During the twenty-one years that my husband and I have spent in China it has been my privilege to carry on more or less regular correspondence with a number of our missionary wives who are stationed in the interior and at distant outposts of this country. The letters that have passed between us have, I believe, been mutually helpful. I have been able to help them in the matter of securing information and making purchases of such goods as were unobtainable at their mission stations and near-by towns, and my own life has been enriched by these contacts with their problems and aims. The efforts I have made for these isolated workers have been more than repaid by the appreciative letters that have come back to me. Moreover, I have learned much that I might otherwise not understand regarding the sacrifices and endeavors of these faithful women who stand nobly by their husbands and the work through long and trying years.
A few days ago as I was rereading some of their correspondence, the thought occurred to me that I might with profit share it with others. I have therefore made a few selections that I hope will give Ministry readers an insight into some of the experiences of a missionary wife in an interior station.
In the summer and autumn of 1935, I made a trip with my husband to Tatsienlu, a city nestled among snowcapped mountains on the Tibetan frontier, where Dr. and Mrs. H. E. James, now in America on furlough, were in charge of our hospital dispensary for seven years. Since that time I have corresponded with Mrs. James, whose letters are most revealing and inspiring. Writing of a time when Doctor James and the one male nurse of the hospital-dispensary were itinerating on the Tibetan grasslands, she says:
"While they were away, Mrs. Kung and I carried on the work of the dispensary. Invariably, when I am alone like this, some terrible case comes into the clinic for care. This time it was a man who had been cruelly injured by a bear. He had been hunting his cows in the low brush just beyond our city air field. Hearing a rustling in the brush and thinking it was his cow, he went to the spot, and there was a bear. The bear reached out his paw and took the man's face off—and I mean exactly that. When he reached the hospital his face was hanging from his chin, with an eye and a nose waving about on the outer edge of the loosened flesh. I have never before or since seen anything so terrible. I bandaged the poor fellow up as best I could. He was bleeding profusely and had nothing left to his face but a bony skeleton and a mouth. He was past sixty years of age. I told his wife that he would probably die before morning. The wife took him home and bought a coffin for him, but now, three weeks later, he is still living. I suppose injuries like this, and worse, are encountered every day and several times a day in the righting areas of the world. But, O, the suffering !"
Recent letters from Mrs. Floyd Johnson, at the same station, tell of difficulties encountered in securing food and medical supplies. Many times, after waiting weeks and months for supplies to arrive from the coast, they get word that boxes have fallen into the rivers or down the sides of the steep mountains, or that the caravan has been overtaken by bandits and there is nothing left.
I wish my readers might have been present when the luggage which we brought along to Tatsienlu was unpacked ! It is exciting enough here in Shanghai when things come from home. We smell the paper and exclaim over this and that. But away off in the interior even things from Shanghai look good. I think we had almost everything from bobby pins to galvanized metal to be used for a bathtub on this occasion. Such excitement and happiness ! Everything was wonderful. Mrs. Johnson seemed to get the greatest pleasure out of some cases of tomatoes. She picked up several tins and started toward the house crying for sheer joy over them. Their little son loves tomatoes, and they said they had managed to ripen four or five that year from their own garden. Someone told me they were the first tomatoes, of which they had any record, ever to ripen in Tatsienlu.
Doctor James got a real thrill out of a box of rubber gloves for the surgery. He pulled at them, examined them closely, and with a broad smile said, "First-rate gloves," still patting the gloves. Seven years at a stretch in places like Tatsienlu, with not even a dozen Europeans—many times not even half a dozen —to mingle with should be considered a real test. Yet in spite of difficulties and the loneliness, the missionaries in Tatsienlu are holding on. It takes moral stamina and a great burden for souls to carry on in these interior places under present-day conditions.
I have before me an eleven-page, single-spaced diary written by Gertrude Green, entitled, "Bicycling Through Anhwei and Honan." It is a record of a trip made by Miss Green, Dr. W. G. Nethery, Mrs. Thelma Smith, and her son, Herbert, from Shanghai to our mission station in Yencheng, Honan, where Doctor 7.\Tethery is in charge of the hospital-dispensary. Miss Green had been appointed to the Yencheng Sanitarium as superintendent of nurses, and Mrs. Smith, whose chosen work is the Bible work, was going to Yencheng to be acting treasurer for the Honan Mission until the treasurer could return from furlough. Reading this diary reminds one of the days before modern transportation. [Excerpts from Miss Green's diary appear in the Medical Missionary Section of this and last month's issues of the Ministry.—Ed.]
Among recent arrivals from the United States, for service in China, were Brother and Sister D. M. Barnett, young people who had been assigned to serve in Chengtu, Szechwan, in the West China Union. It was my privilege to help entertain these young people on their arrival in Shanghai, and to aid them in preparing for the long trip to the west. They set sail from Shanghai with a group of other missionaries on a small German boat, the S. S. "Hanna," bound for a port on the China coast, from which point they were to travel overland by auto truck to Chengtu, Szechwan. We bade them good-by at the wharf one Sabbath afternoon, expecting to get word by telegram in a few days announcing their arrival at their destined port. But in a few days we learned from the radio and the daily papers that the little ship had been held up by a gunboat that was operating along the coast, and was on its way back to Shanghai.
A few mornings later there was a knock at the door, and when I opened it, there stood Brother and Sister Barnett. They looked tired and worn, but were glad to be safely back again, and we were happy to see them. As they partook of the breakfast I hurriedly prepared, they told their experience. Later I asked Mrs. Barnett to write it up for me. Here are a few paragraphs gleaned from her report :
"The S.S. 'Hanna' was a small ship, so small in fact that some of the men had to sleep in the dining room because there were not enough cabins for the twenty missionaries on board. We left Shanghai with assurances from those in authority that — was an open port and we could enter.
Captain ______________ had a copy of the proclamation issued by the authorities which showed the restricted areas. The port for which we were making was not listed on this proclamation. We therefore expected to go in without trouble.
"We sailed without event until Sunday evening. At about four that evening, several of us who were sleeping were awakened by a loud noise; then there was the 'boom' of a shell. We ran to the door of the cabin just in time to see a second shell skid across the water and explode a few yards from us. By this time everyone was running for the bottom of tne ship, and we joined in the flight, wondering if we would be able to get there, or if the next shell would hit us. No more shots were fired, but the suspense was terrible.
"We dropped anchor, and the warship came nearer and signaled that we were under arrest, and must follow it. With two oig guns pointing directly at us, we had no choice in the matter. We followed, and when their boat anchored, we anchored beside it. We spent the night with guns trained on us, and our feelings were not altogether comfortable. It was not pleasant to be looking into the barrel of one of those big guns. Monday morning two officers and several armed sailors boarded our ship, examined our ship's papers, and talked with the captain. The captain showed them the proclamation he held. After some time we were told that we might go on, but that it was unsafe to do so. We were advised to go back to Shanghai.
We took the chance, though, but with fear and trembling on the part of some of us. We had sailed only two hours when we were again stopped. We were held up the rest of that day and night, and the next morning our ship was boarded, examinations were made, and we were again advised to return to Shanghai. But we were determined to reach our destination ; so we started on again, hoping that no one would fire at us or trouble us further. On Tuesday morning we arrived at the desired anchorage, but instead of our being permitted to go in as we hao hoped, a near-by destroyer turned its guns on us and signaled for us to stop and drop anchor. We were later ordered to return to Shanghai immediately, and told that if we stopped we would be destroyed or captured."
The Barnett family stayed in Shanghai for a short time awaiting another opportunity to proceed west. In the meantime, the political situation in the Far East changed, and word reached us through our consul and from the General Conference regarding the evacuation of American missionaries. Brother and Sister Barnett were sent to Rangoon, Burma, where they are to study Chinese; later they will enter free China, probably by way of the Burma Road.
Throughout the hostilities our sisters have shared with their husbands in the difficulties of travel, and in a number of cases have narrowly escaped bombings by air raids. The following experience related by Mrs. E. H. James, wife of the director of the Hunan Mission, gives a picture of the dangers attendant these days on travel in China.
Sister James and her husband were traveling by truck, one of a caravan on its way to Changsha, Hunan, which is the headquarters of the Hunan Provincial Mission. The only route open was by way of Haiphong, in Indo-China. Here the party was held up for nineteen hot, trying days, while customs permits were secured and arrangements were made for continuing the journey. After continuous travel for three days and two nights, the weary missionaries reached our Nanning Hospital and mission station in Kwangsi. Here they hoped for rest after the hardships of the road, but this was denied them. Mrs. James writes:
"Air-raid signals were the order of the day, and each time alarms sounded we drove our trucks away from the hospital to a more rural section. One morning, the last we spent in Nanning, the second alarm sounded very soon after the first, and by a series of jerks and moans urged us to move quickly. My husband and Mr. Longway were delayed, making a repair on Doctor Lilly's car, and we were caught on the open road when the second alarm sounded. Guards refused to allow us to proceed, and later we learned how fortunate we were that they were determined not to let us proceed.
The rest of our caravan had gone a little way farther on to our usual 'hide-out.' But this 'hide-out' had been seen by scout planes, and, as the trucks were mistaken for military trucks, we were made the real objective on that day. Leaving our trucks, we found a tiny bush off a muddy lane under which we crouched. We had not long to wait. Soon the hum of planes could be heard as they circled above us, and—well, perhaps you know what the sound of a bomber tearing earthward in dive bombings does to the pit of the stomach. The scream of the plane was terrifying, and added to this was the machine-gunning, and the crash and vibration of the bursting bombs. The earth shook beneath us. We watched the planes mount and descend again, and could clearly see the bombs leave their racks. I was glad that morning for the ninety-first psalm. It seemed to me that I could distinctly hear the words, 'He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.'
"I looked at my husband. He seemed perfectly calm as far as I could see. 'Aren't you afraid?' I asked. He said something about its doing no good to be afraid, and remarked that I did not look very fearful myself. The 'all clear' sounded, and we hurried to the others of our party. The bombs had landed much closer to them. In fact, the earth thrown up from the impact of a bomb had landed on the engine hood of one truck and crushed it. We were a quiet, thoughtful company as we returned to the hospital that Monday morning."
Mrs. Floyd Johnson, referred to before, was one of this caravan in this same air raid. She tells of how she and her little boy, Curtis, seven years old, were hiding with others in a small bamboo grove. The planes flew so low that the wind from the propellers moved the trees of the bamboo thicket to and fro. Three bombs exploded so close to the thicket that water from a near-by pond was splashed over the trees. "Curtis was very brave," Mrs. Johnson writes, and only said, "'Mamma, why doesn't Jesus come now ? Why doesn't He come and take me to heaven? Mummie, I do want to see Jesus come right now.'"
Shortly after the ill-fated trip of the "Hanna," a group of our missionaries made arrangements to travel on another small boat to the city of Wenchow. This party consisted of the Christensens, the C. B. Guilds, Della Rice, E. L. Longway, and E. H. James. They carried with them sixty tons of freight and baggage. After a hard trip they reached Wen-chow, just in time to be caught in one of the worst typhoons that had visited Chekiang coast in many years. This and four inches of rain in one day caused the river to rise and put a foot and a half of water in the godowns (warehouses) on the waterfront, where the goods were stored. A large portion of the baggage and freight was waterlogged. While our brethren were wading around in water trying to save as much as possible, an air raid was staged overhead, and one bomb struck very near the place where they took refuge.
It took many days to dry the books, medical supplies, groceries, and other supplies, and get them into shape for the long trip to West China.
Mention might also be made of the long, hard journey that Mrs. G. L. Wilkinson took last summer into interior Honan during the very hottest season, and of Mrs. Frick's experience in living in a besieged city for several months, staying with her husband in a trench dug in the yard, with shells from opposing armies flying overhead. They were unable for many weeks to get any food from the outside, and finally were driven to gathering leaves in the yard to eat.
Surely, when the history of our work in China during these years of hostilities is written, the part our sisters have taken, their endurance in hardship, their courage in danger, and their loyalty to the cause, will occupy no mean place.
