Life Under The Guard Towers

A Story of The Survivors of Weihsien Prison Camp

Story by LAURA ANN POEHNER | Illustration by KEARA MULVIHILL

In March 1943, Weihsien (pronounced WAY-SHEN) was a sleepy little town in northern China, on the eastern coast, north of Shanghai and directly across the Yellow Sea from Seoul, Korea. The outside world called the 150-by-200-yard compound just outside the city limits Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center. The Japanese told the 2,000 foreigners trucked through the gates it was the Weihsien Internment Camp. The internees called it the Weihsien Prison Camp.

A dilapidated archway greeted them as the gates opened. The sign above read, “Courtyard of the Happy Way.”

Internees came from as far north as Chinwangtao, just below the Great Wall and as far south as Tsingtao, 98 miles south on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

Most internees were British or American. Internees’ nationalities, before denoting affluence and neutrality, were embroidered on red and black armbands. The Japanese marked internees as enemies.

This foreign population had lived peaceably with the Chinese in treaty ports — land concessions granted their home countries in the mid-19th century for trade purposes. They remained neutral when the Japanese invaded China in December 1937. It was not our war, they said.

The Sino-Japanese War, as it was later named, was at a stalemate in 1939 as Hitler’s Third Reich conquered most of the European continent. Though the Japanese controlled most of Western China, they had not gained territory since 1938. Weihsien belonged to them.

Most of the foreign nationals hated the Japanese for invading, but many had lived in China for generations and called it their home. The foreign nationals had witnessed the brutality of the Japanese army. As hostilities increased in China and war broke out in Europe, many opted to return to their countries of origin. Others felt it was safer to stay in China as their homelands were consumed with anti-Semitism and war. The British were not given an option to leave. The British government ordered subjects to remain in China to maintain British interests.

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[embed]https://soundcloud.com/laura-ann-poehner/eric-liddells-last-race[/embed]

Olympic gold medalist and hero of the film Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell, was a hero to the hundreds of internees at the Weihsien Prison Camp, but not just because he could run.

On Dec. 8, 1941, Japan entered World War II as Pearl Harbor burned. The Day of Infamy would be remembered by Americans as Dec. 7, 1941. Because of the international date line, foreign nationals in China would remember Dec. 8, 1941, as their Day of Infamy, or the Fatal Eighth as one survivor put it. In one day, the foreign merchants and missionaries of Allied nations became enemy aliens in the eyes of Japan.

On Dec. 8, heavily armed Japanese soldiers surrounded Chefoo School, a boarding school established by China Inland Mission under James Hudson Taylor in the late 19th century. The Japanese declared the school a naval base. Its roughly 300 occupants were under house arrest. Mary Previte was 9 years old when she watched Japanese bayonet drills on the school’s ball field.

“We were just young children,” Previte said. “Watching…how you killed someone.”

The Japanese took immediate control of the Western concessions and economic operations. Exultant triumph and begrudging submission replaced the feigned cooperation between the Japanese and their white neighbors. Between December 1941 and March 1943, the Japanese forced the enemy foreigners to continue their jobs for the benefit of Japan.

“We didn’t do anything to them,” Pamela Masters said of the Japanese. Masters was 13 years old at the time. Her British grandfather had helped build the Chinese railroad. After the Fatal Eighth, Masters’ father, George Simmons, was forced to work as the port accountant for the Japanese in Chinwangtao. The Japanese said they’d kill his wife and three daughters if he did not cooperate.

These enemy foreigners were heavily supervised by the Japanese authorities, who learned as much as they could about operations of the ports. When the Japanese no longer needed their expertise, they were sent to internment camps.

Survivor Langdon Gilkey was a 24-year-old American English teacher in Peking. In his book, “Shantung Compound,” he recalls the Japanese memo ordering all enemy foreigners report for transportation to Weihsien:

“In stilted English sentences, the official letter announced that ‘for your safety and comfort’ all enemy nationals would be sent by train to a ‘Civilian Internment Center’ near Weihsien…The letter went on to say that ‘there every comfort of Western culture will be yours.’”

Of the roughly 125,000 civilian prisoners the Japanese held during World War II, about 10 percent were in China and Hong Kong. Those 13,000 prisoners were scattered across 25 Japanese-run internment camps in China, according to author and survivor Greg Leck. Weihsien became one of the largest.

Previously, it was an American Presbyterian mission school. It held between 1,400 internees to 2,000 internees.

Internees included merchant families like Masters’, teachers like Gilkey, and hundreds of school children like Previte. Others included missionaries of every sect, priests and nuns, athletes, tourists, musicians, prostitutes and drug addicts.

There were rows and rows of 9-foot-by-12-foot cells. Three or four people slept in one cell, with about 18 inches between them and the next bed. Classrooms in larger buildings became dorms for upward of 20 individuals per room. There were three kitchens, a bakery, hospital and church. Previously occupied by Chinese and Japanese militaries, buildings were stripped of furnishings. What remained was found in piles of metal shards and broken furniture. None of the 24 toilets flushed. Water for showers had to be pumped by hand.

“This existence was of the greatest conceivable contrast to all that had gone before in my life, and the same was true for almost everyone there,” Gilkey said.

Weihsien was surrounded by barbed and electric wires. Guard towers in the corners of the camp were armed with machine guns and searchlights. The guards patrolled with fierce German Shepherds. Each internee was assigned a number and forced to stand for roll call in the camp’s ball field every morning.

As survivor John Hoyte said, within the confines of a totalitarian regime a democratic society was born.

Almost immediately a governing committee of internees was established. Members were chosen to manage housing, employment, schools, discipline and cooking. The daily operation and maintenance of the camp was left to these individuals. Dependence on the Japanese was restricted only to food rations, coal dust for heat, electricity and waste removal, according to Hoyte.

“This was a life almost normal, and yet intensely difficult,” Gilkey said. “Very near to our usual cries and problems, and yet precarious in the extreme.”

Food was scarce. Thin leek soup, bread and gaoling, a peasant grain, were staples. Every now and then the Japanese would provide 10 pounds of mule or horse meat, according to Hoyte. Sometimes a rotting mystery meat would also appear which creative cooks disguised in stew.

Previte’s teachers decided school must go on. Classes were held every day. The writing materials they brought with them used, erased and used again.

While the children ate gruel out of soap dishes, their teachers insisted the quality of manners used in Weihsien was not to differ from those used in Buckingham Palace, Previte said. They made their beds with hospital corners.

Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts continued. They earned badges for collecting bedbugs and swatting flies. They made a game out of making coal out of coal dust.

“I and Marjorie Harrison won the recognition for setting the pot belly stove red-hot in the morning,” Previte said.

Hoyte was Previte’s classmate. His job was to pump water into the 30-foot water towers for hour long increments. When he wasn’t in class or pumping water, he was sketching or wandering the camp with his friend Theo. His memoir reads:

“My first experience of the discipline committee was when my friend Theo and I were reported to the committee for throwing stones at the insulators on top of the outside walls…If the Japanese guards had caught us we might have been severely punishes. Luckily, our punishment was relatively benign, writing out several hundred times ‘I must not throw stones at the wall-top insulators.’ As we were desperately short of paper, I cannot recall how we found the means to do this.”

The rat infestation had reached such levels that the Japanese announced a prize for whoever caught the three largest rats. Hoyte and his friend modified an old trap and caught an 18-inch rodent. They received second prize and a can of beans to share.

While in Weihsien, Hoyte and his five siblings received word their mother had died of typhus. The Hoyte’s were a close-knit family. The hope of reunification after an almost five-year separation was what got them through the camp. They hoped the news was false.

Masters recalls the hardship of the camp with less childlike innocence and less deep-seeded grief. She was 16 years old when she took a job at the hospital to avoid the humiliation of the daily role calls. She lived with her parents and two older sisters.

She recalls the numbing wind that blew through the single-pane windows of cells in winter and the sound of Japanese guns when two Chinese farmers were executed for smuggling eggs into camp. Masters’ friend died after the Japanese ordered him to remove a branch from some electrical wires.

Her memoir recounts the trials of a typical teenager. Masters finished high school her first year in Weihsien. She made some friends and experienced the joy and jealousies of dating and riveting Bridge games and Saturday night dances in the mess hall. An introvert and surrounded by hundreds of people, she found solace in painting and eventually created the sets for various plays put on by the entertainment committee.

Shows were allowed by the Japanese on one condition — they were given front row seats, Masters said. The Japanese guards couldn’t speak or understand English. One night the internees dedicated a song to a guard they called “Gold Tooth.” They proudly sang “We’ll be glad when you’re dead” to an even prouder Gold Tooth who jumped up on the stage to dance before the audience.

This was Weihsien. Survival made possible by a group of people unwilling to give up, but entirely willing to make the most out of every situation. Perhaps the best example of this was the songs they sang.

Songs seemed as natural a response to their trials as breathing. School children sang songs to memorize scripture. Previte’s grandfather, who weighed less than 90 pounds at the time, sang hymns every morning for the camp to hear. If you ask his great granddaughter, she’ll sing his favorite for you.

“Courage, brother, do not stumble

Though thy path be dark as night;

There’s a star to guide the humble:

Trust in God and do the right.

Let the road be rough and dreary,

And its end far out of sight,

Foot it bravely; strong or weary,

Trust in God, trust in God,

Trust in God and do the right.”

Weihsien Prison Camp was liberated by seven American paratroopers on Aug. 17, 1945.

There is a wealth of information about the deprivation and torture experienced by American and British prisoners of war under the Japanese during World War II. Those stories are frequently told. The story of Weihsien, a democratic society surviving virtually independent of and yet completely subjected to the totalitarian Japanese regime, is not often told. Google searches will pull up a few stories written by the BBC or The New York Times, all centered around Previte and only written after she completed her mission to find and thank the American soldiers who liberated the camp. Today there is only one book, “Shantung Compound,” that is still in print. There is one other, Masters’ “The Mushroom Years.” It is out of print.

The best online resource is a website hard-coded by a Belgian survivor. It contains 3,500 pages of scanned pictures, sketches, paintings, memoirs and a hodgepodge of news coverage, all written and submitted by Weihsien survivors. They’re thankful for their experiences.

“It strengthened all of us,” Masters said.

Previte became the administrator of the Camden County Youth Center and a member of the New Jersey General Assembly. Hoyte became an engineer with a taste for adventure. He led the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition which led an elephant across the Alps and organized the High Sierra Centennial Climb which saw 20 climbing parties lighting flares from Mount Whitney to Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Masters worked as a technical illustrator in the space race. Gilkey’s book, “Shantung Compound,” is used to teach sociology at the university level.

If you ask the remaining survivors of the camp about their experience, you might hear stories of death or the threat thereof. But what you’re more likely to hear are stories of life.