China Interrupted: Japanese Internment and the Reshaping of a Canadian Missionary Community

Foreword

xi Foreword My friendship with Dr. Sonya Grypma first began with her telephone call, nine years ago. As a nurse historian, she was researching the work of the Canadian missionary nurses in China, which included my mother, Betty Gale.I could not have predicted,at the time,how interlaced our lives would become. As we spoke further, I began to realize what an opportunity this would be for my family. For many years, my brother Kendall, my sister Patricia , and I, together with our families, had discussed how to make our mother’s story known to a wider audience. Through Sonya’s research, this could now be possible. Canada has been quiet for too long on the nurses’ contributions to the development of western health care in China. She has reopened this chapter in our history. Sonya’s first book, Healing Henan, was published in 2008. Meanwhile, we continued to discuss her research into the life and experiences of my mother, both as a missionary nurse and as a civilian internee during the Second World War. Born to missionary parents in China in 1911, she later received her professional training in Toronto and returned to China in 1939 as a missionary nurse. China was already at war. Although the Canadian nurses were separated geographically, they were part of a large and cohesive missionary community.China Interrupted describes their lives in China during this time,how they were able to deal with their war experiences,and how these experiences influenced their life decisions. Sonya has meticulously reviewed all the available records and has met or corresponded with many members of the missionaries’families,including my own. When she asked me to write the foreword for China Interrupted, I was reminded how lives can suddenly be altered by world events over which one has no control. My parents met in China in 1939. My father, Godfrey Gale, was an English missionary doctor who was practising in Qilu. They were married in 1940 and I was born in July 1941. Pearl Harbor was bombed five months later. We were immediately placed under house arrest by the Japanese and spent the duration of the war in civilian internment camps in eastern China. Newly married and with the added responsibility of caring for Foreword xii a young child, my parents endured years of confinement, deprivation, and uncertainty. During their captivity, my mother kept a diary. She was a caregiver by nature and wrote from her unique perspective as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a nurse,committed to ensuring the well-being of my father,myself,and the other internees. Now that we more fully understand the importance of the early years in a child’s development, we realize the extent to which children interpret the world through the eyes of the adults closest to them. My mother instinctively understood this and was able to hide from me any sense of loss. While she and my father coped with the challenges of daily survival and attended to the diverse medical needs of the internees, I spent my time playing with my friend Eli, the daughter of two English doctors who had been with us since the beginning of our internment.Eli and I were the same age and these camps were the only homes we had ever known. Although I had never spent a day at the beach or had an ice cream cone, these simple childhood pleasures had been described to me by my parents as things yet to come. As an adult,I have few memories of internment.My most vivid recollection is the day of our release. I was four years old.The war was over and the Japanese guards had gone. The camp was in turmoil as the internees were packing their belongings and saying their tearful goodbyes.I can remember the wild excitement and wondering what was happening.When we left the building, Eli and I ran ahead of our parents towards the gate, which had been left wide open. As we hesitated at the threshold and looked back, my mother reassured us that “it was okay”and that we could now go through to the outside. My mother condemned all acts of violence, including those committed by the Allies. Her war experiences never changed her world view. Her love of China remained with her throughout her life.She followed the changing developments there with intense interest, but always with conflicting emotions .She never returned. At the same time...