History of WWII internment camp bonds Westerners, Chinese friends

Help from local Chinese

Despite the wartime dangers, local Chinese villagers outside the camp risked their lives to secretly send critical intelligence to the internees, providing "very important information about the course of the war", according to Stanley.

In addition, they also helped form a "black market" that allowed people in the camp to trade some of their belongings for food, such as chicken meat and eggs, as the food supplies in the camp were quite limited.

"The black market was obviously dangerous," he said. "The Chinese people who helped make it work were in grave danger of being shot by the Japanese guards."

In 1944, some Western internees secretly planned an escape. Zhang Xingtai, who cleaned the latrines, and carpenter Liu Tengyun, were among the few non-Japanese allowed to enter and leave the camp. They helped convey messages to nearby Chinese anti-Japanese forces. With their assistance, Brit Laurance Tipton and the Hummel successfully escaped in June 1944.

On Aug 17, 1945, two days after Japan announced its surrender, the US military launched a rescue mission code-named "Operation Duck" and parachuted into Weihsien to liberate the internees.

Chinese translator Wang Chenghan, who is now 99, parachuted with the US soldiers during the rescue operation.

In 2020, Wang donated a piece of parachute cord to the internment camp museum given to him in 2015 by Cox Elliott, who was 2 years old when she left the camp. She said that her mother collected some sturdy parachute cords for packing their belongings as they prepared to leave Weihsien.

These cords were preserved by her family and were not given to Wang until Cox Elliott was 72 years old.

Stanley also recounted unforgettable stories his parents told him of heading to and leaving the camp.

In 1943, it was freezing cold when his family walked with their suitcases along Beijing streets heading to the railway station to get the train to the Weihsien camp. One man emerged from the crowd to give Stanley's father a thick jacket for warmth.

"This act of kindness from a stranger stuck in my father's memory many years later," he said.

Although Stanley was very young, he said he still remembers a group of Chinese boys about his age when he was in the camp. "They used to climb onto the camp wall where they would tease us and we would tease them back," he said.

At that time, the war had just ended and the electric fence was turned off. Stanley's family had remained in the camp waiting to be transported to Qingdao and board a ship to leave China.

"When we were finally driven out of the camp on army trucks, I saw the Chinese boys sitting by the camp wall watching us leave and looking very sad, as we were too, that we would never get the chance to play together," he said.