com >

Cc: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>; "Janette et Pierre" <pierre.ley@pandora.be>

Objet: Weihsien

Date: lundi 18 novembre 2002 10:32

 

Dear Mr. Yuanfen Zhao

 

Your message to Mrs. Mary Previte, on the Topica site was also received out here, in Europe.

I sent it, by post, to Father Hanquet who, at 87 and with a pacemaker in his body is a wonderful example for all of us.

Father Hanquet was a main figure in the Weihsien prison camp as a Catholic priest. He loves speaking of his experiences in China. The "Weihsien episode" is still very clear in his memory.

He also speaks your language.

            In Belgium, where he lives, he has already been interviewed by our national television, the RTBF, in a series called "INEDITS" set up by Mr. André Huet, with old films and photographs of China before the war.

            If ever you schedule a trip to Europe, Father Hanquet would be very happy to meet you where he now lives, in Louvain-la-Neuve, which is the actual location of the Catholic University in Belgium.

            You can send a e-mail to my address for Father Hanquet (which I will transmit) and you can also write directly to him by ordinary post at ;

 

Monsieur l'Abbé Emmanuel HANQUET

Rue des Buissons,  1-201

1325 - LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

Belgium.

Telephone:  010/45-58-49 (in Belgium)

 

Best regards, Leopold Pander.

 

 

De: "Audrey Nordmo Horton" <berean@look.ca>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Telling our stories on Veteran's Day

Date: jeudi 21 novembre 2002 3:06

 

Thank you Mary for a wonderful challenge.   I have shared my Weihsien experience in churches but not in schools---Audrey Nordmo Horton

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Telling our stories

Date: samedi 23 novembre 2002 21:33

 

About "Telling Our Stories"  I spent half of yesterday (Nov. 22) telling my story about Weihsien where I never lived but heard about from my parents, Hugh and Mabel Hubbard.  The Shandong group through Zhang Xiaoping, their interpreter, (same first name as Deng Xiaoping, little bottle) got in touch with me and asked me to come to talk to them at Tysons Corner.  The "boss" is Wang Guisen, Deputy Seacretary-General of Shandong Provincial People's Government.  They are all from Jinan and I was sorry I didn't have "Tungchow Re-collected" about Jinan.  I had the Princeton Reunion issue instead, but did point out John Hayes's two daughters in a picture. I didn't think I had much to say since I was pulled out of Yenching University and sent to the US in January 1941, so that I would not be interned in the war with Japan that my parents felt was coming.  They were right, of course.  They felt they should stay with their work in China but were separated when Pearl Harbor came.  Mother was put under house arrest in Baoding, with the Galts, while Father was in Beijing taking Earl Ballou's place as American Board secretary. Mother was able to join Father in Beijing in February 1942, from where they were sent to Weihsien in March 1943.

 

Back to the Shandong group, which has as official title "THE LAWSUITS FOR THE FUTURE, The Lawsuits Against Japanese Government by the Chinese Victims of the WW II, Shandong Movie & TV Studio." Because I do not have first hand information about Weihsien I took everything I could find of my parents and others:  My father's "Watchman" from 1939, and his letters about what happened at Pearl Harbor in Beijing, and the trip to Weihsien, and the letter about what happened after they were rescued in 1945. I also took the books about Weihsien:  Little Foreign Devil (Desmond Power), A Boy's War (David Michell), and Courtyard of the Happy Way (Norman Cliff).  They videotaped the cover of Courtyard drawn by Hugh Hubbard, with quotation from "Weihsien - the Test".  I also took "Shantung Compound" by Langdon Gilkey and an INQUIRER copy of "A Song of Salvation" by Mary Taylor Previte (hope you don't mind, Mary, - it is SO VERY GOOD!).  They did not take or copy it but may have videotaped some of the pictures.  They videotaped your family picture, p. 31 as they did Desmond Power's family and my family (many pictures).  That leads me to think that what they want is the human interest aspect of internees. They wanted to know what I observed of the effect of internment on my parents so I told them about my mother's refusing to throw away burned toast, eating it instead, and my father on trash day picking up an old trunk put on the sidewalk in New York to be picked up by the dump trucks, not willing to throw away anything so useful! Other books I took were , my father's "Birds of Northeastern China" written with George Wilder (since his grandson Don Menzi is being taped today that seemed appropriate) and my mother's "Experiment in Teaching the Christian Religion by Life Situations in Fan Village, China". and ,my father's tape recorded reminiscences (not much about Weihsien) .We talked mostly in English with Miss Zhang translating.  She did an excellent job - I could understand a great deal of her translation, but although I talked a little Chinese I couldn't produce anything technical in Chinese.  They seemed particularly interested in the two albums of pictures of my family and went through rather carefully, a young picture of my father ("very handsome"!), where we all were at Pearl Harbor, our house, my older brother Wells who was also interned briefly but repatriated (Mother refused to leave Father.) I hope I haven't violated any copyright laws - they didn't seem interested in quoting or videotaping writing. They had a book in Chinese on atrocities by the Japanese in Malaysia, but weren't interested in reading Father's comments about atrocities. They treated me to an absolutely delicious lunch and I was on my way home by 2:00 while they were off to the Archives at the U. of Maryland, College Park.  I understand they are interviewing Don Menzie today, Saturday, and hope Don will report from his contacts with them.  They promised to send me a copy of their film when produced - "so people will know about this."  That's all, and probably more than you all want to know.

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Telling our stories on Veteran's Day

Date: samedi 23 novembre 2002 23:43

 

I, too, have done this.  At the local public high school I was asked by one of the students, and invited by one of the teachers, to take the whole class period to tell about our internee experience in Tsingtao and Weihsien.  The kids and teacher were very attentive and applauded at the end of the class.

Many of them were Asian students, both Chinese and Japanese Americans.

Dwight W. Whipple

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Weihsien Documentary

Date: dimanche 24 novembre 2002 17:26

 

Very exciting news!  I am just now meeting with a group of Chinese from  Shandong province, thanks to Mary.  They asked that I send you all the  following message:

They are here to explore the possibility of making a TV documentary about  the Weihsien camp.   They want to learn about the stories of people who  were there, and also about what you are all doing now.  They are very  interested in the possibility of our having a reunion next year, which is  the 60th anniversary of Weihsien's founding, and offered to help to get the  local and provincial government's help.

As a first step they are asking to be added to the group.  Please add the  following email addresses to the list:

 wlzs001@163.com   (Dong Ling Zhao, the producer -- also a general address  for the filming group)

yuanfenzhao@yahoo.com  (Zhang Xiaoping, the translator)

 

Natasha, will you please add them to the list as soon as possible.

 

They will want to get from each of you your name, mailing address and phone  number.  They would like to know from each of you if you are seriously  interested in coming to Weihsien next year for a reunion.  If it looks like  it will happen, it will help them persuade their superiors to go ahead with  the TV documentary project.  Wait until Natasha confirms that they are on  the list, however, before using the group address to contact them.

In addition to the above email addresses, other means of contacting them  after they return to China on December 4, are: Phone and fax: 86-531-266-7853

Cell phone for Zhang Xiaoping, 86-13954183268

 It looks like exciting things could happen.

 Don Menzi

 

De: "theresa m granger" <ttmg@juno.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Cc: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Documentary

Date: dimanche 24 novembre 2002 18:19

 

Donald,

Great to hear you have met with that group.  My mother (Myrtle Granger - nee Sharp)is scheduled to meet with them on Wed. Nov. 27, as they will be in the Detroit area.  This is pretty exciting.

Theresa Granger

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Documentary

Date: dimanche 24 novembre 2002 18:46

 

I am interested but not close to any of the areas they will be in the U.S. I have just returned from China, day before yesterday, and visited my birthplace (Kuling, Kiangsi, now called Lushan Mountain) and met folk there who are interested in those who lived on the mountain in the thirties and forties.  They are doing a history and we have already begun an e-mail correspondence.  China is an exciting place these days.  We were impressed with the progress everywhere.  I would be happy to talk, correspond, etc., regarding Weihsien.  We were there from March until September, 1943 and were then repatriated in an exchange of government nationals.

~Dwight W. Whipple

 

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Weihsien

Date: dimanche 24 novembre 2002 21:54

 

Dong Ling Zhao, producer & Zhang Xiaoping, translator have been on the list.

We also have han_jh@sina.com  Does anyone know who this is.

I will write to the translator giving him my name and e-mail address.

To those of you who remember Joan Walle Eglis (Tsingtao - Weishien), I have been able to reach her in New Jersey.  We have promised each other to keep in touch.

Natasha Petersen

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 3:53

 

Thanks, Natasha.  They will be using email to ask a lot of questions for  everyone in the group. Note that the translator is a woman, however.

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Cc: <rswmenzi@hotmail.com>

Objet: Chinese TV Documentary Crew's Visit and a New Weihsien Web Site

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 4:26

 

The Chinese TV documentary crew has left now.  I printed out and gave them  copies of the paintings that Leopold had sent, and also those provided by  Joyce Bradbury (Cooke), as well as Gertrude Wilder's paintings, the diaries  by George Wilder and Howard Galt, and Leopold Pander's collected emails  from 2000 and 2001.  The emails really impressed them, so everyone who has  been sharing memories, questions, etc. should feel proud of his or her  contribution.  I also gave them copies of Langdon Gilkey's and Norman  Cliff's books and showed them how to find and download the black-and-white  photos of the camp.

 

They were extremely impressed by all the material that we, as a group, have  generated about Weihsien, which they had never heard of a month ago when  they learned about it from some Chinese who remembered it.  When they left  us they were going to try to meet with Mary Previte in New Jersey tomorrow  (Monday).

 

I think they now believe that they could make a good TV documentary about  Weihsien.  If they get the go-ahead, you will be hearing much more about it.

 

Let me also invite you to visit the almost-finished web site at  weihsien.menzi.org that my son, Richard, has been working on.  If you go  there you will first see Hugh Hubbard's drawing of the gateway to the camp,  along with his statement about "Weihsien, the Test."  From there you can go  to four different pages.  One of them includes a map of the compound and a  list of the paintings.  If you click on this one you will have to wait for  a few minutes until the pictures are completely downloaded, so please be  patient.  After a box with instructions appears at the bottom of the screen  you can point and click on the picture titles on the list and the  picture  will appear in the middle of the screen.  A symbol will also  appear on the map showing you where Gertrude Wilder was standing when she  painted the picture.  You can enlarge the picture by pointing to its centre  and right-clicking, then clicking on "Zoom In."  Also, if you move the  pointer around the various parts of the map, the names of the main  buildings and public areas such as the basketball court, playground, ball  field, etc. will appear.

 

Note that we rotated the map 180 degrees, putting North at the top, which  is the standard way nearly all maps are drawn.  Since you are used to  seeing it the other way, you may be a little disoriented (literally, not

knowing which way is East) at first.

I would really appreciate it if you would let me know of some of your  favourite places that aren't already identified on the map, such as "Lovers'  Lane," so we can include pop-up names for them, too.  I think most of them  are on the map that Leopold sent us, so if you tell me about them I can  probably include them, but just to make sure, tell me approximately where  they are and if we get it wrong we can correct it later..

 

Going back to the first page, you will see that we also included an  internet link that takes you to the Leopold's collection of black-and-white  photographs.  (I think it's Leopold's,  but if the site belongs to someone  else, please let me know.)  We forgot to identify the source or the actual  site address, which will be corrected in the future so that proper credit  is given where credit is due.

 

I also want to include something that shows you the progress of the  map/picture page's download process, since it takes so long and you may  think that it's just sitting there doing nothing while it's still  downloading.

 

I also just discovered that Cornell University Library's collection of  George Wilder's papers includes a hand-drawn map that shows the  location  of all the trees in the compound and identifies their  species.  Once  we get it from Cornell, we hope to add them to the base map.

 

We did not include the other paintings that Leopold sent out, but we may be  able to do so on a separate page in the future.  We may also be able to  include additional down-loads, such as the collection of emails, the email  addresses of the members of the group, etc., making this a truly  comprehensive Weihsien site.

 

I am really interested to hear from you what you think of it so far, and  get your suggestions for additional things to include in the future.  In  the mean time, I hope you enjoy the tour!

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Cc: <geomenzi@chartermi.net>; <emenzi@racc2000.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 4:53

 

Natasha,

 

Please add my brother and sister to the group.  They are:

 

George Menzi -- geomenzi@chartermi.net

Betty Menzi -- emenzi@racc2000.com

 

Thanks.

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet:

 Re: Chinese TV Documentary Crew's Visit and a New Weihsien Web Site

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 4:55

 

What a great  service to us all, Donald.  Thanks so much!

~Dwight W. whipple

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Chinese TV Documentary Crew's Visit

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 6:05

 

Hello, Everybody,

 

    What excitement!  I'm thrilled  with the help of the internet to have   helped connect several of you with the Shandong TV documentary team.  It  sounds like your stories and mementos have found  a wonderful reception.

 

    Alas,  I won't be able to meet these visitors  this time .  Their e-mail  message  with their request for an interview tomorrow didn't connect with me  until late tonight . They're in New Jersey -- but at the other end of the  state from where i live.  Bad timing, too.   I'm scheduled for legislative  sessions in the State Capitol tomorrow.  Yes, we're expected to show up to  vote.  If the delegation had a car, I'd invite them to meet for an interview  at our New Jersey State house in Trenton tomorrow and give them a tour.

 

    I wrote to Pamela Masters about meeting the crew when they're in  California and she promised to try to connect with them,  too.  Please keep  us updated on your interviews. It's fascinating.

 

    Mary Previte

 

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: web site

Date: lundi 25 novembre 2002 16:25

 

Dear Donald,

I managed to open your web site this afternoon.

Fantastic.

It is a real pleasure to admire the paintings with the map on the left showing the whereabouts.

Congratulations. You MUST continue -----

You mentioned my name for the black and white photographs. They were put on the web by Christine Talbot Sancton and her son Rob, with her message of March 23rd, 2002. I had also a real great pleasure looking at those photographs and printed every one of them on A4 paper.

In our family treasures, we don't have a single photo of Weihsien --- past or present.

All the best,

Leopold

 

 

De: "Zandy Strangman" <zandy.jen@bigpond.com.au>

À: "Internment Camp" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Verification of mail.

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 0:33

 

Attention ....John de Zutter,

 

I sent you an email and attached a copy of the Scout photo, you requested, to the designated address on the 25th Oct.  but to date without any feed back!

I would just like to know whether you received it at all ?

Regards........Zandy

 

De: "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Verification of mail.

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 4:22

 

Sorry I didn't respond.  I received the photo from 3 different ppppeople and I thought I had acknowledged each source.

I did receive the photo and thank you for sending it

Best wishes

John

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Chinese TV documentary crew visit me today

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 6:19

 

Hello,  Everybody,

 

    What an amazing story!  What determination!

 

    The TV documentary crew from Shandong tracked me down -- no appointment,  no advance announcement -- in the New Jersey state Capitol this morning as I  was preparing to testify on a bill of mine before the Assembly Judiciary  Committee .

 

    I'm still blinking in astonishment

 

    Not 12 hours earlier, I had e-mailed my regrets that I could NOT meet  with them today because of my schedule in the State House.

 

    We've never connected by telephone -- only by e-mails.    But on a  thought that I might phone them from Trenton to invite them down, I piled a  bag of my photos and mementos in my car today.

 

    In the Assembly Judiciary committee room, a state trooper came looking  for me -- said a Chinese lady was outside in the hallway, looking for me.  My  legislative aide  said you should have seen my face.

 

    Is this amazing! 

 

    So between morning and afternoon legislative committee meetings, the  Chinese visitors  interviewed and video taped me for an hour and a half,  video taped my Weihsien story, photographed my Weihsien treasures.  Through  their interpreter, Zhang Xioaping,  I told them this is a story of faith.  I  wove that theme through my story as I always do.  Interpreter Zhang wept  several times as I told the story.

 

    The producer, Ms. Dong Ling Zhao, has won several top national awards for  films she has produced in China.  She says they hope to start with a  documentary about Weihsien and see if that can lead to a movie of this story.

 

    I gave these very distinguished visitors a tour of the state Capitol. One  of the guests is among the highest officials of Shandong province.  My, oh,  my! did we take pictures!  -- pictures of them sitting at  my  desk in the  General Assembly, standing at the Speaker's podium, in the Senate chambers,  outside in the sunshine with the beautiful golden dome of the  Capitol behind  them.  Talk about determination!  What perfect timing that they arrived in  their van as the morning session was ending -- giving us unscheduled time and  my legislative hearing  room available before my afternoon committee meeting.

 

    The producer  talks of first making a documentary film about Weihsien and  seeing if it might lead to a movie.  They continue to talk of  our having a  reunion in Weihsien next year -- the 60th anniversary of the start of the  camp.  That would give opportunity for videotaping former internees on the  site.

 

    What a lovely day!  What a surprise!  I came home marvelling at the  miracles of Weihsien.

 

     Mary Previte

 

 

De: "han jihui" <han_jh@sina.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 14:36

 

Hi Mr.Petersen,

I am the one with the address as han_jh@sina.com  on your list. I am in Beijing and do not in the Shandong TV team whom are in US right now. But you can take me as a volunteer who's interested in history and your Wheishien story. Now i was reading your former posted articles and try to translated to Chinese so maybe Shandong TV team can found something they would focused in. I wish i can do something for those history pieces.

By the way I’d like say hello and best wishes to everybody here in this BBS:)

Han, Jihui

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: welcome

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 15:32

 

I would like to welcome Jule Gilfillan (seraphpix@earthlink.net )  and Han Jihui  (han_jh@sina.com)  to Weishien listing.  There is a lower dash between han and jh.  Jule has a background in Asian Studies and has spent a few years in China.  He was "turned onto a book titled Courtyard of the Happy Way".  I personally am always curious to find out why someone joins our listing and I like to add the person's given name and surname. 

Juhui is from Beijing and says that he is not part of the Shandong TV team.  He is interested in history and our Weihsien story.

Natasha Petersen (female)

 

De: "Jule Gilfillan" <seraphpix@earthlink.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: welcome

Date: mardi 26 novembre 2002 19:07

 

Dear Weihsien Group,

Thank you very much for welcoming me to your list.  I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Jule Gilfillan (also female)

 

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: A SUCCESSFUL GETAWAY

Date: mercredi 27 novembre 2002 9:10

 

….. a translation from French into English .

Father Hanquet writes:

 

          All those who were in Weihsien prison camp know that Tipton and Hummel had made an evasion during the month of June 1944, but what they don't know, is how it was prepared and how, finally, it succeeded. I will try to give them that complementary information.

 

For a few young and dynamic prisoners who didn't have family responsibilities, evading camp was a constant dream. I was one of them. It was also a means to lessen the monotony of the camp days.

 

Well, to do so, there were a few conditions to respect. Firstly, absolute secrecy was a major clause. Father de Jaegher, who was one of those young and dynamic elements, and with whom I shared the same room, had the same desire of evasion. We however never spoke about it.

 

Every one of us, without the knowing of the others, was trying to put up a contact with a Chinese from the outside. That was the second condition to accomplish: to find a serious arrangement with a Chinese from the exterior who sometimes came into camp. This service would have to be well paid for, and that would be done by Larry Tipton, often seen with Father de Jaegher and who had a few gold bars, a necessity for the transaction.

 

Tipton and R. de Jaegher were often seen in the mornings, walking to and fro on the sports field pretending to improve their Chinese language while, in fact, they were exercising their muscles for the long walks they would have to make, once outside. That was during the winter period of 1943-44.

 

Meanwhile, R. de Jaegher kept on trying to establish a contact with the cesspool coolies that came daily to empty the prisoners' latrines. As for myself, I was lucky enough to meet and make friends with a Chinese carter bringing the vegetables into camp. I talked about it to R. de Jaegher, and we decided that I could maybe try something about it. As my Chinese friend seemed trustworthy and quite serious, we promised him a good reward by the means of Larry Tipton's gold bars. That was during the months of March-April, 1944.

 

One day, my Chinese contact brought me a written message: "our plan is well established, and on the chosen day, we would be met and provided with donkeys or mules on a road boarded by trees, situated beyond the valley at the North-East end of the camp. We were to have a little flag with the mention: "welcome to our foreign friends". We hoped to travel by night so as to reach a safe enough point by the following day.

 

We had now to select the date. We had observed the moon and decided to choose a night when the moon would rise after midnight, which would ease our moving about. Don't forget that in those days, there was no street lighting. That got us in the whereabouts of the 10th of June.

 

In the meantime, Father de Jaegher had had difficulties with our immediate ecclesiastic superior in camp, Father Rutherford. He had been informed of our project by another Father, (N.W.), and had pronounced an ecclesiastic sanction in the terms of: "suspensus a divinis" if ever he left the camp. He had to, he said, because it was vital to avoid the eventual reprisals by our Japanese captors towards the Christian prisoners in camp.

 

Tipton was very disappointed. He absolutely wanted to leave the camp with a missionary. You must know, that in those days, local churches easily welcomed the travelling missionaries.

 

Father de Jaegher told me of this interdiction, and it was agreed between us that I would take his place. Alas, whilst sitting on my bed, and while, in great secrecy, I was confectioning my back sac, my colleague, Father N.W. saw me doing so and quickly concluded that I was going to take Father de Jaeger's place in the escapade. He told so to Father Rutherford who called for me and pronounced the same banning as he had to R. de Jaegher.

 

A hasty meeting was held, and we decided that Tipton would ask Hummel to take our place. He immediately accepted which allowed us to keep the schedule previously established for the getaway.

 

Now, we had to choose the place and the exact time such as to involve the smallest amount of people and however succeed in our task. As for the place of the breakthrough, we quickly found complicity at the end of an alley (in the vicinity of n°10) where we hid a ladder, absolutely necessary to go over the boundary wall high of more or less 2.40 metres. In those days, on the other side of the wall, there was just a fence with 6 to 7 barbed wires of which the uppermost was electrified. We believed that the current was put on that wire only after 10 P.M., which was curfew time, and also the moment when a Japanese guard switched off all the lights in our compound for the night. We weren't sure about that and told the escapees to wear rubber-soled shoes and rather put their feet on the big porcelain isolators while climbing over the fence.

 

We had also to make sure that there were no Japanese guards around. On the chosen night, our group of 6 or 7 friends were all in place and watching in the different alleys in order to get the ladder in place, against the wall. The time was then, 9.30 P.M. and in less than 5 minutes, Tipton and Hummel were beyond the wall and over the fence.

 

We were, however, very anxious to avoid any mishaps, and had previously arranged with them for a recuperation procedure if ever they missed the "contact" at the scheduled location.  That is why, between 6 and 7 in the morning, the following day, I had to be waiting for them near the boundary limits not very far away from our bloc n°56 at a place, behind the wall that was invisible from the watch towers. I hid myself just behind the morgue ready with a thick strong rope. If ever I heard the cry of the owl, I had to thrust the rope over the wall to help them back into the compound.

 

You can easily understand that on that particular night, we didn't sleep very much and that I sighed with relief after 7 o'clock in the morning when I got out of my hiding place just behind the morgue.

 

Now, we had to give the best possible chances to our two escapees in order to let them get away as far as possible from the camp. As we know, the Japs made a roll call every morning at 8 o'clock. At that precise moment we all had to stand in a row in front of our respective blocks and in the order of our badge-numbers. Tipton lived with us, on the first floor. Actually, it was Mc. Laren who was responsible for us towards the Japanese Commandant. I secretly informed Mc Laren of our projects and arranged with him that as warden of our bloc, I would give the alert as late as possible. At the roll call, I would simply say that Tipton was already working in the kitchen. It is only around 10 o'clock that morning, that I mentioned Tipton's absence to Mc Laren. He then asked me, in the presence of the camp's Commandant, to go and make sure that he was not in the toilets or anywhere else. The same thing happened for the missing of Hummel. While I was going all over camp to search for Tipton, the rumour spread fast, and at about 11, I came back empty-handed, and informed the irritated Commandant. He was very sure of himself and absolutely certain to recapture the escapees. As a precautionary measure, he put all the escapees' roommates under room arrest. Even, days after that, and from time to time, they had us rounded up in the middle of the night and guarded by armed Japs.

 

As for the escapees, they rapidly managed to reach the Chinese guerrilla forces and shared their lives with them for 14 months. They managed to smuggle a radio, in small parts, as well as medicines for the hospital and supplements of flour.

 

It is only the day after the parachutes came with the Americans that we saw, one morning, our two escapees all tanned by the sun and in excellent health.

 

E. Hanquet.

 

De: "Jihui Han" <han_jh@sina.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: welcome

Date: mercredi 27 novembre 2002 13:29

 

Hi Natasha Petersen,

Many thanks for your welcome message. It seemed I’d better to introduce myself first :) my name's Jihui, my surname's Han, male:), software engineer in Beijing.

Ms Dongling Zhao, the leader of Shandong TV team is my friend, she is now producing a documentary film about the Chinese labour who were forced to work for Japan during world war II. I know she is doing a great work for unveil some unknown historical fact, that would be very helpful for people to learn something from the history. So I told her maybe i can do something for it if possible.

 

 

Before Ms.Zhao leave China to U.S. she gave me the address of Weishien BBS, so I registered and downloaded some of your former articles to translate it into Chinese. I hope those can help more or less.

By the way if you like you may call me Han.

Han, Jihui

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Welcome to Han

Date: mercredi 27 novembre 2002 16:33

 

Welcome Han.

 

You mentioned that you had downloaded some of the emails.  Leopold Pander  has done us a wonderful service in copying all of them back to January 2000  into a MS Word document, which he can send you as an attachment.  You will  only need to un-zip it to have all of the emails.  If that is a problem for  you either he or I could send you the unzipped version, though they are  large, totalling about 250 pages.  The memories of the camp inmates are  fascinating, and a valuable addition to the history of Weishien.  I believe  that many of the emails would be useful in the narrative of a documentary.

 

I also invite you to visit the web site weihsien.menzi.org for some  pictures of the camp, together with a map that shows where they were  painted and identifies the major buildings.  Be patient while the pictures  themselves are downloading.  Once they have arrived, you click on the name  of the painting and it appears, while a symbol on the map shows its  location.  Pointing to buildings and areas will produce labels telling you  what they are.  There is still more work to be done on this site, but it is  useable now.

 

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: SUCCESSFUL GETAWAY - and historian making  oral history of Weihsien

Date: jeudi 28 novembre 2002 5:00

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Father Hanquet, for your fascinating story  of Tipton and Hummel's escape from Weihsien.

 

Remember how the Japanese counted and counted and counted us over and over  again at roll call when they discovered that two men had escaped?

 

The escape prompted the Japanese to move the men out of the hospital and move   Chefoo School children in.  Children were less likely to be spying or  signaling to Chinese over the wall near the hospital.

 

I do hope you will keep telling the Weihsien stories from the persective of a  group up in the camp.  Our teachers shielded us children from many realities  of the camp.

 

On another subject -- Xun LIU, who identifies him or herself as a post  doctoral fellow at Harvard,  has contacted me for information about Weihsien.

   Xun LIU writes, "I am a cultural historian of modern China and am curently  a consultant on an oral history project on the Weixian survivors with Dr.  Pedro Loureiro, an oral history expert and the chief archivist at the Pacific  Basic Institute at Pomona Colege in Los Angeles, California."

 

I will suggest  his contacting  Natasha about signing onto our bulletin board.

 

Mary Previte

 

 

 

 

De: "Jihui Han" <han_jh@sina.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com >

Objet: Re: Welcome to Han

Date: jeudi 28 novembre 2002 13:56

 

Hi Donald Menzi,

Thanks for your kindly information and your zipped file would help me a lot (you know to download all the mail from July 2000 is really a boresome task sometimes). The zip file is perfect to me and if possible i wish i can get that file earlier.

Thanks again.

Han, Jihui

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <han_jh@sina.com>

Cc: <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Fwd: Histo-2002>message 675

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 5:20

 

Han

I jsent you Leopold Pander's zip file of email messages from 2001 a few  minutes ago, and am now sending you 2002.  I have those from 2000 on a  different computer and will send it later, but these two will get you started. Let me know whether or not you are able to unzip and read these files.

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <han_jh@sina.com>

Cc: <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Weihsien email files

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 5:25

 

Instead of waiting until I find Leopold's file for 2000, I'm going to ask  him to send it to you directly.

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Cc: <han_jh@sina.com>

Objet: email files to Han

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 5:27

 

Could you please send Han your email zipfile for the year 2000?  I have  sent him 2001 and 2002 already, but 2000 is on a different computer. His email address is han_jh@sina.com

 

 

Thanks.

 

De: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <han_jh@sina.com>

Cc: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

Objet: Fw: Archives of year 2000

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 9:29

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Leopold Pander

To: han_jh@sina.com

Cc: weihsien@topica.com ; Donald Menzi

Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 9:20 AM

Subject: Archives of year 2000

 

 

Hello Han,

I hope you were able to unzip the files number two and three. Here comes number one file. Let us know if you have a problem unzipping them?

Best regards,

Leopold  

 

De: "Han" <han_jh@sina.com>

À: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Re: Archives of year 2000

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 13:18

 

Hi Leopold Pander,

 

Thank you for your message. I've got all the three zip file from you and Mr.Donald Menzi. All the files are available to open in my computer. You have done a wonderful job for Weihsien BBS that all those three file is in good organisation for reading.

 

Many thanks and best wishes,

 

Han, Jihui

 

De: "Gay Talbot Stratford" <stillbrk@eagle.ca>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: A SUCCESSFUL GETAWAY

Date: vendredi 29 novembre 2002 17:28

 

Please thank Father Hanquet 'infiniment' for his colourful stories of Weihsien. He was so close to all the action - and his memories are so vivid yet understated, we are indeed fortunate that he is sharing them with us. Thanks also to you for making them accessible. I remember you as a a darkhaired shy little boy. You were lively and active. My sister Christine is still in touch with Monique Walravens. I am a much worse corespondent. If you ever cross the Atlantic, do come to see us. Graham and I have never been to Belgium, but are Belgian friends are encouraging us to do so. Maybe one day...

                                    With greetings to you and yours ,and of course, Pere Hanquet,

                                                                    Gay Talbot Stratford 

 

De: "Gladys Swift" <glaswift@cstone.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: SUCCESSFUL GETAWAY - and historian making  oral history of Weihsien

Date: samedi 30 novembre 2002 17:25

 

Reply from Gladys Hubbard Swift - It would help me if all email writers would preface their comments with their name so I know who is talking.

Since all these emails are headed "weihsien@topica.com" I am confused as to who is the writer.  Has ihollister@aol.com  gotten onto this list yet?

Margaret Hollister, son Paul and g'children are going to Peking and Weihsien/Weifang in June and want to be on this list, getting information and history.  If not on, please contact them.

 

De: "John de Zutter" <jjdz@optonline.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Chinese TV Documentary Crew's Visit and a New Weihsien Web Site

Date: dimanche 1 décembre 2002 18:29

 

The "almost-finished" web site is great.

Thanks much for taking the time and effort to put it together.

John de Zutter

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Cc: <rswmenzi@hotmail.com>

Objet: RE Weihsien Web Site

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 0:14

 

I'm glad you like the Weihsien web site, John.  We will be happy to get any  ideas you might have for additional features, beyond the ones we have  already mentioned.

 

If there's really going to be a reunion next Fall and a Chinese TV  documentary, then there will be a lot more people who hear about Weihsien  and become interested in it, and we should have a really spectacular web  site for them to visit.  So please send us your ideas and we'll see what we  can do between now and next Fall.  (This applies to everyone in the group.)

 

 

De: "Greg Leck" <gregleck@epix.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 3:17

 

I recently returned from a research trip to the UK where I read an account of Weihsien.

 

There were two anecdotes which I thought I would ask others about.  The first seems very feasible but I think the second is utter nonsense and probably the work of an over active imagination.

 

"The Japanese would sometimes cut electricity during concerts or plays. Tiny homemade peanut oil lamps used to provide light at these times and during night when lights were extinguished."

 

This sounds vindictive on the part of the Japnanese.  The account describes how electricians would scamper all over, looking for the source of the problem, but it was always in the Japanese area of the camp where the main switches were.  Does anyone else remember this?

 

 

"One source of worry to us was the presence of the Chinese 8th Route Army in the vicinity.  The Japs never suceeded in eliminating them in spite of several serious attempts to do so.  A favorite habit of these guerrillas was to catch the Jap sentries standing asleep against the trees in the camp.

Then would noiselessly climb down from the camp wall where they had been watching in the darkness and cut the sentry's throat.  It was a terrifying sound at first to those living near the outer wall but we grew hardened and callous in time.  On hearing this frozen scream we would slide out of bed and prop a trunk against the door lest the guerrilla, being chased, seek safety in our room and the Japs shoot it out with him, with ourselves inside.  Not a pleasant thing to contemplate.  We were rather afraid that the Japs would implicate us in these killings but fortunately they never did."

 

This seems very implausible to me.  First, you cannot scream if your throat is cut.  Second, I have read many accounts and not one mentions anything like this.

 

Greg

 

 

De: "Joyce Cook" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 5:30

 

Dear Greg. I must say that I cannot remember anything about either anecdote referred to in your message. I do recall my mother telling me she heard a scream outside the wall in our block 2 when a Chinese black marketer accidentally came into contact with the electric wire.I do not know whether he survived the shock or not.  She told us this in the camp at the time and later in Australia sometimes mentioned it. I do remember the peanut oil lamps but I only recall using them after lights out at 10pm. I think at first we had lights out at 9pm but later it was extended it to 10pm. Regards

Joyce Bradbury.

 

De: "Fred Dreggs" <dreggs@powerup.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 6:22

 

I agree 100% with Joyce Cook's(now Bradbury) response in that the story you mention is UTTER tripe. Yes, we did use peanut oil lamps after hours, I particularly remember studying by that dim light after 10.pm cramming for my final school exam late 1944. As a matter of interest my final result was sent to the Cambridge University's Overseas Board for assessment and I did matriculate and have a Cambridge Uni. Certificate as a memento somewhere in my archives. Thanks to Peanut oil. Coral and I still use it as our main cooking oil because we like it! So much for more Weihsien trivia.

 

Fred

 

De: "Greg Leck" <gregleck@epix.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 15:48

 

 

Another account mentioned how the author and a few others missed the parachute landings because they were inside taking an exam for school.  It may have even been the Cambridge exam.

 

It went on to describe how permission had to be obtained to cross a creek to hunt for frogs for dissection purposes, which the Japanese considered a barbaric practice!

 

Greg

 

De: "Ron Bridge" <rwbridge@freeuk.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 21:35

 

Greg,

Can not comment on that all those storied seem far fetched. Unlikely that any exams were being sat as in was August the School year at that time ended in December and any exams were

taken June or December.

As to crossing a Creek for frogs no creek inside the camp, no one allowed outside until the war ended, and then had possibly check out from the gate with guard on duty who was Japanese under US command. There was a small creek about 200 yards in front of the camp on other side of the road which flowed through a village which I and others walked to more than once. Peanut oil

lamps did exist but again this is fanciful.

Rgds

Ron

PS I answered this before I read the other responses that you have had.

There is a lot of fable out there.

 

De: "David Beard" <beard@xtra.co.nz>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Account

Date: lundi 2 décembre 2002 23:15

 

Greg,

Just to set the record straight, the Chefoo Schools 6th form was cramming for  EARLY Oxford examinations on the day Camp was liberated. I was one of those 'swotters' and was fortunate to see, out of the window, the fantastic sight which I'll never forget of the parachutists baling out of the B 24 Liberator. There wasn't any more swotting for exams that day, to be sure, but the ensuing two weeks required a lot of self-discipline to complete our cramming while the rest of you enjoyed the fun. I'm glad to say that all but one of our group passed the exams successfully. And I did get a taste of the excitement out on the field where the parachute drops were made, getting out on the very last day. It turned out to be one of the scariest days of my life. After the last drop made by the B29s, one lone bomber wheeled around with its final load, just as some of us were out in the middle of the drop site. It roared over, bomb racks wide open, while I was making a tropistic

beeline for a nearby tree! Gee, it was scary!

David Beard

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Weihsien Account

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 3:09

 

Hello, Greg,

 

    I've never before heard of either of your two stories -- Japanese turning  off the electricity during the prisoner dramas or Chinese slitting the  throats of sleeping Japanese guards.  But peanut oil lamps -- yes, we  certainly used peanut oil and cotton wick lamps at night.  I remember well   lighting the Chefoo School Lower School Dormitory  (LSD) in hospital with the  peanut oil lamps  .

 

    The account of students missing the Americans parachuting to liberate the  camp because they were studying for exams  is quite possible.  In August of  1943, eleven 6th Form students of the Chefoo School took their Oxford exams  -- and passed.  In 1944, my sister Kathleen and her 13 classmates took their  Oxfords.  They all  passed.  In August 1945, eleven more sat for their  Oxfords. Nine passed.  And when the war was over, Oxford University confirmed  the results.

 

    I have read before that a Chinese black marketeer was killed on the camp  wall.

 

    Who is the source for these memories?

 

    In our Lower School Dormitory we had an old hand-crank gramaphone and two  songs which we played over and over again:  Harry Lauder singing A'Roamin' in  the gloamin with a lassie by my side" and "Go to sleep, my dusky baby;  sleepy-sleep, my angel baby, tell your mammy rest a little while."  Those  songs still sing in my head.

    Mary Previte

 

De: "Greg Leck" <gregleck@epix.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Weihsien Account

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 3:19

 

The Weihsien account I read was written by Dorothy Potter, who worked in the sewing room.

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: RE: Weihsien Account

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 4:32

 

Where did you find Dorothy Potter's account.  Was it published, and if so  under what title?

 

De: "Joyce Cook" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Weihsien Account

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 7:54

 

>From Bob Bradbury, Joyce's husband. I would like to make a small contribution to Topica, viz, As a young boy living in Sydney in the mid nineteen thirties I too remember an old gramophone playing Harry Lauder Roamin' in the Gloamin. I think everybody had that record. We also had someone singing, "Where does daddy go when he goes out - you may as well ask where does the fire go when it goes out." Ah, memories. Keep up the Topica reminiscences and we are very keenly watching the developments on the suggested Weihsien re-union. It will be our second trip there since Joyce was liberated. Bob Bradbury.

 

De: "Leonard Mostaert" <mostaert@hinet.net.au>

À: "TOPICA" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Tipton

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 10:49

 

 

     Tipton lived just behind us in block 52, and my Mother, with others used to have lessons in Chinese from him. When Tipton went over the wall, my Mother disconsolate..... who is to give her Chinese lessons now ?  Everybody reacts in different ways.

     We were in block 53, and had our place during roll call in front of our block. My father was the Jap translator for our section, and walked with the guard so that he could explain anything in Japanese. The morning after the escape of Tipton and Hummel, I was very anxious to see what would happen as the guard and my Father got to the spot where Tipton should have been.....a lot of hand waving went on, yells and the stamping of feet, then my Father started miming the "going over the wall" signs. We all laughed at that which made the guard absolutely red with rage, I thought that something terrible would happen to my Father. The guard then just spun around and rushed off with as much dignity as he could muster, leaving Father standing there and not knowing just what to do. We waited a very long time after that, and eventually everything was sorted out.

    It's amazing how much does come back if you really try.

 

            Leonard Mostaert  No. 248

 

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: addition

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 15:16

 

We have  a new subscriber Marjorie McLorn Bull.  m.bull@sympatico.ca  Marjorie was interned with her parents, grandparents, brother and sister.  I am sure that many of you will remember her.

 

Natasha

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: "Leopold Pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

Objet: Re: web site

Date: mardi 3 décembre 2002 17:16

 

Thanks for the material.  We will try to add it to the download list.

You're doing great work!

 

At 10:37 AM 12/2/02 +0100, you wrote:

>Hello Donald,

>I just finished printing the latest edition of the Weihsien gazette for   Father Hanquet and I'll try and get it a.s.a.p. in his letter box. He told  >us something about that famous "main switch" and it would be great if he  >could write us a story about that. He writes in French, and I get it into  >English. (Hope I don't make too many mistakes !!)

>Included, is the zip-file of all I sent so far to Father Hanquet. (after  >oct.25th) Could it be possible for you to include that on the  >Weihsien.Menzi-web site for all who would like to download it. (???)

>Best regards,

>Leopold

 

 

De: "Fred Dreggs" <dreggs@powerup.com.au>

À: "Ex Internees" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Greetings

Date: samedi 7 décembre 2002 5:02

 

  ca  To all ex-Weihsien internees who subscribe to Topica.

 

A MERRY CHRISTMAS

              AND

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

 

FRED (ALFIE) DREGGS

 

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: HELP

Date: samedi 7 décembre 2002 19:03

 

I  went to the website - weihsien.menzi.org and tried to print the Wilder pictures.  When I zoom in and print, the whole pictures narrows and becomes unnaturally elongated.  What am I not doing?  Your help will be greatly appreciated.  I have copies of these that I ordered several months ago, but want these for Joan Walle Eglis  (Tsingtao)

 

Natasha

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Fw: Decmber 7

Date: dimanche 8 décembre 2002 2:14

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Alison Holmes

To: weihsien@topica.com

Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 11:51 AM

Subject: Decmber 7

 

 

Good morning everybody this December 7th.  Has this amazing collection of memory keepers any stories to tell about the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the entry of the United States into the war?  I am also interested in whether with all our rejoicings at the end of the war we were aware of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and if we had any idea of how horrific an act that was. Does our collective memory draw any conclusions about war and have we any collective wisdom to spread at this moment of poise before engaging in yet another?  I look forward to any thoughts shared.  Even grandchildren may have stories and conclusions handed down by old Weihsieners.  It seems important to me that we should not just dwell in the past but bring those lessons forward for the future.  May this holiday season be one where peace is not just devoutly wished for but understood in all its dynamism!  Thank you, everyone!   Alison

 

De: "Joyce Cook" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Greetings

Date: dimanche 8 décembre 2002 6:57

 

Thanks Fred Dreggs and all at Topica.

 

Thank you for your kind wishes and I would like to respond by wishing everybody the same.

 

Joyce Bradbury

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Memories  of December 7

Date: dimanche 8 décembre 2002 19:30

 

Hello, Everybody:

 

    I remembered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a few days early by  telling our miracle story to a group of Senior citizens at the local Roman  Catholic Church.  With Seniors, I usually start with a question:  "Do you  remember where you were on December 7, 1941?"

 

    Out pours the most astonishing detail of exactly were they were that  Sunday morning in the United States when they heard the news about the attack  more than 60 years ago.  "I was scrubbing the kitchen floor."  "I was with my  fiancé in a restaurant.  As we left, all the waitresses were showing extra  kindness to the young men, helping them on with their coats -- as if they  might never see these boys  again."   "I was in the ballpark in New York when  the public address system announced that all men in the military service were  to report immediately to their bases."

 

    This week the group added  a new dimension to the discussion:  "Those of  us who have seen war are not so quick to want to jump into it again."

 

    Frequently after I speak, old timers who served in the Pacific tell me  that when  America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they themselves were poised  to invade Japan.

 

    Do you Chefoo students remember after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bringing  a Shinto priest onto the ballfield of the Chefoo School and doing a ceremony  that said that our school now belonged to the great Emperor of Japan? 

Remember their pasting paper seals with Japanese writing on the desks,  chairs, equipment, saying that all  of it now belonged to the Emperor of  Japan.  And remember the arm bands they made us wear -- with "A" for American  and "B" for British?  Remember what we children called "YAH" practice, when  they suited up with padded body armor and face masks and practiced bayonet  attacks on each other near the front gate to the school?  Suddenly we were  prisoners.

 

    The attack on Pearl Harbor changed all of our lives for ever.

 

    Mary Previte

 

De: "Gay Talbot Stratford" <stillbrk@eagle.ca>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Greetings

Date: dimanche 8 décembre 2002 21:30

 

Me too. May peace begin with each one of us.

Gay Talbot Stratford

 

De: "Joyce Cook" <bobjoyce@tpg.com.au>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Memories of December 7.

Date: mardi 10 décembre 2002 5:27

 

Dear Mary Previte.

I too remember where I was when the news of Pearl Harbor came over the radio spoken by Carol Alcott an American radio announcer in Shanghai. I was 13 years of age in Tsingtao and within an hour we were visited at our home by Jap Officers and immediately put under house arrest. I still have my "B" (British) armband and I show it to my audiences during addresses I give to various organisations in and around Sydney as often as three times a week. A photograph of that is also shown in my book "Forgiven But Not Forgotten"

As you are well aware we were  not rescued until 17th August 1945, two days after the war ended. I also well remember the Sixth Division Marines coming to Tsingtao from Guam and Okinawa. Their OC General Shepherd and later General Clements became quite friendly with our family whilst their Marines were protecting our part of China for some time after the war. I believe these marines had been  scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan. No doubt many of these men were, like myself grateful that the war ended so suddenly and dramatically as many would not have survived. I also believe that the Sixth Marine Division was the only marine division that did not actually serve in USA as it was formed during the war on either Okinawa or Guam.  One USA serviceman with whom my family became friendly, Bill Perez, a Walt Disney cartoonist, drew the Big Bad Wolf for my brother Eddie and he still has the drawing in his autograph book. These Topica reminiscences certainly jog my memory. Please keep it up. Happy Christmas to all. Joyce Bradbury

 

De: "David Birch" <gdavidbirch@yahoo.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Greetings

Date: mercredi 11 décembre 2002 20:01

 

 

Warmest greetings to you too, Fred, and all other Weihsien@topica.com  subscribers! May God bless you richly and give you a HAPPY CHRISTMAS and the BEST NEW YEAR yet!

Sincerely,

David Birch

 

De: "Iain Macpherson" <IMaccrosho@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: China List from The Old Bookroom

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 11:18

 

Dear Mr Menzi,

I have tried to open the web site you mention, www.weihsien.menzi.org,  without success.  Have I got the address right?  Perhaps you could post it as  a link so as to eliminate any typing errors on my part.

Many thanks,

Iain Macpherson

 

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Greetings

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 20:19

 

I WOULD LIKE TO WISH EVERYONE A BLESSED CHRISTMAS, A GREAT NEW YEAR, AND A HAPPY (PAST) HANNUKAH  (sp?)

 

Natasha

 

De: "Mimi Kent" <meemsterama@hotmail.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Cc: <viriditas@earthlink.net>

Objet: An introduction

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 20:46

 

Hello, my name is Mimi Kent and I have been hired, along with Jule  Gilfillan, by Pedro Loureiro of Pamona College and Dr. Liu Xun to  produce an oral history of the Weihsien internment camp.  I have read  many of the postings in your chat room, and I am looking forward to  speaking with the internees who are willing to tell their stories for  this important oral history project.  Thank you for allowing me to  introduce myself and wishing you all a peaceful, happy holiday.

Mimi Kent

meemsterama@hotmail.com

 

De: "Jule Gilfillan" <seraphpix@earthlink.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: An introduction

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 21:05

 

Argh!  I was going to post my peace/christmas message first!  You are sooo quick, baby!  Oh well... here we go!

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: An introduction

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 21:27

 

I would be glad to speak with Mimi Kent about our time in Weihsien.

~Dwight W. Whipple

  Telephone: 360.456.4300

 

De: "Jule Gilfillan" <seraphpix@earthlink.net>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Peace on Earth and Christmas Greetings

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 21:33

 

Dear Members of the Weihsien Discussion list,

 

I have been so grateful to have stumbled upon your site.  As I told Natasha Peterson earlier, I was fortunate enough to have been given a copy of COURTYARD OF THE HAPPY WAY, and then SHANDONG COMPOUND by a friend, and as a student of Chinese studies, was immediately fascinated.

 

Over the last month, I have read your postings with great interest, frequently moved by the memories and stories.  During this season when the issues of peace and goodwill on Earth are in all our hearts, your recent postings on PEACE have been especially effecting.  For those of us who have grown up in the relative peace and prosperity of contemporary America, I think it's very important to hear the wisdom of a generation who lived through and experienced the terrors of war first hand.  I am so happy to be able to assist Ms. Kent in Dr. Loureiro's and Dr. Liu's oral history project, and to help bring your voices and stories to a broader community.

 

I look forward to hearing your stories in the future and would like to echo the wish of a peaceful and happy  Christmas to all.

Jule Gilfillan

 

PS. If this has been sent twice, my apologies... I seem to have accidentally unsubscribed a second ago! 

 

De: "Dwight W. Whipple" <thewhipples@attbi.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Greetings

Date: jeudi 12 décembre 2002 22:31

 

Thanks, got your greetings this time!  Hanukkah is the correct spelling, although there are some alternates.

~Dwight & Judy Whipple

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Can you believe this!

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 2:21

 

Hello, Everybody,

 

    Here's a letter from a New Jersey lady who contacted me after she read an  tribute I wrote about our Weihsien heroes to celebrate our liberation day  this August.  We've been e-mailing back and forth -- especially after she  told me her father had been stationed in China during World War II.

 

    You with the Hugh Hubbard and Jesuit priests connections will be  fascinated at this e-mail letter she wrote me today. Who of you returned to  Peking after we were liberated?>  You may know this man.  I've asked her for  her father's name and military unit.

Here's her letter:

 

Dear Mary,

 

I spoke to my Dad on the phone last night and when I told him about you, he  said, "She wasn't at Weihsien Camp was she?!"  He said he met a lot of people  who had been released from various camps, most definitely including Weihsien!

In September 1945 he was on leave and went to Peking, where he took classes  at the Chinese Language

 School, which had a rooming house. Many of the others  living there were recently released from Weihsien! He recalled that they were  happy to see American GIs, and "considered us all heroes who came to China.

They thanked us for liberating them." He wanted to know if you knew Mrs. Hugh  Hubbard, whose husband introduced basketball to China. There was also a  Jesuit priest, a fellow stamp collector like my Dad.      

    Best wishes,

Amy

 

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Greetings

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 9:17

 

>From Belgium, a tiny little land shaped like a great huge heart in the middle of Europe we send you our best wishes of health and happiness for the new-coming year.

50°40'24"North. & 04°40'09"East

Leopold.

 

 

Cher Père Hanquet,

Voici la suite de la gazette. Vos textes font des merveilles.

Je me sens parfois comme un gamin de quatre ans (l’âge que j’avais en 1945) avec ses grands yeux tournés vers  son aîné : « Racontez-nous encore des histoires, mon Père ! »

Bien amicalement,

Léopold

 

De: "Natasha Petersen" <natasha@roanoke.infi.net>

À: "weihsien" <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: new subscribers

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 19:01

 

Jule Gilfillan  seraphpix@earthlink.net  

Mimi Kent      meemsterama@hotmail.com 

For info on the above -check today's messages

Paul Hollister phollister@dbllp.com  

per request of Donald Menzi

I am sure all Weihsieners wish Jule and Mimi good luck with their project.  I am looking forward to seeing the final product.  God Speed.

Natasha

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: China List from The Old Bookroom

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 21:18

 

Leave out the www. and you'll get there.

 

At 05:17 AM 12/12/02 -0500, you wrote:

>Dear Mr Menzi,

>I have tried to open the web site you mention, www.weihsien.menzi.org ,

>without success.  Have I got the address right?  Perhaps you could post it as

>a link so as to eliminate any typing errors on my part.

>

>Many thanks,

>Iain Macpherson

>

 

De: "Donald Menzi" <dmenzi@asan.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: An introduction

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 21:27

 

It's great that you're doing this.

For a visual tour of the camp, go to weihsien.menzi.org -- without the www  prefix.

 

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: An introduction

Date: vendredi 13 décembre 2002 22:33

 

Dear Donald,

     It certainly helped to leave of the www!  But nothing came up when I clicked on the headings.  Was I being too impatient?  Should I have waited longer?

     I am glad that there is an oral history being done and would certainly be happy to talk to any of the researchers, though I wonder if thee will be many more exciting tales than we have already recounted,  I talked to a Chinese friend of mine and he says the government of the People’s Republic should be paying for our gathering together next year!  I like that idea.  I certainly could not afford to go unless there was a large subsidy.  Given that there are so few of the buildings left it would be hard to get a good documentary, I think.  Even though Block 23 had become a middle school, it still gave us the view that we remembered, with tears, to the surprise of the secretaries in the office.  The actual block that we lived in was pulled down, though the next block was there in total disarray.  We were glad to be invited in to one of the original sized rooms by a delightful young woman and her mother and were amazed to think that six of us had lived in two of those rooms for years.  Perhaps I should get some of our photos of that trip scanned and add them to the site.

     Thank you to those of you who have responded to my inquiry about both the beginnin and end of the war.  I repeat that we need to understand what war and peace are about.  Reminiscences are good, thinking is even better! I remember a quotation from Hitler ""What good fortune for governments, that the people do not think"  God bless us all.

     And a happy Christmas and holiday season to everyone.

                       Alison Martin Holmes

 

De: "Mary Previte" <mtprevite@aol.com>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Does anyone remember this America serviceman in Peking?

Date: samedi 14 décembre 2002 4:05

 

Hello, Everybody:

 

    Does anyone on our network remember and American signalman in Peking  named Lee H. Hill?  He says he met quite a few recently-released Weihsien  internees in Peking just after the war ended -- including Hugh Hubbard and a  Belgian Jesuit priest named Ignate Rybens.  Here's information his daughter  sent me about him:

 

My Dad's name is Lee H. Hill, Jr.  As a freshman at Cornell University in the  fall of 1942, he joined the Army Reserve. His initial training at Cornell was  with horse-drawn artillery!

    He was called to active duty as a private at the end of his freshman  year, at a time when it was illegal to draft boys of his age (19). He was  sent to the Army Specialized Training Program ("College") at Mississippi  State in Starkville. After one term there the army realized these men were  needed "with the troops." As an advanced student, he was sent to the Signal  Corps for further communications training. He completed advanced Army Signal  Corps training at Camp Crowder, Missouri and qualified for the coveted "777"  classification -- high speed radio operator. In the summer of 1944 he was  sent via the Red Ball Express to China.

    He was a sergeant in Company B of the Army's 835th Signal Service  Battalion, which was later called the 3102nd and then the 3198th.

    Dad had been an Eagle Scout and a member of First United Methodist Church  of Wauwatosa, Wis. He is an only child and promised his mother that he would  be "a good boy" while he was in the Army. He may be remembered as the  American sergeant who was a stamp collector extraordinaire. (He made many  friends and contacts through his lifelong, beloved hobby of stamp  collecting.) Among those he recalls as a fellow stamp collector was the  Jesuit priest -- Ignate Rybens -- from Weihsien.

    I just told my Dad on the phone that you remember Hugh Hubbard and he was  quite amazed!

-- Amy

   

De: "leopold pander" <pander.nl@skynet.be>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Cheer up !

Date: samedi 14 décembre 2002 11:10

 

>From Father Hanquet,

a translation from French into English --- 

CHEER-UP

With the coming of the first winter in camp, we experienced the monotony of the long, endless evenings. The Sun was more generous than in Europe though, but it went down early and the long cold evenings began without radio and without TV. Television didn’t even exist in the old days!

For all those who had nothing special to do, the only distractions available were; reading of books, walking around, or visiting friends and neighbours. As for book reading, we had a small library with various books brought into camp by the different groups of prisoners that came from Peking or Tientsin or elsewhere. There wasn’t a fantastic choice, but, I must however tell you that I read a great deal of books all about life in China and also about Chinese history.

Besides reading, the few possible occupations, were visiting friends and neighbours, singing and theatre activities.

About visiting: we had to find enough space to greet our friends in the little rooms where the only suitable seat was the bed next to the one you were already sitting on. There was always somebody around to listen to whatever confidence that you might be telling. That was why those visits were very rare, rather brief and had, for major purposes, the request of a favour.

As time went on and people got to know each other better, and becoming friendlier, it was customary to have birthday parties. The Mothers did marvels in the baking of cookies without eggs or butter!

We had concerts.

Those concerts, in the “sing-song” style were performed two or three times every winter and gave a little joy and beauty in our otherwise boring existence. Those concerts and recitals, of course, had to be meticulously prepared and we used and abused our local artists’ talents. Percy Glee (?) was one of those precious artists. He was an excellent pianist and sung with the wonderful voice of a tenor. He was also able to conduct a choir. Thanks to that, we became more familiar with English folk music, folk songs, as well as with Negro spirituals. The song that was highest in rank on the hit parade during those days was: “God Bless America”, it was a song that warmed up our spirits and pride and gave us the energy to go on. Everybody learned the words.

We had plays.

Theatre had no lack of artists and more than once did the little groups of our younger folks prepare their performances with great care and meticulousness.

They recited poems or performed in short plays. Some even adventured themselves in giving a full recital.

But the musts, was by no contest, the performance of the Bernard Shaw’s classic, “Androcles and the Lion”. I must tell you about that, for I was closely involved in the adventure. The promoter and director of the play, lived in the same bloc as mine, but on the first floor. His name was Arthur P. and shared a room with Larry Tipton. He was a fine and distinguished Englishman, not very tall, with a soft voice and intelligent conversation. We were neighbours, and as “warden” of Bloc n° 56 I often had the opportunity of talking to him without ever really being his friend for as much. That is why he hesitatingly asked me  -  maybe due to my sacerdotal condition  -  that he allowed himself to take the risk to invite me to take a part in his project, as well as Father Palmers, to play the role of a Roman soldier!! I re-assured him of our complete collaboration. That is the reason why I still have an accurate memory of my Roman soldier outfit. It had been carefully assembled at the repair-shop by the means of many tin cans that had been flattened and assembled together to finally take the shape of a helmet and a breastplate that fit us perfectly. To give more reality to the looks of our legs and arms that were of course all white, we painted them with potassium permanganate that got us all bronzed up. For only a few days though.

Nero appeared in all his majesty with his laurel crown and draped in a white cloth surrounded closely by his courtesans chosen amongst the prettiest women of the camp, dressed in green and rose gowns confectioned by the means of old curtains. Two gladiators armed with nets were trying to hold Androcles as their prisoner. 

The show was a great success and we even had to do an encore to be able to satisfy all those who wanted to see it. A few weeks later, when the American parachutists came into camp we even had the honour to perform the play once again for them.

E. Hanquet.

 

 

De: "alison holmes" <aholmes@prescott.edu>

À: <weihsien@topica.com>

Objet: Re: Cheer up !

Date: samedi 14 décembre 2002 17:42

 

What a delight to have Father Hanquet's reminiscences!  I loved to hear the details of the costume...that must have given entertainment and employment and imagination to all who worked on making it and putting on the play.  How valuable the human spirit which finds ways to bring freedom in imprisonment, laughter in times of fear and boredom, and education, moral ed