ent camps, including Weihsien, was repatriated by civilian exchange with the Japanese to the U.S. in 1943. The categories of civilians included in the lists submitted by the Allies to the Japanese were: people imprisoned by the Japanese; people compelled to miss evacuation in the national interest; experts and technicians; missionaries; wives and families of the above categories, together with other women and children; the aged and infirm. All categories had equal priority. Yenching University professor Mary Gladys Cookingham and others from Weihsien were included in the second group of civilian internees to be repatriated; this group also included a number of civilians from Hong Kong. The group of civilians travelled on the Japanese vessel "Taia Maru" to Marmagao (Goa) in Portuguese India, where they were exchanged for a group of Japanese civilians who had traveled to Goa from the U.S.
Upon arrival in Goa in October 1943, the Allied civilians expressed their thankfulness for having escaped the semi-starvation of their internment camps, as well as their anxiety for the health of those left behind in Japanese custody. The US-bound group boarded the chartered Swedish ship MS (Mercy Ship) Gripsholm and departed from Goa on October 22, 1943, and traveled via the Southern Atlantic. They arrived in New York City on December 1, 1943. The information they provided upon arrival gave urgency to negotiations with Japan for further civilian exchange agreements, but in spite of unceasing negotiation, this was the second and last group of Allied civilians to be repatriated from Japanese custody until the liberation of the Philippines in February 1945.
Background and living circumstances
The Weihsien camp was established in an American Presbyterian mission compound named "Courtyard of the Happy Way" (Chinese: 乐道院; pinyin: Lè dào yuàn) in Wei County, Shandong, China between Jinan and Qingdao. The compound consisted of twenty-four acres of attractive landscape. The area was 60 years old and filled with shrubbery and fine old trees. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese threatened a reprisal if this area was bombed or attacked.
Barbed wire and barrier walls with electrified wires surrounded the camp. There were also guard towers that surrounded the perimeters. Every day, the internees woke up to starvation, guard dogs, prisoner badges and numbers, daily roll calls, bayonet drills, bed bugs, horrible sanitation, and flies.
The climate was at times a major problem for the internees. It was nice in the spring and fall. The summer heat began in May and became extremely hot in August. There was also a rainy season that began in August, which included substantial rains. These rains, though, sometimes hurt the environment and the architecture. Occasionally, roads were flooded and walls collapsed. The architecture at this time in China did not fulfill requirements for dreadful rains, so leaking sometimes occurred in the buildings. The winters in this area were dry and cold towards December, January, and February and there was little in the way of heating the cramped quarters. The weather started to warm up in March and the summer heat was usually humid.
In order to survive, the internees knew that they all had to work together. They created kitchens and a hospital, started a library, and educated their children without desks, chairs, or a classroom and with few books. Since the internment camp was in squalid conditions, people from all walks of life came together to peel potatoes, stoke the ovens, clean the latrines, and perform other repetitive and boring tasks. All of these tasks were necessary for survival, though. Latrines had to be cleaned to keep the sanitation at a good level and some internees had to peel potatoes to make dinner for hundreds of people at a time. Sometimes, the Japanese even had the internees dig graves for the dead or living. In these cases, the dead were never recorded.
By the time the Japanese herded the allied civilians to the camp, the former Shadyside Hospital had been gutted and looted, and supplies had been take