1

Biol-war\txt

Archie R. Crouch
3455 So. Corona Ave.
Suite #635
Englewood CO 80110
(303) 781-9013
SS. 559-50 7974 A

First North American Rights
13,749 words

# BIOLOGICAL WARFARE IN CHINA:

## One Family's Encounter

by Archie R. Crouch

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INTRODUCTION

During the Gulf War, when the whole world was hyped-
up about the possibility that Saddam Hussein would unleash
biological and chemical warfare on the armies and nations
opposing him in the Persian Gulf, *The New Yorker* published a
44,000-word-two-part story "Annals of the Cold War" by
Thomas Whiteside.

In all those 44,000 words Mr. Whiteside used 29 words
to describe a massive biological warfare complex in Manchuria
and its tactical operation on more than 1300 occasions in 14
provinces of China. I quote, "The Japanese employed poison
gas and also apparently engaged in acts of biological warfare,
including the spread of bubonic plague, during their occupation

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of Chinese territory between 1937 and 1945." (The New Yorker, Feb. 11, 1991, p. 40).

The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union had detailed information of the Japanese development and use of biological weapons in China. Why did Mr. Whiteside omit that data in an otherwise comprehensive report? Was that omission part of the international intrigue, beginning with General MacArthur's Command in Tokyo and reaching to Moscow, London and Washington D.C.?

Our family lived through one of the 1300 germ warfare attacks. I dug into my old diaries and photos to tell the story from an on-the-spot-human encounter. We lived in the city of Ningbo which suffered under an airborne attack of bubonic plague from October 1940 through the summer of 1941. Every event, except the rat killing in our bathroom, is documented in

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our diaries, correspondence, and reports. Corroboration of all
our records is detailed in *Materials on the Trial of Former
Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing
and Employing Bacteriological Weapons* published by the
Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1950; and *Unit
731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II* by
Peter Williams and David Wallace published by The Free
Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc. New York, 1989.

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# Prologue

## October 27, 1940. Ningbo, China

The air-raid siren shrieked a warning that Japanese bombers were approaching. This alarm was different from the 250 previous alarms during the nine months since we had moved into our home in Ningbo, China. It was just before twilight, and all other raids had been during the middle of the day, generally from about 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. That single-seater plane, flying slowly for a few minutes over the center of the city, caused a greater and more prolonged

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disruption of life than all the other raids we had witnessed.
We would soon learn that fleas carrying bubonic plague can
cause more civilian and economic destruction than squadrons
of planes carrying bombs.

We were well acquainted with Japanese bombers and
Japanese military, having seen from the cliffs of
Beidaihe in North China, the first waves of bombers flying out
of Manzhouguo (Manchuria) over the Great Wall to bomb
Tianjin on July 14, 1937. This was the day after we arrived in
Beidaihe and the day on which Japan provoked the major
phase of the Sino-Japanese war at the Marco Polo Bridge. We
had become accustomed to the clop-clop of their military boots
as Japanese officers tramping through the halls of the
dormitory in which we lived while studying Mandarin at The

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College of Chinese Studies in Beijing. Later that year I taught school in the "South Gate" sector of Shanghai, which had been devastated by the Japanese and memorialized in the novel and motion picture *Empire of the Sun* by J. G. Ballard.

Now, October 1940, in Ningbo we were part of a city over which the pattern of previous bombings was so regular that the people had adjusted their work habits to fit the expected arrival of the bombers. Shops opened at daylight, closed during the middle of the day, and opened again after 5:00 P.M. Riverbend Christian Middle (High) School, where I taught, and all other schools in the city, held classes in the school buildings from 5:00 A.M. until 9:00 A.M. At that time the students and faculty took their books and homework to hide under the canopy of bamboo groves along the canal banks

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away from the campus until 5:00 P.M. Then they reassembled
again for evening classes in the school buildings.

Through the autumn of 1940 the bombings caused a
massive disruption of life and business for over
300,000 people. Day after day the banks were closed,
shops were shuttered, homes were locked, and the people
trudged to the outskirts where bombing might be less likely.
Men and women and older children carried babies and small
children in addition to meager provisions for the day. Groups
of young people formed a volunteer first aid corps with simple
remedies, one of which was vaseline for sunburn. And many
acted as human crutches supporting older women hobbling on
sore, bound feet. Every morning, except in bad weather when
the planes did not fly, the people trickled from the side streets

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and alleys into the main thoroughfares where they surged like
an ebb tide toward the open spaces beyond. And every
evening, the tide of people flowed back to their homes and
places of business to salvage what was left of the day. We
learned, early on, that it was impossible to move against that
mass of people pushing their way toward temporary safety. It
was like trying to row a small sampan against the tide of the
Yuyao River which divided the old city from the new city.

(More)

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Just before his second birthday, our first son, Edward,
and I got caught in one of those human tides. It was late in the
afternoon of September 12, 1940, when the air raids were
usually finished for the day. Ed sat on the little bicycle saddle
in front of me as we biked out across the bridge toward the
south end of the city to buy some tree stumps for winter fuel.
As we crossed the bridge into an area of the city which had
been badly bombed the previous days, we found ourselves
facing the tide of people on their way back into the city from
their day's refuge in country hiding places. Turning into a
side street leading toward the firewood merchant, we found it
blocked by a bomb crater about forty feet in diameter and
twenty feet deep. The sultry air was saturated with the smells
of smoke, ashes, mold, and body odors released from the

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pores of the wood, plaster and stone suddenly exposed to the
air after centuries of inert existence in the homes and shops of
the families who were no longer there. We turned back into
the mainstream of people on their way in from the outskirts.
Suddenly they turned and retreated toward the edge of the city
again shouting, "The alarm! The planes are coming back!"

To bicycle against the mob of frantic people was
impossible. To stay where we were was dangerous, since the
last bombs had been dropped only a few yards away about an
hour before. To follow the crowds would be equally risky,
because the planes had recently machine-gunned street crowds.
So I turned into an alley so narrow and crooked that strafing
would be difficult, pedaling slowly over the large cobble-
stones to keep Ed from bouncing off his saddle onto the

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crossbar. At every intersection I had to dismount and push the bike through the masses of frantic people trying to find places to hide. The shouts and street noises made it impossible to hear the sound of the approaching planes. Carrying the bike with Ed on it over two stone bridges arched high over canals loaded with a frenzy of pushing people, I finally made it into an open spot with a canal on one side and a graveyard filled with burial mounds on the other side. Since the nearby hiding places were already occupied, we pushed on until we found an unoccupied mound. Eighteen feet from us lay the corpse of a small child, wrapped in dirty straw matting, resting against one of the grave mounds. The mounds were like inverted ice-cream cones about nine feet high and sixteen feet in diameter, good hiding places when they were close together.

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We hid there, the living taking refuge among the dead,
dodging to the opposite side of the mound when planes which
had been strafing the city streets flew in our direction. Edward
thought it was a game of hide-and-seek. As the all-clear siren
signaled a degree of safety, people emerged from behind the
grave mounds, stood around nervously for a few minutes, and
then started trudging back into the city. We gave up the
search for wood and joined them, and by the time we
passed the crater which had previously blocked our way,
people were digging in the broken rubble for bodies of family
and friends.

*****

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We had arrived in China in September, 1936, blissfully
unaware that was the year Emperor Hirohita's seal appeared on
a secret order to establish a biological warfare unit in the
small town of Pingfan in an isolated part of Manchuria south
of Harbin.¹ That order condemned us to be part of the
population upon which the Japanese army tested the tactical
value of spreading bubonic plague by plane in October 1940.

We were assigned to work in Ningbo, the first major
seaport about twelve hours south of Shanghai by coastal
steamer. The city sits astride the Yuyao River flowing east,
the Fenghua River flowing north, and the Yong where the
Yuyao and the Fenghua meet and flow into the East China Sea.
Fresh from California, we were to be housed in a compound at

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14 Huai Shu Lu, but the Sino-Japanese War prevented us from
moving in until three years later. The compound included a
Chinese church, a residence for Pastor Ching, a boys' primary
school, Dzong Teh Primary Girls' School with residences for
teachers, and two residences for missionaries. Roy and
Mabelle Smith occupied the newest house. The whole complex
was surrounded by a twelve-foot high brick wall on the street
side and a three-foot wall facing west across the Yuyao River.
The north and south boundaries of the property shared a
common wall with neighbors, a family-owned Buddhist temple
to the south, and a residence to the north.

The house in which we lived was the first house built on
that site. It was an ancient house constructed of hand-hued
timber held together by hand-forged nails and hardwood pegs,

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and the walls inside and out were finished with plaster made of
clay mixed with rice straw. Floors were varnished with a
mixture of pigs' blood and tung oil boiled to a dark red-brown
viscous mixture, and the roof was of fragile unglazed gray tile,
some of which always blew off during heavy storms.

Soon after we got to Ningbo we added a bomb shelter for
the children from the two schools. Since we lived at water
level on the bank of the Yuyao River, we had to build the
shelter above ground: four-foot-thick walls of wet clay from
the river bank encased in bamboo thatch, twelve-inch-thick
upright logs for roof support, six-inch horizontal logs for the
roof of sandbags; and a V-frame covering of straw thatch to
shed the rain. It was good protection from shrapnel but no use
at all for a direct hit.

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At first we did not like living behind walls, but we soon discovered that all of China lived behind walls. The city of Ningbo had just begun to tear down the old city walls when we arrived, but every institution, every business from the smallest shop to the largest commercial enterprise, was behind a wall with heavy iron grills or a solid gate which was closed at the end of the day, and sometimes both day and night; admittance being only through a "gatehouse" with a gatekeeper in charge; very much like the large apartments or institutions in our large American cities today. No farmer lived in an open home. They all lived together in small walled villages, often surrounded by canals which served as moats. Gates were always closed and locked at night. Walls and gates were China's security system in the absence of a well organized police system.

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All this was frighteningly different from the
China which we had expected as we steamed up the yellow
silt-laden Yangtse estuary toward Shanghai on the hot
afternoon of September 11, 1936. We were totally ignorant of
Chinese culture and the Chinese language, arrogantly exuberant
with the vision that if we could help educate the youth of
China, which we considered to be one of the most important
nations in the world's future, we could thereby make a
personal contribution toward a better world.

During the time we lived in Ningbo two other families
occasionally shared the residences with us. Two doctors and
their families who had fled the Nazi horrors in Vienna, made
their way to Shanghai, where they found refuge when many
western nations had closed their gates to them. Dr. George and

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Mrs. Hannah Sgalitzer were employed by the Hwa Mei Hospital in Ningbo which was to play such a central role in bubonic plague treatment and eradication. Dr. Erwin Lengyel and his wife Grete and son Hans came to us after ten months in a concentration camp in Europe and were employed by the McCartee Hospital at Yuyao, about thirty miles up the Yuyao River from Ningbo. A few days after they arrived they were initiated into the war by heavy Japanese bombing which filled the little hospital with wounded and dying civilians. Their daughter, Mabelle, was born during Japanese raids in and around Yuyao in November, a few weeks after the Bubonic Plague attack in Ningbo. Dr. Lengyel's mother, joined them a few months later. Their son, Hans, died in China before they could get visas for the United States. They stayed in China

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until 1949, and arrived, by way of Vienna, for a new life in
the United States later that year.

The whole population of Ningbo and Yuyao was
encouraged by the additional medical expertise of these two
doctors, and their cultural contributions from the cultural life
of Vienna lifted our often drooping spirits during a time of
great stress and suffering. Despite their memories of Europe
slipping back into the dark ages, Dr. and Mrs. Sgalitzer were
ebullient people. He was the son of a world famous radiologist,
professor at the University of Vienna Medical School, and
author of many scientific papers. We soon learned that Dr.
Sgalitzer he was an accomplished pianist who could play from
memory almost any classic we could name. And O-mama
Lengyel made the best *apfelstrudel* we had ever eaten.

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The wharfs were near the railway station. The only bridge from the south city to the north city had one end anchored near the railway station and the wharfs, and the other end anchored near the heart of the mercantile and banking centers at the other side of the Yuayo River. The major targets of the air raids were the bridge, the wharfs, the railway station, and the con- gested business centers at both ends of the bridge. I can still see, fifty-two years later, the bombs falling during our first air raid. Three planes flying high over the north city like seagulls effortlessly floating on the wind. Silver eggs dropping from their bellies. The eggs floating horizontally for a few seconds, then heading with increasing velocity toward the roof- tops. Flames, smoke and debris spouting upward, the

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explosions pounding our ears. I can feel again the dry cotton fear in my throat. We still have some of the shrapnel picked up from our garden after raids on the nearby railway station.

Our attempts to keep the family together and as far away from danger as possible never worked out. After a series of intensive bombing raids on the first day of May, 1939, we decided that Ellen should get Edward out to Shanghai as soon as possible. We thought that Shanghai, which had been conquered by the Japanese army much earlier, would be safer than to live under constant attack in Ningbo. A little British oil tanker was leaving that night, so we arranged a night passage for them.

After they had existed several months as refugees, sharing a room in a home with several other refugees, we

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decided it would be better for the whole family to live together
in Ningbo no matter what happened. So I went up to Shanghai
and fetched them home on the S.S. "Mohlenhoff", an
overloaded, two-deck, rickety river boat which disgorged its
thousands of passengers within sight of several Japanese
destroyers surrounding the port of Ningbo. The people fought
like animals to disembark, so we waited until late in the night
when the decks had been cleared. By August 22, 1939, we
had resumed our life together in Ningbo for the duration.

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# THE PLAGUE

October 18, 1940

The 9:00 P.M. radio news from Shanghai announced that the American government had advised all Americans in Japan, Manchuria, China, French Indo-China (Vietnam), and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to leave. By broadcasting that advice the U.S.A., in effect, disconnected itself from responsibility for any casualties or sufferings by its citizens who elected to remain.

We heard on the same broadcast that the British government announced the opening of the Burma Road, a road which became a critical part of my life, and another story, four years later. We deduced from the

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announcements that America and Great Britain would be
at war with the Japanese in those areas designated "off limits"
to its citizens. That was more than thirteen months before the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

We decided to stay if our presence would not endanger
or embarrass our Chinese colleagues. We discussed the
problem with Ms. Tsu, principal of Dzong Teh Primary
School, where Ellen taught; with Mr. T. K. Shou, principal of
Riverbend Christian Middle School where I taught; with Pastor
Ching; and with our missionary colleagues. Pastor Ching
replied, "Stay for now. Maybe you can help as long as the
United States is not at war with Japan. We will tell you when
we feel it is the right time for you to leave."

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October 27, 1940

So we were together in our home in Ningbo late in the
afternoon of October 27, 1940, a few days before Carolyn was
born. It was unusual to have an air-raid alarm that late in the
day, but we went through the customary family routine. Ellen
hurried to the central hall of our home with our two-year-old
son, Edward. We kept a cache of essential foods and clothing
packed in small bags, ready to snatch and run if necessary. I
opened windows all over the house to protect against shattered
glass from bomb explosions, then went outside to spot the
planes and try to determine where they would bomb.

It was strange. I heard nothing until the plane was over
the center of the city. It was flying very low, and that, too,
was unusual, since the bombers usually came in groups of

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three, six, or nine. As this lone plane circled slowly over the
heart of the city a plume of what appeared to be dense smoke
billowed out behind the fuselage. I thought it must be on fire,
but then the cloud dispersed downward quickly, like rain from
a thunderhead on a summer day, and the plane flew away.

Puzzled, I went back into the house to report to Ellen,
who was reading a story to Edward. A few minutes later the
all-clear siren relieved the tension, and the life of that autumn
afternoon and evening went on with its usual routine. We did
not realize the significance of that single plane's appearance
until a few days later when the first bubonic plague symptoms
appeared among people who lived in the center of the city.

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October 28-1940

The gossip around the city that morning was that the
plane had dropped a lot of wheat, so much in some streets that
the people were sweeping it up for chicken feed. By the time I
got to school the students and faculty were trying to figure out
what it meant. Some wondered if it might be a kind of
biological warfare, and we all felt a tension we had not felt
during the conventional bombings.

The testimony from the Japanese army officers on trial
for biological warfare in China revealed in Khabarovsk
December 25-30, 1949, corroborated our experience in almost
exact detail.²

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Naokata Ishibashi, an eighteen year-old technician in the laboratories producing plague infected fleas, was part of a forty-man unit dispatched to the Province of Zhejiang late in 1940. The unit accompanied freight consisting of special materials calling for such secrecy that they were not listed in the waybill. Approximately fifteen million infected fleas were in that shipment to be scattered by air from a specially designed small plane. He later saw a documentary film which was also described by his training chief.

The film "first showed a receptacle containing plague-infected fleas being attached to the fuselage of an aircraft. Then the spraying apparatus was shown being attached to the aircraft's wings . . . The plane took off . . . The plane was next seen over the enemy's positions. Then

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followed shots of the aircraft, of the Chinese troops in
movement and of Chinese villages. A cloud of smoke was
seen detaching itself from the aeroplane's wings, and it
transpired from the explanation that this smoke consisted of
plague fleas which were being sprayed on the enemy. The
plane turned back to the airfield, and a caption appeared on the
screen "Operation Concluded". We saw the plane landing. A
squad of disinfectant orderlies drove up to it, and the plane
was shown being disinfected."³ Another accused officer,
Nishi, added, "and on the screen were projected articles from
Chinese magazines and newspapers describing outbreaks of
plague in the town of Ningpo".⁴ It was also reported that
Allied Intelligence knew that, "On October 29, 1940, bubonic

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plague occurred in Ningpo in Chekiang Province. The epidemic lasted a period of 34 days and claimed a total of 99 victims. It was reported that on October 27th, 1940, Japanese planes raided Ningpo and scattered a considerable quantity of wheat grains over the port city. No one at that time seemed to know the enemy's intention and no thorough examination of the grains were made. All the plague victims were the local residents. The diagnosis of plague was definitely confirmed by laboratory test."⁵

**Oct 29, 1940**

Ellen, in the last days of her pregnancy with Carolyn, went to a going-away party for Dr. George Sgalitzer and his wife Hannah at Hwa Mei Hospital. They were anticipating

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visas with which they could leave for Shanghai and freedom in
the United States. The party conflicted with a meeting with
some of my students, so our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Elleroy
Smith, escorted Ellen across the Yuyao river. From our
veranda Edward and I could see them against the late afternoon
sun setting red over the smoky rooftops. The sampan ferry
swayed from side to side as the oarsman, standing at the rear,
stroked the water with a huge sweep shaped like an otter's tail.
Their rickshas bounced over the cobblestone street leading to
the hospital. Labor pains began before the party was over, so
Dr. Sgalitzer got Ellen bedded down in the hospital.

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War was old hat to our language teacher who came every
morning, bombing or no bombing. Mr. Wang came to Ningbo
from North China where he grew up in Shanhaigwan (where
the Great Wall of China meets the North China Sea). During
the Boxer uprising in 1900 he and his primary school
classmates had to flee for their lives. When he finished his
education he got a position on one of the newly-built railroads
in North China. Under Sun Yat Sen he became a commander
of a body of troops in the revolution which overthrew the
Manchu Dynasty and founded the Republic of China.

After that revolution he went back to railroading
again until the Japanese invasion took over all the
railroads of North China. He fled south to Ningbo where he
settled his wife and six children. Except for the half day as a

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language teacher, he made his living buying old boats,
repairing them, and putting them into service on the canals and
rivers of Zhejiang Province. "People must always travel." he
said.

*****

As soon as the ferry opened I followed the same route
Ellen had taken to the hospital the night before. I passed the
spot where, a few weeks earlier (Sept 9),
I had hidden in a trench down on the bank of the Yuyao River
during a bombing raid. I remembered the long stream of
rickshas loaded with mangled bodies on their way to the hospi-
tal even before the all-clear signal. I still remember that the
bodies jiggled like the long halves of freshly butchered pigs I

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had often seen in rickshas on their way to the market.

Carolyn was nursing as I stepped in. She stopped a
moment and turned her head toward me as I exclaimed my
delight at her arrival. Then she turned back to her mother's
breast. How fragile and utterly helpless she looked against the
backdrop of the increased tempo of bombing and the warnings
from the United States State Department to leave China at
once.

In that setting, so peaceful, quiet, and clean, we talked
about another telegram which had just arrived
from Shanghai. It was from the American Consulate advising
all Americans to leave China as soon as possible, stating that
the American government had a ship standing by for the
exodus from China. Local rumors were that the Japanese

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army was advancing on Ningbo from the south. Our answer
this time was easy, for we had already made our decision to
stay.

And that night, about twenty hours after Carolyn's birth,
I had a nasty dream which, 53 years later, nauseatingly
reappears from my subconscious. Mabelle Smith was calling
out the good news of Carolyn's birth. She was on her veranda
shouting through the dark of the night that our daughter had
just been born. But the strip of lawn between us was filled with
poisonous snakes and piles of human excrement through which
I tiptoed to the telephone in her house.

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November 1, 1940

We heard that 20 people from the central part of the city had contracted a severe disease. Although the laboratory tests were not complete, the symptoms were clearly those of bubonic plague, so the doctors made plans for plague control.

They asked the city authorities to cordon off an area in the heart of the city from which the patients were coming. No persons except doctors were allowed to go into or to leave that part of the city. I warned all who worked with us not to ride in rickshas, which often carried fleas and lice, and to stay away from places where they might get bitten by infected fleas.

We put batches of rat poison all over the schools and our homes. Edward was not allowed to leave the yard.

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I looked up bubonic plague in the little blue-covered missionaries' guide to common diseases of the Orient. The title, which I can't remember, was embossed in silver-colored ink. (Why does the mind keep such trivia intact in the memory for over fifty years and disregards the one important item, such as the title of the book?), The symptoms of bubonic plague, the book said, appear two to eight days following the injection of the plague bacteria into the body from a bite by an infected flea. The bacteria proliferate in the lymph nodes of the groin, the armpits, and the neck. We have learned recently that Japanese experiments on prisoners of war recorded, "the onset is abrupt, with chills, high fever and extreme weakness. The eyes redden, the face becomes congested and the tongue coated. Victims can become maniacally delirious and death

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may be rapid, sometimes within one day."⁶ This is
accompanied by pain in the *buboes* (lymph nodes of the groin,
from which is derived the term "bubonic"). In some situations
the hands and feet become dark purple and gangrenous because
of lack of blood circulation to the extremities (hence the term
"Black Death" which decimated the population of Europe in
the fourteenth century).

I began to imagine itches and pains as I read on, for fleas
were a normal part of our life in China. There was not much
hope in the paragraph on treatment. This was eight years
before the antibiotic therapy developed in 1948 which advised
the use of streptomycin (or tetracycline for those allergic to
streptomycin). I felt more and more panic as I turned to the
section on prevention.

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The book advised an injection of plague serum which should be used at once in a series of two injections, followed by boosters every six months. The hospital had none, but assured me that a supply had been ordered from Shanghai.

The only measures left were purely physical. "Live in rat-proof and flea-proof houses," the book advised. Easy instructions from doctors living in antiseptic houses in North America to those of us who lived in houses built to order for armies of fleas; hand-hued timbers with joints and cracks, and crumbling plaster.

"Wear gloves to protect the wrists, and shoes to protect the ankles, with long clothing tied about the ankles and wrists."

How long could one last in such protective garb in the hot humidity of the semitropics? I now understand the discomfort

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of the soldiers in chemical-proof gear in the desert of Saudi Arabia! The article ended with the happy note that the plague had been successfully controlled by quarantine, rat control, and the use of insecticides.

Fighting fleas was a new kind of warfare for us. We knew them only as tiny brown specks which disappeared when we tried to catch them. Bedbugs we had learned to skewer on pins and drop into a little dish of kerosene. Lice could be crushed between the front teeth. But fleas were unapproachable.

I explained all this to Ellen at the hospital while Carolyn slept. Then I arranged for them to stay at the hospital as long as possible and went back home to flea-proof the old house, and to exterminate all rats on the premises. We

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took care of the rats with traps from local entrepreneurs who were already doing a big business and with poison which was always available in the city shops. We improvised a brew of strong locally made soap and kerosene to scrub down the woodwork and floors, making sure that the mixture soaked deep into the cracks. The house smelled terrible for months!

November 2, 1940

My diary noted that 16 more people died and that the disease had definitely been established as bubonic plague. The Chinese newspapers carried full descriptions of the causes, symptoms, and cures. Prior to the outbreak of plague there had been rumors that the Japanese army was advancing toward Ningbo from the south but similar rumors in previous months

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had proven to be false. Now there was more fear of the
plague than of the Japanese army!

November 3, 1940

Schools with no boarding facilities were closed.
Riverbend accepted as many boarders as possible, then closed
its gates. Traffic in and out was limited to the essentials. City
authorities were collaborating with the hospital staff in
preventive programs. Cleaning squads were shoveling and
scrubbing all refuse from the streets and back-alleys. Posters
with dramatic illustrations of how to prevent and control
bubonic plague were plastered all over the city. The billboards
of bull-sized rats and cat-sized fleas frightened everybody into
compliance.

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On the billboards the little brown pinhead sized specks became beasts which looked like dinosaurs with thigh muscles stout as oak trees. We have learned from an astronomer friend that those muscles could project a flea at a speed too fast for the eye to follow (200 x gravity) in an arc eight inches high to a spot thirteen inches away. Try to imagine a flea as large as a cat with all its facilities magnified accordingly, and you have a miniature dinosaur able to jump beyond the moon in a split second! They are built for speed and blood sucking. Their bodies are flattened vertically and enveloped in flexible armor plates like an armadillo. The six spiny legs are equipped with needle-sharp claws to anchor them to their victim while drilling for blood. A pair of barbed drilling stylets extend from a small head for tenacious attachment to the body of the host. A

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flea penetrating the skin for blood thus injects from 10,000 to 24,000 plague pathogens into the body of its host, and 15 million of those little beasts were sprayed over Ningbo!⁷ From that time until now we have never been free from the fear of a flea.

Armies of brick masons were organized to build a four-teen-foot high wall around the six square blocks in the center of the city where the plague was concentrated. The plan was to burn that section of the city as soon as the wall was completed and the people evacuated. Rats can climb walls, but the authorities figured that they would not all get away.

People with plague were taken to a large building which was set up as a plague hospital outside the city. Family

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members, or others who had close contact with the plague vic-
tims, were isolated in another building until it was determined
that they were free of the disease.

No one who lived in the area enclosed within the wall
was allowed to leave except through the decontamination sheds
which were adjacent to the gates. Each person was allowed
only the clothing he or she wore and a bedroll. They were led
into de-contamination sheds where they were disrobed,
washed down, and given a clean set of clothing and a clean
bedroll. The clothing and bedrolls of plague victims were
burned.

The area was manned by specially trained de-
contamination squads clothed in green uniforms, flea
proof boots, and helmets which might have been the mock-ups

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for space helmets used by astronauts many years later.

November 13, 1940

I brought Ellen and Carolyn past the brick walls under construction, all the way down to the crippled bridge which the bombing had not yet demolished, up past the pile of twisted rubble of the railway station, to our home at 14 Huai Shu Lu.

Plague serum arrived by November 30, when Carolyn was just one month old, so we all had our plague shots.

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December 1, 1940

The heart of the eradication plan was to burn out the
center of the city enclosed within the brick wall. Trails of
sulphur were laid out like a rat maze through the condemned
area. Ignited at strategic places, fires from the burning sulphur
raced through the maze like sparkling snakes, and by 7:00 P.M.
the whole south western horizon was leaping with flames. The
heart of the city was quickly reduced to a pile of glowing
embers, and the assumption was that no rat and no flea could
have possibly escaped. The next step of the hospital and city
authorities was to get enough anti-plague serum for
compulsory injections for the entire population. The Japanese
authorities cited Chinese records which stated that 99 of the
plague victims died.

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51

December 3, 1940

A new fear spread through the city with the news that one of the orderlies at the hospital died of _pneumonic_ plague. This type is far more dangerous than bubonic since it is spread by sputum coughed out by victims and spreads like wild fire through large populations. The Chinese newspapers confirmed the previous rumor that the plague had been spread by a Japanese plane. Then I remembered that late afternoon of October 27, 1940, when I had seen a plane spreading a cloud of what seemed to be smoke, but turned out to be wheat, over the center of the city. Fifty-two years later we discovered that this was the first major tactical experiment which provided the impetus for a full scale advancement of biological warfare in China. The invading army had a plague decontamination unit

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## Part II

### THE INVASION

As the plague diminished to a few sporadic cases in the rural area around Ningbo, the Japanese military tightened the noose around the city with a naval blockade which extended from Shanghai south to Wenchow, and the armies blocked all land routes. Starvation became our new emergency. The Japanese raided the farms for food to feed their army. Nothing could move in or out of the city.

The blockade led to food shortages so severe that many died of starvation. Our diet was reduced to what we had in the house, vegetables from the garden, plus a few items smuggled

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into the city and sold under cover. Starvation took more lives
than the plague. As I moved about the city with Pastor Ching
trying to find rice and other supplies for the refugees in our
center, we often passed the corpses of people who had died of
starvation.

During those months from the apparent end of the plague
until the invasion we had one glorious meal of goat meat which
arrived on our table unexpectedly from a farmer we did not
know. Before the plague we had bought a goat to provide milk
for Edward. As the Japanese started closing in, confiscating
all animals they could find, we gave the goat to Pastor Ching

to give to a farmer who might be able to keep it hidden. Later
on, when he knew it could no longer be hidden, he decided to

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eat it before the Japanese did, so he divided it among his
friends and Pastor Ching who brought a part of it back to us.

Under the assumption that an invasion was imminent and
that the Chinese Army would not be able to hold the city, we
formed an International Relief Committee and set up plans to
care for women and children in each of eleven mission schools
and compounds. Men would be excluded because we had
learned from other areas of China that the Japanese army
raided the refugee centers and took out all the men. The
committee requested each center to add more French, British,
and American flags in conspicuous places, including very large
flags painted on the roofs. Arm bands with identifying

insignia were prepared for the Chinese aides who worked in

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the centers. Smaller identifying arm bands were made for each
refugee. Arrangements were made with rice and salt merchants
to provide rice and salt when the emergency came. Plans were
made with the International Red Cross in Shanghai for funds to
pay for essential supplies, and in some cases rice and salt were
stockpiled for the first wave of refugees. Finally we made
public announcements of our plans, advising those who could
do so to leave the city, and those who came to the centers to
bring as much food as possible to tide them over the first few
days. We prepared documents for the Japanese Command re-
questing protection for each center, including identifications,
addresses, and maps to be presented to Japanese authorities as
soon as possible after the invasion.

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April 2, 1941

There are moments of wonder and joy sandwiched in
between the massive attempts of people to destroy each
other. Just eighteen days before we huddled on the floor of our
home while the Japanese army fought its way into Ningbo,
Edward and I enjoyed a beautiful day together distributing
money and seeds for the orphans at the Bethel Mission and at
St. Joseph's Hospital.

We got home about five-thirty, played with his
little rabbits for awhile and then romped on the grass until
about six. Edward lay down on his back beside me to watch
an electrical storm blowing in from the West over the Yuyao
River. The light show was spectacular, illuminated by
lightning among the clouds against the setting sun with the

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backdrop of deep blue sky holding a silver half moon. As the
clouds raced across the moon we vied with each other to see
who would first see the moon emerge on the other side.
The spell was broken when Edward saw a Parson Crow
perched on the flag pole. He jumped to his feet and
ran with his hands out trying to catch the bird. I wrote this
line in my diary that night, "That is the way with such times as
these; they are as rarely caught as are birds by empty handed
children."

April 17, 1941

All the places of any importance around Ningbo were
bombed. Many squadrons of bombers, nine to eighteen in each
group, flew over the city all day, but dropped no bombs.

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59

People fled the city again but this time with possessions piled
on carts, on rickshas, or on their shoulders.

April 19, 1941.

The air-raid alarm awoke us at four-forty-five that
morning. Since I had some final reviewing to do for my
Chinese language examination, I got right up and started work.
I had just started when Mabelle Smith came running over to
tell us that the Japanese had landed during the night at Qinghai,
just a few miles down river from our harbor. A few minutes
later a young boy from the primary school next door ran in to
tell us that the school had been dismissed.

At seven-thirty the Principal of Riverbend School tele-
phoned for me to get out there immediately. I biked as fast as

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I could along the roadbed of an abandoned railroad. In a few
minutes a low-flying plane zoomed in from the rising sun
straight at me. I was about to dive over the handle bars into a
ditch when the plane swerved to the left and roared past
without shooting. A little farther on I saw a formation of nine
bombers approaching from the northeast, then a group of three
from the east. By the time I got to school all the bombers
were circling the city.

Students with small bundles of personal belongings tied
in cloth slung over their shoulders were dispersing in all direc-
tions along paths between rice paddies leading from the city
toward the country. Our principal was giving orders like a
general from the steps of the administration building. He
ordered me to go back into the city to draw all the school

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61

money out of the banks, six thousand from the Zhejiang Provincial Bank and thirteen thousand from The Bank of China.

Biking back into the city was more frightening than going out to the school. The planes were still circling, so the main streets of the city were empty, but small shopkeepers in side streets were doing business as usual. Chinese soldiers in gray uniforms patrolled the streets in groups of three. They had green tree branches stuck in their caps, their rifle barrels, and their belts. Some were equipped with short bayonets on their rifles, and some had potato-masher hand grenades hanging from their belts.

The banks were cleaned out. They had fled with their money much earlier, so our school was left empty-handed.

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62

After a quick breakfast at home I biked back to school as a general bombing of the city began. As the bombers flew very low over the school I hid under a hedge until they had passed. Everybody but the principal had fled the school by the time I got there. He took the news of no money stoically, told me to go home and take care of my family, and that he was off to get his own family out of town.

Back at home I found Ellen and the children out under the big camphor tree in front of our house where I joined them and tried to entertain Edward until that particular raid was over. (The many hours that we hid under that camphor tree during air-raids formed a life-long affection for camphor trees, the sight and fragrance of which always retrieve those scenes of unreal protection to the screen of my memory. Friends have

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observed that hiding in bamboo groves and under camphor
trees is no protection from bombers. We knew that, but we
also knew we must get out of buildings, and the impulse was to
be invisible to the planes under some kind of shelter.) We had
a fairly quiet lunch, then another raid about 2:30 P.M. My
nerves were jumpy by then so I went out to the garden to hoe
the corn, which really did not need hoeing, but working in the
garden always quieted me. About 4:30 the air reverberated
with several shots from artillery. Mabelle Smith came running
out to tell us that a friend had called to say that the Japanese
were just outside the city and that we should run up our
American flags. (This was before Pearl Harbor while the
United States was still considered neutral.)

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64

As I pulled the flag up on the flagpole down near the river, I heard Ellen calling frantically for help. I turned to see her, Mabelle Smith, Grete Lengyel and the several Chinese who helped us with our work trying to push the big compound gate shut against a mob of frantic people who were seeking refuge under the protection of the American flag. Soon after we got the gate closed the mob broke in through the gates to the school next door. Since our International Relief Committee had already decided we would only admit women and children, the men had to be ejected.

We few foreigners, three women and one man, were no match for the men, until a group of stout Chinese women took the task into their own hands. Far rougher than we, they cleared the men out in a hurry. I saw one man stripped of his

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military uniform while scrambling over the wall in his
underpants. Late in the afternoon I decided it would be
prudent to destroy documents in my library which might
incriminate us in the minds of the Japanese. The only ones I
could think of were *Mein Kampf* by Adolph Hitler and *The
Communist Manifesto* by Karl Marx. (I have always worked
with the policy of knowing the ideologies of my enemies).

The ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not burn easily
in the little wood-burning stove in our kitchen. I had to stand a
long time over their cremation, stirring with a poker to be sure
that no charred but legible page remained.

We set up a schedule of gatekeepers to sit by the gate
through the night. Mabelle Smith and I did the
gate watch that night until 11:30. Since the city was

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quiet by 11:00 P.M. I had Mabelle give me the Chinese
Language exam I should have had earlier in the day. Then I
fixed a cot on the ground floor of our home where I prepared
to sleep with my clothes on and a flashlight at my side.
Mabelle did the same in her home. Ellen put the children to
bed upstairs.

April 20, 1941

Listed in my diary as "the most terrible day that I have
ever known," the invasion began about 6:00 A.M. with low-
flying bombers. The Chinese responded with machine gun fire
and occasional anti-aircraft artillery. The noise was deafening
since some of the machine guns were just outside our gate, and
the anti-aircraft artillery was in the courtyard of the Buddhist

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67

temple beyond the wall to our south. We knew that we could
get hit by mistake. How can one bomb a machine gun
emplacement outside a front gate, or an anti-aircraft gun in the
courtyard next door without an occasional miss? But that was
beyond our control.

We put Carolyn in her bassinet downstairs on the floor in
the central hallway which we considered the safest place in the
house. Then we made a place for Edward to play with his
toys next to her, barricaded the space between us and the front
door with chairs, and sat down on the floor to play with
Edward.

During a lull in the firing at about 10 A.M. I went over to
check on the women and children in the refugee shelter at
Dzong Teh girls' school just a few hundred feet to the north of

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our home. As Pastor Ching and I were going up the three
steps into the school there was a burst of rifle fire from across
the river. I jumped down behind the cement steps, the exposed
side I discovered later, as Pastor Ching jumped up onto the
veranda. At the same moment that we jumped there were
additional bursts of rifle fire, which knocked a corner off the
brick wall above our heads, scattering the pieces all around us,
and another into the side of the cement stairs about eighteen
inches from where I was huddled. I stayed there without
moving for about ten minutes after the firing stopped, then
made a dash back home to check on the family and change
from a white shirt to a less conspicuous dark tan.

A little later some of the women refugees drew more fire
as they ventured out of the school toward our house. I jumped

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69

from my place on the floor with the family to get the women
out of the line of fire at the back of the house as bullets whined
all around us, smacking into the walls of our home and the
school. Later I dug a slug out of a window frame a short
distance from Carolyn's bassinet. One of the women at the
school was hiding under a desk where a bullet came in at an
angle, hit the frame of the desk and ricocheted into the
plywood at her side where it stuck--totally out of energy.

We prepared lunch during one of the lulls in the firing.
Ellen and I were too frightened to be hungry, but Edward was
having a picnic and Carolyn was only interested in getting her
pablum on time and her diapers changed. We ate some cold
biscuits and cottage cheese made from water-buffalo milk and
some tea from a thermos bottle. Edward had a cold potato. I

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70

still remember the tart flavor of the cottage cheese, the first
pleasant taste in my cotton-dry mouth since the war started
moving in on us a few days before.

Immediately after lunch we put Edward's mattress on the
floor beside Carolyn's bassinet, hoping they
would both sleep. Edward enjoyed looking at pictures of planes
in *Modern Aviation*, a magazine from which I taught my
students to make model airplanes until the Japanese confiscated
it a few weeks after the invasion. When the bombing was very
intense and so close that it shook our house, Edward looked up
and said, "Daddy, Aunt Mabelle's house is jumping." When
the machine guns were very noisy he asked, "man beating
rug?" Then both children slept straight through the worst part
of the day as dive bombers shrieked over our roof, bombs

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struck targets all around, and the nearby machine guns burst
their seams with continuous firing.

The sounds of battle slowed down about 3:00 P.M. An
hour later I saw a Japanese flag flying on the Drum Tower
Pagoda. I got my field glasses and spotted two Japanese
soldiers running their flag up on the telephone exchange
building. Women and children continued to come in for refuge
all afternoon and late into the night. We got the family back to
the bedrooms upstairs, and tried to reorganize our schedule. I
slept in my clothes on a cot near the front door to care for the
refugees as they came in, and was awakened several times by
the sound of local Chinese looting the houses across the street.

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# THE AFTERMATH

## April 21, 1941

Looting began in earnest early in the morning. Our street was packed with a long procession of people loaded down with loot. The Chinese army and the Ningbo police had evaporated like an evening fog during the night. The Japanese army had not yet set up a local government with military police. The people expected that the Japanese would take everything of value, especially food, so they decided to take it first. But rational decisions soon turned to uncontrolled avarice, and every adult and child who could walk staggered under loads of goods, much of which appeared to be of no use.

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immediate value. For the first time since the fighting began, I choked up and sobbed. My whole world had fallen in a heap at my feet. My pacifist principles became a shambles as I watched the people I had seen in the streets every day for three years, including some members of the church, plundering the shops and homes of their neighbors. Those few moments triggered the reconstruction of my view of the Christian as a doctrinaire pacifist to a new view of the Christian as a peacemaker. I knew that even good people cannot live without a system of order and rules to keep order. It was absolutely clear that force, sometimes violent force, was necessary to maintain order and that the maintenance of order would require the peacemaker to be part of the conflict rather than behind the scenes in some safe haven, no matter how benevolent. But

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there, in Ningbo at that moment, I knew that my type of
Pacifism, total abstinence from the use of violent
force, was not the answer. I prepared a stout club
which I kept at my bedside, ready to use to the point of death
if Ellen or the children, or other persons under our care, were
in danger. The club was no match for guns or swords or
mobs, but it was its symbol of a new moral strength I had not
felt before. Ellen did not need a weapon to demonstrate her
courage. From the first day of bombing and throughout the
street fighting and looting she managed our family life with a
calm dignity which strengthened all of us.

I felt like a new person as I started out in search of
the other two members of the International Relief Committee
we had organized before the invasion. Bishop Fevre

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represented the Catholics, The Reverend Tomlinson
represented the British Protestants, and I represented the
American missions. Our task was to give the Japanese officer
in charge a map of the mission properties where we had
established refugee centers and to ask for official protection of
the women and children who were now living there. I
trembled with fear as I walked the empty streets toward the
Catholic cathedral. The smell of phenol disinfectant was
overpowering as I passed Japanese sentries guarding pillboxes.
I tipped my hat, and most of them replied with a salute, some
with a bow and a smile! The tension relaxed as I continued
past large posters pasted on the walls proclaiming that Ningbo
was now part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

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A very fat Japanese officer met us at the cathedral. A drooping long black mustache pointed toward the tops of black knee-socks with split toes wedged into black sandals. I can see him now, exuding the odor of disinfectant, and I still wonder what made him smile. Was it our appearance? We were Bishop Fevre, a tall debonair Frenchman in long black clerical garb topped with a flat black hat; the Reverend Tomlinson, a short, ruddy faced Briton wearing a white cork tropical hat and khaki shorts; a young American, not long out of theological school, wearing "salt and pepper" textured trousers re-made from one of his father's old suits by a Chinese tailor. All of us were nervous at having to seek favors from an officer of the Japanese Imperial Army.