One snowy day in mid-January, as eighteen-year-old internee Norman Cliff stood in filthy overalls working in Kitchen I, a young American rushed in and said to him and the others who stood at their assigned cauldrons, “Come have a look at what’s coming through the prison gates!”
Norman and the kitchen workers rushed out, following the American to the main road in time to witness countless donkeys pulling carts stacked high with boxes marked “American Red Cross.”
As the internees followed the caravan to the church, visions of the treasures inside danced like the sugarplums they’d dreamed of only a month earlier at Christmastime. During a holiday when, before internment, they had celebrated with more than enough delicacies and joyous celebrations around roaring fires, the past December had seen the prisoners with meager rations and only a few festivities. The winter weather, with its dramatically dropping temperatures, had been met without the coal dust necessary to make briquettes for burning. The prisoners were starving and freezing.
But now . . . who could begin to imagine what lay nestled within those boxes! Since the day the gates closed behind them years earlier—and especially since Father Scanlan’s arrest—the internees had not tasted sugar or milk, fruit or butter. Their clothes became more threadbare, they walked in shoes without soles, and children—in need of more calcium than egg shells could provide—grew teeth without enamel. With the war raging across the globe, supplies became scarcer, and severe malnutrition knocked at every door. Whatever lay within the boxes was nothing short of a godsend.
When the cart wheels rolled to a stop, the prisoners of Weihsien camp swallowed hard, wide-eyed in anticipation. A crew of men unloaded the carts, carrying the boxes into the church where they would be inspected and counted by the Japanese. Two hours later, a man with a tally sheet emerged and announced that there were more than enough for each person in the camp to receive one box each.
Joy on top of joy!
But the next morning a jagged shard deflated the enthusiasm when one of the Japanese officers posted a notice informing the prisoners that a group of Americans had decided that because the American Red Cross had sent the supplies, the provisions should go to their countrymen only. At that time, a mere two hundred Americans dwelled in the camp. Based on their reasoning, that ratio said that each American should receive seven and a half parcels and everyone else none.
Arguing commenced, not only within the rest of the camp but between the ranks of the Americans as well, specifically some who argued that, in the Spirit of Christ, the bounty should be shared with all. But others, despite being missionaries, declared it immoral to segment the boxes if they had been intended only for the Americans.
The Japanese, perplexed by the attitudes and apparent civil war, posted a sign for all to see:
DUE TO PROTESTS FROM THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY, THE PARCELS WILL NOT BE DISTRIBUTED TODAY AS ANNOUNCED.
THE COMMANDANT
The Japanese continued to stand guard over the boxes, which remained stacked in the church where they’d been unloaded. Meanwhile, the commandant contacted his superiors for direction. As he waited, the Americans came back with a new idea: Everyone in the camp gets a box, they proposed. The total would cover one and a half boxes for each American, with the other internees receiving the leftovers.
But the Japanese said no. They would wait to hear from headquarters.
Finally, Tokyo wired back, stating that each internee was to receive one parcel. What was left over was to be sent to other camps. The greed of a few meant that the extra provisions would now go somewhere else. This was a hard lesson for the Weihsien camp but a blessing for those who suffered elsewhere.
Two weeks after the boxes had arrived, the Japanese set a date for distribution. After roll call and breakfast, the internees lined up, skinny arms stretched outward. Then, loaded down with a three-foot by one-foot by one-and-a-half-foot box, they stumbled back to their individual rooms to open their belated Christmas gifts.
The boxes all had “four small sections, each with powdered milk, cigarettes, tinned butter, spam, cheese, concentrated chocolate, sugar, coffee, jam, salmon and raisins.”[103]
Meals could now be followed by desserts. Tea, formerly drunk only black, could now be enjoyed with sugar and milk. Bread could be slathered with jam or butter or sandwiched with Spam and cheese.
As the camp set up a system of exchange—a pack of cigarettes for two bars of chocolate; two tins of Spam for one of coffee—adults calculated how to make the provisions last as long as possible. According to Norman Cliff, once these packages were distributed, “physical hunger and exhaustion were less acute, and with this the general morale was clearly lifted.”[104]
And a great lesson had been learned. As Langdon Gilkey later wrote in his book, “The irony of this was not lost on the gleeful camp: the demand by the Americans for seven and one-half parcels had effected in the end the loss to each of them of an extra half parcel! Thus, as Stan and I grimly agreed, even an enemy authority can mediate the divine justice in human affairs.”[105]
Perhaps a larger life lesson came from the two South Africans who were also detained at Weihsien.
When the parcels were finally distributed, the people discovered that two hundred pairs of boots from the South African Red Cross had been included. Upon this discovery, the two men posted the following notice:
DUE TO THE PRECEDENT THAT HAS BEEN SET, THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNITY IS LAYING CLAIM TO ALL 200 OF THE BOOTS DONATED BY THEIR RED CROSS. WE SHALL WEAR EACH PAIR FOR THREE DAYS TO SIGNAL OUR RIGHT TO WHAT IS OUR OWN PROPERTY, AND THEN SHALL BE GLAD TO LEND SOME OUT WHEN NOT IN USE TO ANY NON-SOUTH AFRICANS WHO
