Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

Through World War II, we lived a miracle.

In our Weihsien days, I was clueless about our miracle. But not any more. Now I know what COULD have happened to us.

I have angels all over my house. On the living room windowsill, over my red couch, over my piano, in my dining room, on my kitchen counter, in my pantry.

Like most of us Chefoo School children, we were separated from our missionary parents for 5 1/2 years!

How do parents anchor children for whatever comes?

I was 9 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and I officially became an enemy of the Japanese.

Even before we were in the war, we were facing separations. My amazing mother, Alice Taylor, decided that pouring God’s promises into our hearts was the best way to anchor us four Taylor children. So how do you squeeze God’s promises into the hearts of little children? Maybe it was the school teacher in her: Make children sing. Everybody knows that you can teach even a little child at age three to sing Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb and when she’s 93 she can still sing Mary had a little lamb.

So mother put the beautiful words of Psalm 91 to music and at our family worship every day after breakfast, our little Taylor choir gathered around her pump organ and sang those words into our hearts. A Psalm full of God’s promises! Every day, every day we sang those words — including the verse, “And God shall give His angels charge over you to keep you in ALL your ways.” I’m not 93 yet, but I can sing it still.

How often do I tell this amazing story — to schools, to civic clubs, to churches, to senior citizen groups? And what do you think makes audiences gasp? Sometimes they weep. Brave Americans parachuting from a low-flying bomber that August day — a B-24 Liberator named — yes, yes, the ARMORED ANGEL.

Angels all over my house!

Singing every imaginable kind of song-even silly ones— was a way even our Chefoo School teachers anchored us in Temple Hill and in Weihsien camps. Remember “ We might have been shipped to Timbuktu” or “Every Brownie likes an Irish stew? Or “Day is done, Gone the sun, from the sea, from the hills from the sky. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.” We sang, sang, sang?

In Weihsien, our teachers also created a world of comfortably-predictable rituals and traditions that made us feel safe. Every day, every day, every day the same. We felt safe —as if a little voice inside kept saying, “Oh, I know what’s going to happen next.”

Rituals in Weihsien — even Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, Brownies and Girl Guides in a concentration camp! Teachers insisted! School will go on.

At the local high school next door to me, I am regular guest speaker at English classes studying Literature of the Holocaust. The teacher has students write answers to questions: How could parents and teachers anchor their children for whatever comes? And What keeps your spirit alive in a concentration camp?

The teacher reads all the papers, then many days later, passes them on to me. I’m joyful at what sticks in the memories of these several hundred high school students. Many, many students write about grownups creating rituals that keep children comforted. They write about the power of singing songs. The students love, love, love, love-to-death the stories about how our teachers turned challenges into games and contests: rat killing contests, fly killing contests! My brother John (now a surgeon) won the fly killing contest. Saturdays - Battle of the bedbugs. While I’m speaking, if the teacher thinks l’m going to forget to tell about our contests for killings rats, and flies, and bed bugs, the teacher sneaks me a note. 😊 Yes, one time I did forget!

Yes, of course, I tell the students about our amazing liberators. I show their photos. The English teacher adds a note for the students to answer: Is there anything you would like Mrs. Previte to tell Mr. Wang? (“Eddie Wang” is the last living member of our Weihsien liberators. I visited him in China three years ago. We keep in touch by e-mail. He loves getting the messages from the students.)

Mary Taylor Previte

To:Weihsien
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 20:55

Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

I turned 16 in July the last month before liberation. I was just younger than your sister Kathleen. The other relevant fact was that we were swatting for matric in Sept/Oct '45. Their class had just written their exams. The school was attached to Oxford University and used to get exam papers from them every year. I don't know if they had some in reserve. Pa Bruce got us together and said we will be scattering all over the world soon, and if we did our matric we would have finished school and could go straight to university. If we didn't pass nothing was lost. So with the planes dropping food parcels all around us, the cicadas buzzing in the trees, and temperatures up to 120 degrees, we sat our school-leaving exams! He gave us a week to prepare.

We are a unique little group from Chefoo and Weihsien. I wonder how many of us are left.

Estelle Horne estelle.m.horne@gmail.com [weihsien_camp]
To:Weihsien
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 20:18

Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

We were just the senior girls of the Chefoo School.

Actually do you remember that I was the only one left in my class of eight boys. But my big sister Lelia (short for Amelia our g'grandmother Hudson Taylor's sister) (Mary Previte is g'granddaughter of Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission and so my 3rd cousin) We were housed in a small bedroom upstairs in the hospital. We had had several drops of food, medical equipment and radio apparatus with different coloured parachutes. I think the latter was the red ones. So we collected the red ones, laid them out on the ground and cut them into two-foot strips and sewed them together to form the letters OK TO LAND. The few Americans who had already landed were asking who could sew, so they put them onto us senior scholars, who had all just been liberated from Weihsien Concentration Camp.

Dwight Whipple thewhipples@comcast.net [weihsien_camp]
To:weihsien_camp@yahoogroups.com
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 17:11

Re: [weihsien_camp] coal balls

Yes, scrounging was one of the first things we did when we entered Weihsien on March 20, 1943. We were one of the first and found an iron skillet, screen door, and a bunch of other things. We (us children ages six to twelve) even went to the forbidden Japanese section to get things. Hardly anyone was around and we had free run of the camp. That changed, of course, as more of the population arrived. Funny the things one remembers after all these years!

~Dwight W Whipple

Mary Previte mtprevite@aol.com [weihsien_camp]
To:weihsien_camp@yahoogroups.com
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 16:33

Re: [weihsien_camp] coal balls

Remember “scrounging”? You had to be careful where you set out your freshly-made coal balls to dry. Sometimes the “scroungers” took them first.

Mary Taylor Previte

Sent from my iPad

Mary Previte mtprevite@aol.com [weihsien_camp]
To:weihsien_camp@yahoogroups.com
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 16:19

Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

Estelle, please, please, please tell us how, after liberation, you — a Girl Guide — we’re chosen to join a team of sewing room ladies who spent the night cutting out giant letters from spent parachutes. The letters read ‘OK TO LAND’ for the nearby air field, a happy OK to the coming B-29s that they could safely land there.

How did you get picked? What other Girl Guides were picked to help? How old were you? What colors were the parachutes you cut up? Where did you gather to do the cutting! Please, please—tell us every detail. What a wonderful story!

Mary Taylor Previte

'A. Knuppe' annemoen@tele2.nl [weihsien_camp]
To:weihsien_camp@yahoogroups.com
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 15:26

[weihsien_camp] coal balls

Reading Estelle Horne’s description of the coal balls, I remember that my dear father also used a wooden frame in which he applied the prepared moist coal dust. The recipe was the same as yours, Estelle. But then he made small blocks with a knife to separate them and when all was dry you could easily break the pieces in chunks of coal. This spared the dirty hands and cold fingers.

Anne de Jongh.

Estelle Horne estelle.m.horne@gmail.com [weihsien_camp]
To:Weihsien
Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 11:11

Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

That's right. We carried them bucket-girl-bucket-girl-bucket. Jolly heavy for us kids. The recipe was a bucket of coal dust, a tinful of mud and a tinful of water. Either shaped into mud pies or emptied on top of red coals in stove and a draught made as a hole with a poker. The ashes were shaken out the bottom.

Estelle Horne estelle.m.horne@gmail.com [weihsien_camp]
To:Weihsien
Sat, 2 Mar 2019 at 21:39

Re: [weihsien_camp] Xmas

I turned 16 at the very end of camp.
I was in the last matric class -- me and 8 boys. All my girl friends had been returned to their families in Qingdao or Tientsin now Tianjin, as all the families were trying to evacuate. My parents were missionaries in inland China and eventually left by flying over The Hump, the Himalayas (typical British humorous understatement).

Maida, we were being taught by your parents and aunt. Your father was, I guess you would call it our class master, when he had his fall. There was a kind of library ladder which slid sideways. Was it in Temple Hill? He must have hit his head. We were swatting for matric. We used to take notes from teachers' lectures 123/abc/Latin numerals etc, but after his fall, your father got these notes all mixed up. We went to Pa Bruce the Principal, and said we are swotting for matric exams which are already three months late. Mr Harris is incapable since his fall of teaching us coherently. Please give us another teacher. I don't remember the outcome of that, but your Dad was removed from that responsibility.

I'll come back to the water-carrying etc.

love to all
Estelle.