On December 8, 1941 Japan made war on England, and on that sad morning we in Shanghai found ourselves under Japanese rule. Then followed one and a half years under the Japanese in Shanghai, and two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp in Yangchow. Those of you who have read my sister's book, "Covered up in Kowloon", and my brother's book, "I was among the Captives", know the story of the Lord's goodness to us during the Japanese occupation. I would like to recall one incident not in those books.
During the Japanese advance into China, for a week they had occupied the city of Yeung Kong, in South China, where we had worked. Her husband was away, and my sister was alone with the Chinese Christians. Two women fled to her for refuge, and were hidden in the house. At night she was sitting with our faithful cook, listening to the shouts and cries of a city being looted. Were they coming to her house? What was that noise? "Let God manage it", said the dear old cook. And He covered that house, so that none inside were hurt. How often I thought of those words, in perplexity or danger. "Let God manage it". That might be the motto of this book.
When we came down to Shanghai from Yangchow after the declaration of peace, my brother and his wife returned to Canada, and I remained in Shanghai, recovering our property, and reopening the Christian Book Room. All through those years the little branch shop had been kept open. The main shop had been sealed by the Japanese, and when we returned to Shanghai we were told that all its stock had been sold as waste paper, and the shop taken over, This was a sad surprise, for we had received a letter in Yang-chow saying all the stock had been preserved. But a few weeks after my brother left I received a message that the stock was all right. It was all rather mysterious, and reports were contradictory, but after some delay I was taken to a little room on the fifth floor of the building where our shop was. It was a room about six foot square, and when the door was opened I saw the place was packed with bundles of books almost to the ceiling, except just inside the door, where our old desk stood on end.
It was not until a year later that I heard how the books had been preserved, and even yet I do not know the full explanation. I was visiting in the States, where I met a friend of my hostess. She said that she had a message for me. A year or so before she had attended a teacher's conference, and had sat next to a lady from China. She could not remember her name. When this lady heard that her neighbor knew a Willis family in China, she said that she had something to tell them, but she did not want to put it in a letter. After we had been interned this lady had been in the building where our shop was. There she had seen some coolies building a false wall, and hiding all our books behind it. I have never found out who did that kind deed, but our Lord knows, and wills reward them. How often it has been an encouragement to remember that the Lord preserved those books in this remarkable way, entirely without our help or knowledge. The books were His, and He wanted to use them. And the Lord's hand is not shortened. The books are still His, and He can preserve them if He still wants to use them.
The shop which we had formerly rented was occupied when we came out of the internment camp, and it was not till the following July that I was able to get the use of a room on the fourth floor of the building and open the shop. By that time missionaries were beginning to return, and business was reviving.
My brother and his wife got back to Shanghai on Christmas day, 1946, and took up life again at the old house on Brenan Road. But the owners of the house were anxious to sell immediately. Houses were very hard to rent in Shanghai, and tremendous "key money" was being asked. Whoever bought the house would be sure to want to occupy it; and where could we live? Also, my brother had built a "godown" (warehouse) for the Book Room at the north end of the property: a two-storied building, with living quarters upstairs, and downstairs storage3, space for books, and a Gospel Hall. For the whole property, the old two-storied house which we occupied, and the steel bungalow in the center, the owners asked $6,000.00 Canadian currency. As our funds had been "frozen" all through the war, and only very slowly thawed afterward, my income had accumulated in Canada, and I could pay $3,000.00 cash, and we decided to ask the owners to accept this, and take a mortgage for the other $3,000. But we had never gone into debt, and we did not like the arrangement very much. We were still wondering what to do, when a message came from old friends in Canada who knew nothing of our problem. They offered us a carload of Canadian merchandise, or the corresponding sum in cash, $3,000.00. How often we were encouraged by the assurance that the Lord had given us that house, and so we knew that was where He wanted us to be. It was His, and He would look after it.
When I returned to Canada in 1947 things in China seemed settling down to normal. But under the surface was all manner of unrest. A farsighted business man in the internment camp had said, If the Japanese win the war, we shall all be out of China at once; if the Chinese win, we shall all be out in two years. I could not believe it then, but it was a true prophecy, only the time was a little longer.
Chiang Kai Shek won the war, but he did not win the peace. t He and his wife had done wonders for China in the ten years before the war-establishing a settled government, improving conditions, introducing all manner of reforms; and all the time struggling against the inroads of Communism. After the collapse of the Chinese Empire in 1911, the confusion and demands for reform that had been seething in China overwhelmed the country. The people were seeking a new way of life. If only Christianity could have been presented to it in the power of the true Gospel, the whole country might have been won. As it was, there was too much evil mixed up with the Western approach, and China turned from it, and fell into Communism.
Communism is a religion. Its object is not, like socialism, to relieve social distress; though it promises to do this. But its object is the transformation of the whole human being, a "conversion" through indoctrination and brainwashing, till all individuality is gone; he has "handed over his heart" to communism, and is merely a "little screw" in its machine. The genuine party members are filled with the selfless zeal of religious fanatics, and their belief in its theories is so intense that its slogans are almost regarded as magic formulas which become effective by constant repetition. There is no personal, individual salvation, or hope, or happiness, or prosperity-all for the "Party". In the British Empire, in the free world, the State exists for the individual; in Communism, the individual exists for the state. It does not matter what happens to the individual, so long as the State carries on.
It had seemed as if communism, diligently cultivated by Russia, might have been supreme in the early 1920s. But Chiang Kai Shek got rid of the whole crew of Russian advisers by 1926, and proceeded to build up his power and develop the country. But there was still a zealous communist party, working especially among the peasants, and among students. And Russia still had much influence, and was sending agents through the country, and taking Chinese students to Russia for education in Soviet methods. Mao Tzu Tung all this time was working in the background, building up an agrarian revolt, and collecting an army in central China.
In 1937 the Japanese war broke out, and brought the work of reform and development to an abrupt stop. Then for ten years Chiang Kai Shek was fighting a desperate struggle for the life of his country, retreating back, and back, opposing "time and space" to the modern instruments of warfare of the Japanese. Time and space won. But when the war was over, there was a ravaged country to rebuild. Not only so, there was the foe within to overcome, the Communists. The coast cities which were the stronghold of the Kuomintang power, were seized by the Japanese. And while Chiang was busy fighting, the Communists with their guerilla forces built up their control over the countryside of China. When Chiang again occupied the coastal areas he was swamped by innumerable difficulties of every kind. And in the Kuomintang there was weakness and corruption and inefficiency which turned many away from it. Many turned to Communism, thinking that there they had found the new life for their country.
But they did not understand Communism. Communism is not the people's party; they have no true patriotism to their country. Their loyalty is to the Party, to Marxist principles, something brought in from without, foreign to China, and hated by much of it, forced upon it by the burning fanaticism and iron will of a powerful oligarchy. The Party is only two per cent of the population. People talk of "recognizing China"; it is not China they would recognize. True China is bound and gagged, and it is her jail keeper that would be recognized.
Many of our missionary friends and their flocks had suffered from the Communists before the war. We had a striking contact with them immediately after. In the Internment camp at Yangchow it was days after peace was declared before we knew that our Japanese masters were defeated. Even when we knew, we could not cast them off. The Japanese had to stay to protect Yangchow from the Communists. The people of Yangchow were more afraid of the Communists than of the Japanese.