WEIHSIEN Concentration Camp________
Rescue from the Sky
by MaryTaylor Previte
Note: Article from the following website and webpager retrived on May 25, 2008:
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/Mprevite/WWIIMagazine/WeihsienConcentrationCamp.htm
Navy Ensign Jim Moore tensed with the rush of adrenalin as the B-24 flew above the Chinese fields. The six-man, American rescue team raced against the clock to prevent the last minute massacre of Allied prisoners -- he shuddered -- the massacre of his school, his teachers by diehard Japanese guards.
Moorehad not faced combat before, but today he was electric with the pictureswirling in his head. Somewhere beneaththe bomber, his own school, his own teachers were nowalmost within his reach. But for nowthey were clutched in the bloody hands of Japan. Mooreknew too well. Japanhad earned its grisly reputation: Rape, enslave, execute civilians. Massacre prisoners. Or prisoners could be kept alive for prisoner swaps, like bargainingchips.
The American rescue team had set out only oneday after the Emperor had announced Japan’ssurrender. The bomber had started 600miles away that morning and now circled over fields of ripening broom corn,searching for the “Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center.” Fifteen hundred Allied prisoners weresomewhere beneath them. It was 9:30 A.M., Monday, August 17, 1945. Flying at 2,000 feet and armed only with scanty photographs andinformation, the crew scanned the landscape, trying to locate the camp. They had few clues. They knew only that Allied internees werebeing held in a Japanese internment camp, a compound somewhere outside a sleepytown called Weihsien (pronounced WAY-shyen).
When the bomber drew no enemy fire,it circled lower in buffeting winds, then lower, hugging the terrain at 500feet. The drone of the plane posed a frightening provocation for artillerypointed to the sky. The team knew that anything could be in the fieldsbelow. Bandits, guerrillas, Chinesecommunists, Chinese Nationalists, Japanese -- they had all bloodied themselvesfor this territory.
Amid the horror of atrocities anddeath camps, feel-good stories still spin out of World War II. In my book, the story of Ensign Jim Mooreranks very near the top. This is thesaga of James Walton Moore, Jr., born to a family whobelieved in miracles. It is the story ofhis part in the rescue of 1,500 Allied prisoners and the Chefoo School-- his Alma Mater -- imprisoned in the Weihsien Concentration Camp in China.
I was a student in the Chefoo School. I was a child in that camp.
Theywere spilling from the belly of a low-flying plane, dangling from parachutesthat looked like giant silk poppies, dropping into the gao liang (broom corn) fields beyond the barrierwalls. August 17, 1945. Every former Weihsien prisoner can tell youexactly where he was that sweltering August morning when the heroes came. Six Americans parachutingfrom the sky, dropping from a B-24 “Liberator.”
One of them ― Jim Moore ― JamesWalton Moore, Jr. ― was a Chefoo Schoolboy, one of our own.
Jimmy Moore’s parents were SouthernBaptist missionaries from East Texaswhen they settled in Chefoo in China’sShantung provincewith Jimmy and his sister, Martha Jane. It was 1920. Jimmy was just a year old ― thefamily’s first and only son. They livedin a compound just off Mule Road and near the Chefoo School, a boarding schoolfounded in 1881 to educate the children of British and American missionaries. Jimmy started as a day student at the schoolin 1926. Chefoo teachers taught Biblestories and miracles every day. Everystudent could scamper to the heavens with endless stories about God’s rescuingHis people: Moses delivering God’s children out of captivity into the PromisedLand, ravens feeding the hungry prophet Elijah in the wilderness, God’s closingthe mouths of lions to protect Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Yes, miracles!
Even after 80 years, Jim Moore stillremembers the winters when steamers became icebound in the harbor,and students ice skated on tennis courts near theschool. Chefoo (now called Yantai) was a picturesque, seaside city in north eastChina, tucked between the hills of Shantung Province and the Yellow Sea. At the very proper Chefoo School, studentswore uniforms, and missionary teachers expected proper, Victorian-stylemanners. Teachers were known as“Masters.” Jim remembered his favorites: MastersGordon Martin, Bruce, Duncan, Chalkley, Welch,Harris, and Houghton. Who could forgetteachers like these?
With his classmates, he playedPrisoners’ base in the Chefoo School Quad, watched billowy-sailed, wooden junksin the harbor, and challenged the waves in row boatsnamed “ Hero ” and “ Leander. ” The school always named its rowboats from Greek mythology. He took thelaunch to the white sands of Lighthouse Island across the bay. Long before television or movies came toChina, he sat spellbound when Masters Martin and Houghton read Kipling aloud tothe boys during lazy winter holidays.
In the Chefoo Boys’ School, JimmyMoore brought glory in athletics to the Carey team. The school named its teamsafter pioneer missionaries. WilliamCarey was an English Baptist, long dead, who had pioneered Christian missionarywork in India in the early 1800s. Jimmy Moore captained the Carey soccer teamand its boating crew. He earned acertificate for swimming five miles. Atsix feet tall, he starred as a runner. Once famous as the home of Emperor Qin ShiHuang, Chefoo had become an outpost for British business. On Saturdays, Jimmy Moore and his teachersplayed the city’s foreign business team in cricket and soccer.
He was 16 years old when he passedhis junior Oxford exams in Chefoo in 1936, opening the door to Hardin-SimmonsUniversity in Abilene, Texas. There, heearned his B.S. and met Pat, the woman he would later marry.
As the war heated up in Europe, hetook a clerk’s job at the F.B.I. in Washington, D.C., and started studying lawat night. A few months before Japanattacked Pearl Harbor, he married Pat.
In America, every able bodied young man was going to war. Everyone bought war bonds. Posters said UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU. In round-the-clock shifts, women builtbattleships and airplanes. At home,women knitted socks for soldiers and wrapped bandages for the Red Cross. Jim’s* Chefoo School alumni magazinelisted *“Chefusians in the Forces” -- six serving in the Royal Navy,forty-nine in the Army, twelve in the Royal Air Force, four in nursing. He knew so many of them. The magazine listed classmates killed in thewar.
Then he read the horror: Acarefully-worded story in his alumni magazine said his Chefoo School had beencaptured, imprisoned in Japanese hands.
By now he was Special Agent JamesMoore of the F.B.I. He and Pat had twobabies. On assignment, he searched fordraft-dodgers and fugitives, chased down rumors ofGerman agents in California. Yetsomething else kept hammering on his mind: Teachers and students in his belovedChefoo Schoolhad been marched and shipped and trucked in lorries tothe Weihsien Concentration Camp. Hecould picture it all ― Japanese troops rampaging through the countryside,executing civilians, massacring prisoners. In his mind he could see a kaleidoscope of terror ― littlechildren, his teachers locked up behind barbed wire and walls ― schoolchildren, bayonet drills, guard dogs, prisoner numbers, roll calls.
Home and whatever else that wasdearest to him were still dear, but this horror was pushing them into thebackground. It was a daily tug of war. In Washington,J. Edgar Hoover preached security ― said F.B.I. agents had important jobs to doto protect Americawithout facing the guns overseas.
So why did Jim Moore choose to go towar?
You read the school’s alumnimagazine, Moore says today, lists of classmates who have died in the war. You read the news ― your school ―your Alma Mater ― marched into concentration camp. You could see it in your head. Your teachers, the little brothers andsisters of your classmates ― little children who looked for “cats’ eyes” shells at the beach where you hadplayed, little children who panted and puffed up Adam’s Knob whereyou once climbed in the hills behind the city ― little children, all ofthem prisoners.
“He HAD to go...WANTED togo,” says Pat, his wife. She wasterrified to have him leave and frustrated that her husband wanted to go whenhe didn’t have to. None of it made senseto her.
Moore heard that the super-secret Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.)was looking for people with a China background. He could speak Chinese, the language of his childhood. Jim Moore resigned from the F.B.I. When theO.S.S. let him choose an Army or a Navy commission, he chose the Navy becauseits $6 per diem gave him more to send home to his wife and children. He would go to China. A new thought took root in his mind. He wouldsign on for the rescue mission.
The O.S.S. gave him the rank ofEnsign, trained him, and sent him to Kunming, China’s“City of Eternal Spring.” Kunming was anoutpost at the China-end of the Burma Road that crossed the Himalayas. G.I.s called thesemountains “The Hump.” In Kunming, 6,000feet above sea level, he went through jump school -- the only American -- with14- and 15-year-old Chinese soldiers learning to parachute from a C-4. A plan formed in his imagination. He would support Chinese Nationalist forcesin Shantung province. It prickled in theback of his mind. Yes, yes! Theconcentration camp was in China’s Shantung province. In Shantung,he would be within reach.
Back home in Texas,Pat Moore worried. “The high point of my day was going to the mailbox,”she says. “I didn’t know where Jim wasor what he was doing. I’d send him pictures, keep him up to date about the children.” Trained to keep secrets, Jim rarely wrote.****
Americaclosed in on Japanin late summer, 1945. Reports reachedAmerican headquarters in China that Japan planned to kill its prisoners or usethem as bargaining chips. Everyone knewrecent history -- Bataan, Singapore, Manchuria, therape of Nanking. Japanese troops hadrampaged through one defeated country after another, enslaving “comfort women,”slaughtering civilians, and exploiting prisoners of war. In Weihsien, Japanese guards passed on theirgrisly message: When the war was over they would shoot the prisoners then fallupon their swords. Prisoners could seewhat looked like a death trench outside the walls of the camp.
Rescue became a gut-wrenchingpriority. American commander, GeneralAlbert Wedemeyer, ordered agencies under his controlto locate and evacuate POWs in China, Manchuria, and Korea. It was a daring plan that tempted fate. Wedemeyer pulled together six-man rescue teams with medicaland communications specialists and interpreters. Six-man teams against how-many armed Japanese? O.S.S. had two assignments: rescue prisonersand gather intelligence.
If you knew the Japanese, you knewthese rescue missions might be death traps. Moore asked the rescue anddevelopment branch to cut down cavalry boots and to convert his .38 beltholster for the left side. He would beready.
Heading for Japanese prison camps,Americans threw nine rescue missions together at the last minute, all undercode names of birds: Magpie (heading to Peiping), Duck (Weihsien), Flamingo(Harbin), Cardinal (Mukden), Sparrow (Shanghai), Quail (Hanoi), Pigeon (Hainan Island), Raven (Vientiane, Laos), Eagle(Korea). The 14th Air Force was orderedto provide the necessary staging areas.
Moore signed on to the Weihsienrescue team called the “Duck Mission.” The waiting was over. A day afterthe Emperor announced Japan’s surrender, the O.S.S. launched the teams. The sixAmericans bound for Weihsien flew from Kunming in a
B-24“Liberator,” named “The Armored Angel” headedfor an O.S.S. base in Si-an. They were Major StanleyStaiger; EnsignJames W. Moore; 1st Lt. James J. Hannon of the Air Ground Aid Service; Nisei interpreter, Sgt. Tad Nagaki; Sgt. Raymond Hanchulak,medic; and Cpl. Peter Orlich, radio operator. In the early morning of August 17, they took off for Weihsien. A young Chinese interpreter, “Eddie”Cheng-Han Wang, accompanied the team.
Yes,the war was over and they were flying into Japanese-held territory to locateand rescue Allied prisoners― a humanitarian mission. But would Japanese in these outposts knowthat Japan had surrendered? Would it bepeace? Or would it be guns bristlinglike needles, pointing at the sky? Twenty-four years old, Moore itched for action. He had been sitting around Kunming way toolong. His Chefoo School, his teacherswere beneath them on the ground, somewhere hidden in the unending panorama ofvillages and fields of ripening grain.
The pilot had trouble locating thecamp. They circled. Then―
“There it is.” Moore jabbed his finger towards a walledcompound tucked among the fields, crowds of people waving hands, wavingclothing at the American plane. A smallair strip stretched across a field not far beyond the camp. Should they land the bomber? Was the air strip mined? Should they jump?
Team commander, Major StanleyStaiger made the decision: If the worst came to worst, he said, you lose fewermen and less equipment if you jump. Bydropping lower, you give the Japanese less space to shoot you and yourparachutes.
It was a miserable day and theplane, ill-designed for a parachute drop. To prepare the bomber for the drop, someone had removed panels from thebomb bay door and closed the hole with a makeshift plywood cover. The B-24 now hugged the ground at agut-wrenching 500 feet. The rescue teamsat poised on the edge of the makeshift opening. With a small push, Moore was on his way. Strong winds buffeted the fast-openingBritish parachutes.
Mary’sStory
Nineteen forty-five had broughta sweltering summer to the camp, now awash in every kind of misery ―plagues of rats, flies, bed bugs. OurChefoo School teachers organized us children into competing teams of flykillers, teams of rat killers. With foodsupplies dwindling, teachers sent us foraging for weeds to eat. Some prisoners had lost 100 lbs.
We would win the war, ofcourse. The grown-ups told us so. We kept ourselves alive with hope. So on Tuesday evenings, all so clandestinelyin a small room next to the camp’s shoe repair shop, the Salvation Army bandpracticed a Victory Medley, created to celebrate whoever rescued us. But whowould that be? America? England? Russia? China? So they played a joyful mix of all the Alliednational anthems. Because the Japanesewere suspicious of this “army” with its officers and military regalia, theSalvation Army had changed its Chinese name from “Save the World Army” to “Savethe World Church.”
The Salvation Army had guts. Right under the noses of the Japanese, Brig. Stranks and his 15 brass instruments practiced their partsof the Victory Medley each week, sandwiching it between “Happy Days Are HereAgain” and triumphant hymns of the church ― “Onward, Christian Soldiers,”“Battle Hymn of the Republic,” –”Rise Up, O Men of God.” We would be ready for any victor.
In 1939, with so much turmoil aroundus before the war started ― starvation, anxiety, distrust ― Motherwas determined to fill us children with faith and trust in God’s promises. But how do you anchor children for the stormsof war? The school teacher in herdecided that the best way to do this was to put the Psalms to music and singthem every day. So with gunboats in theChefoo harbor in front of our house, and with Chineseguerrillas limping behind us, bloodied from their night time skirmishes withJapanese invaders, we sang Psalm 91 and Mother’s music at our family worshipevery morning. We learned the psalm “byheart”:__
“Thou shaltnot be afraid...He shall give His ANGELS charge over thee to keepthee....”
Like a needle stuck in a gramophonerecord, the words kept playing in my head: “He shall give HisANGELS chargeover thee to keep thee....”
_ Angels, angels, angels._
In 1939, Mummy and Daddy hadreturned to their far away missionary service in northwest China. Now, separated from them by warring armies,Jamie, Johnnie, Kathleen and I had not seen Daddy and Mummy for five and a halfyears.
It was Friday, August 17, 1945. In a scorching heat wave, I was withering withdiarrhea, confined to my “ poo-gai ”mattress atop three side-by-side steamer trunks in the second floor hospitaldormitory. Inside the barrier walls ofthe concentration camp, I heard the drone of an airplane far above thecamp. Sweaty and barefoot, I raced tothe dormitory window and watched a plane sweep lower, slowly lower, and thencircle again. An awe-struck, scrawny12-year-old, I watched in disbelief. Agiant plane emblazoned with the American star was circling the camp. Americans were waving from the bomber. Leaflets drifted from the sky.
Beyond the tree tops, its bellyopened. I gaped in wonder as hot August winds buffeted giant parachutes to theground.
Angels!
Weihsien went mad. It was instant cure for my diarrhea. I racedfor the entry gates and was swept off my feet by the pandemonium. Prisoners ran in circles and pounded theskies with their fists. They wept,cursed, hugged, danced. They cheered themselves hoarse. Very proper grown-ups ripped off their shirtsand waved at the B-24 “Liberator” circling overhead. Wave after wave of prisoners swept past Japanese guards into fieldsbeyond the camp.
A mile away we found them ―six Americans ― standing with their weapons ready, surrounded by fieldsof ripening broom corn. Advancing towards them came atidal wave of prisoners, intoxicated with joy and free in the open fields. Ragtag, barefoot, and hollow with hunger,they hoisted the American major onto a bony platform of shoulders and carriedhim back to the camp in triumph.
In the distance near the gate, themusic of “Happy Days Are Here Again” drifted out into the fields. It was the Salvation Army band blasting itsjoyful Victory Medley. When it got to“The Star-Spangled Banner,” the crowd hushed.
“ _O say,does that star-spangled banner still wave, _
_ O’er the Land ofthe Free and the Home of the Brave.”_
From up on his throne of shoulders,the 27-year-old American major struggled down to a standing salute. Up on a mound by the gate, a young Americantrombonist in the Salvation Army Band crumpled to the ground and wept. He knew what we all knew. We were free.
Jim Moore recalls it after more than60 years. “People running out from the camp,” he says, “people clapping us onthe back, the prisoner band playing as we got to the gate. I felt like a hero.”
The Japanese put down their arms.
Inside the camp, the first personJim Moore asked to see was his former Chefoo School’s Head Master “Pa”Bruce. In an emotional reunion, Moore, 6feet tall and wearing cut-down cavalry boots and the khaki uniform of theUnited States of America, towered over his emaciated head master. There stood Chefoo teacher Gordon Martin, whohad played soccer with Moore, and Mr. Houghton, who had played field hockey. There was Mr. Welsh, who had officiated in Chefoo’s intramural games. Steely teachers wept. Chefoostudents celebrated. My 12-year-oldheart turned somersaults.
Grown prisoners wanted Americancigarettes ― their first request. That’s not what we childrenwanted. We trailed these gorgeousliberators around, begged for their insignia, begged for buttons, begged fortheir autographs, begged for chewing gum and swapped the sticky wads from mouthto mouth. We begged them to sing thesongs of America. They were sun-bronzedAmerican gods with meat on their bones. Who could look at these men and not want to be like them? We followed them day and night, like childrenfollowing the Pied Piper. We made themgods. We wanted to sit on theirlaps. To capture a souvenir, girls cutoff chunks of the men’s hair. In thecool of the August evenings, our heroes taught us the songs of America. I can sing one still:
“You are my sunshine, my onlysunshine;
You make me happy when skies are gray.
You’ll never know, dear, how much Ilove you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Back in America, The AssociatedPress trumpeted the story on August 20, 1945:****
**YANK TEAMS RISKED DEATHTO BRING AID. **
“Chungking, China (AP) American rescue teams parachuted intoJapanese-occupied areas at the risk of instant death to bring food, medical aidand encouragement to about 20,000 Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees....The teams were parachuted down to nine places -- from Manchuria toIndo-China....”
The war was over.
Postscript :After it was over
Latein 1945, Pat Moore learned by reading the local newspaper in Texas that herhusband had won the Soldier’s Medal for liberating Weihsien. Today, Jim Moore remains shy of admitting he’sa hero. He says he did what any Americanwould have done.
More than sixty years later,Weihsien prisoners still remember. Hardly a week goes by without former prisoners ―from Australia,New Zealand,England,Belgium,Canada,the U.S.A. ―on an Internet memory board, winging the globe with their memories of that day ―AUGUST 17, 1945 ― FREEDOM DAY, the day the Americans came.
After the war, Jim Moore wasassigned to the U. S. State Department and served as American Vice-Consul inTsingtao and later in Calcutta. In 1950,he returned to the United States and worked for the Central Intelligence Agencyuntil he retired in 1978.
As the decades passed, I could neverunderstand why six Americans would parachute ― defying death ― torescue 1,500 people they didn’t even know. It was beyond my imagination. Iwanted to know these men. I wanted to know what makes an American hero.
In 1997, ina series of miracles and with the help of China-Burma-India Veterans Association,I tracked them down. What words wouldever be enough to thank a man who risked his life to give me freedom? Talking to them by telephone, sending themcards -- it didn’t feel like thanks enough to me.
So I started my pilgrimage --crisscrossing Americato visit each one of them face-to-face to honor them ―Jim Moore, Ray Hanchulak, Pete Orlich, Tad Nagaki, Stanley Staiger, JimHannon. I went looking for the soul ofAmerica. And it is beautiful!
Each one is different: Jimmy Moore,a former FBI agent and the son of missionaries to China. Tad Nagaki, a Japanese-American farm boy who didn’t speakEnglish until he went to school in a small, Nebraska town. Jim Hannon, an adventurer who had prospectedfor gold in Alaska. Major StanleyStaiger, an ROTC student, snatched from his third year at the University ofOregon. Raymond Hanchulak,a man from the coal mines and ethnic enclaves of Pennsylvania. The youngest of the team ― 21 years old― Pete Orlich, a kid with a scholarship to college, but whose familyneeded him to go to work, not go to school ― who memorized the eye chartso he wouldn’t be excluded from the rescue team because he wore glasses. Pete taped his glasses to his head when heparachuted to liberate the Weihsien Concentration Camp that day.
I found them in New York, Nevada,Nebraska, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California.
On holidays I call them on thephone, four heroes and two widows. Isend them cards. I call them to saythank you. I often tell their story to school children; the boys and girls sendto my heroes hand-made Valentines and hero letters. More than 85 years old now, they all actmodest. They say they’re notheroes.
Some folks tell me America has noheroes. They’re wrong. I see the face of heroes in the weatheredfaces of these six men and the thousands of American men and women who look likethem. These are the heroes who saved theworld. Yes, America has heroes. I know their names.