Philippians 4:12
Early April 1943
“We have to organize,” Eric said to the men who had gathered outside the dorm room he shared with Josh and Bear. “And we have to be logical.” He placed his hands on his hips, splaying his fingers. “We don’t know exactly how long this could go on—how long before we return home.”
“What are you saying, Liddell?” one of the younger men asked him, a man Eric recognized as Langdon Gilkey.
Eric raised his chin ever so slightly. Gilkey came from solid—though certainly liberal—theological stock. But he had barely crawled into his twenties when he arrived in China as a missionary, shortly before being interned.
“Call me Eric. And what I’m saying—” Eric glanced around the small crowd and then beyond to make certain none of the Japanese were nearby. “What I’m saying to all of you is that we’re here. That much we can know for sure. And this place used to be a mission compound, so we’ve got, at the very least, the buildings we need. We have doctors here. We have nurses—like Annie—and an old hospital.”
“Gutted,” someone reminded him.
“But it’s there.” Eric refused to be dissuaded and looked to his friend Cullen for support. “We have teachers—men like you, Cullen. And me. We can organize. How many children do you suppose they’ve brought in from the boarding schools or with their parents?”
“Too many,” Gilkey replied, his voice tinged with bitterness. “And I’ve heard more are arriving from the Chefoo School.”
“Do you know when?” Bear asked him.
“No.”
“Could be a while,” Cullen said with authority. “Could be tomorrow. The way things have been . . . who knows.”
“Whenever they arrive, they and the children already here will need continued education,” Eric replied. “And sports. They must be kept active.” He looked at Cullen again. “Especially those who’ve already made it to adolescence.”
Cullen groaned in agreement.
“We can do this,” Eric said, the confidence rising in his voice. “If we put our minds and hands together, we can.”
“And what do you propose for schoolbooks?” Gilkey asked. “What will you teach them with?”
Eric had already given that question to God. He prayed that the teachers from Chefoo would bring textbooks with them, but until then . . . “I’ve taken that to the Lord, and God has provided an answer. My knowledge of science doesn’t reside in a schoolbook. My knowledge resides here,” he said, pointing to his head. “Give me paper and ink. With God’s help, I’ll write the books myself.”
WEIHSIEN BOASTED ONLY four showers and little water. That meant that most of the internees bathed using water caught in buckets.
Men were allowed daily showers. Women could bathe only three times a week. Often the icy water stored in buckets for early-morning face washing had to be broken apart before it could be splashed.
The Weihsien internees were not mandated to perform slave labor. They did not endure the dehumanizing sufferings that would later haunt the world in reports from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. It became evident soon enough that the internees’ biggest adversary was not the war, the forces of nature, or even their Japanese captors. Their biggest enemy was the slow and painful truth incurvatus in se—each one’s selfish desire to curve inward and live for his or her own exclusive interests. This ugly reality unfolded quite rapidly, especially in a setting where sharing and working together seemed to be the only option and resources were scant. Those who doled out half cups of watered-down stew often took the brunt end of fury from the hungry being served. Exhausted women often threw dirty dishwater on those who worked beside them. And British secretaries who had been housed with older female missionaries found themselves at odds to the point of the freshly formed Camp Housing Committee having to referee their squabbles.
Most of the foreigners had come from white-collar backgrounds—businessmen, educators, lawyers, and engineers—most with their children in tow, as well as a large contingency of Catholic priests and nuns and the large missionary community. Almost everyone in the camp was used to employing the Chinese to perform all the difficult daily physical work for them. Cooking, cleaning, plumbing, maintenance, and the like had not been their practice or their forte.
The finer, nobler pursuits in life had always come at the price of the common man grinding out the raw work of life via blood and sweat. Now a group of people almost completely unprepared for the task was left to fend for themselves. As if the challenge were not complicated enough, eleven nationalities were represented within the large group. Learning by the minute how to coexist became a psychological chess match, calculating each minuscule move to conquer a new small space. But coexist they must. The internees quickly realized the need to work together if they wanted to survive at all. They organized a hospital, formed kitchens, and determined schedules for menial tasks such as potato peeling and latrine scrubbing.
Daily roll call formed at 7:30 a.m. and again in the evening, and each call took enough time for all the prisoners to reach their “roll call district,” followed by strict lineups. Prisoners wore their numbers pinned to their chests, and after they were numbered off, they remained in line until the guards tallied the counts from each of the six districts. Between roll calls, however, the men, women, and children of Weihsien were free to do as they pleased. This meant organized school for the children, but for the adults it meant something even more detailed.
The question of a democratic election process had been debated, but the lack of who’s-who knowledge and communication complicated the endeavor. A management committee for the camp was finally appointed under the direction of the Japanese commandant, a civil officer, and the military police. The established departments were discipline, education, entertainment and athletics, employment, engineering and repairs, finance, general affairs, medical, quarters and accommodation, and
