History
For the Maryknollers in Shanghai and southern China, World War II began in 1937, when Japanese and Chinese troops began regularly fighting in Maryknoll mission territories. The Maryknoll Sisters who staffed Shanghai Mercy Hospital lived through the Japanese invasion and takeover of the city as they cared for their patients. After the Japanese invaded southern China, the Chinese economy crashed, leaving people desperately poor and homeless as they fled the advancing soldiers. Maryknollers in southern China, Hong Kong, and the Fushun Mission continued their regular ministries and expanded their medical and social aid. Throughout the war, they provided shelter, emergency medical care, and food to members of the community when Japanese troops and bombers came to town.
When the United States entered the war in 1941, Maryknollers across China and Hong Kong immediately felt the impact. Japanese troops occupied the Fushun Mission territory by the end of the year and interned all the Maryknollers who were US citizens. These Maryknollers were repatriated to the US in 1943 on the MS Gripsholm. Five Sisters, who were German, Japanese, and Korean citizens, remained in the city of Dairen throughout the war running the Maryknoll Academy. In late 1941 and early 1942, most of the Maryknollers in Hong Kong and occupied China were arrested or interned, unless they could prove dual citizenship to a neutral nation like Portugal or Ireland. Those in Hong Kong were interned in the Stanley Internment Camp, and those in mainland China were largely placed under house arrest or ordered to leave the occupied territory. Some of those interned in Stanley were released, and some were repatriated to the US in 1942 on the MS Gripsholm, the same ship which in 1943 repatriated many of their compatriots from Fushun.
When Maryknollers were either released from internment or ordered to leave an occupied territory, not all immediately returned to the US. For example, some Maryknoll Sisters went straight to new mission assignments in Asia. Five joined the Italian Sisters of Loreto in India to teach at their schools in Kolkata and Shimla, and four moved to Macau to staff an orphanage and teach English. Maryknollers in Hong Kong who weren’t interned, repatriated, or assigned to new missions carried on their mission work as best they could, providing pastoral, medical, and social ministries to their communities. Maryknollers who had to leave their missions in occupied China moved in with other Maryknollers in the unoccupied territories. As of 1943, these unoccupied territories included Kweilin, Wuchow, and Kaying.
Maryknollers in unoccupied China did their best to continue their mission work, but faced constant stress and peril from the encroachment of Japanese troops and bombs. As the war went on and the Japanese troops moved further into southern China, dozens of Fathers, Brothers, and Sisters began moving from place to place. They continued their ministries until troops or bombs came too close for comfort. They would then either move to the next town or simply hide in the hills until the danger had passed.
By mid-1944, most of the Maryknollers left in mainland China were either not US citizens, in hiding, trapped in still-unoccupied Kaying, or at one of the new Maryknoll centers in Chungking and Kunming (two cities in unoccupied central China). This remained the case until the end of the war. Throughout this period, the Maryknollers continued to provide pastoral and medical ministries to the people, leaving them only when absolutely necessary. Immediately after the war, the Fathers and Brothers established a procure in Shanghai from which to direct their mission work, since their other procures in Hong Kong, Kongmoon, Kweilin, and Wuchow had been destroyed or occupied during the war.
Collections Related to World War II
MFBA China Missions Collection, Series 6
MFBA Mission Diaries, Series 2 Subseries 2, 4, 6-7, 11-12
MFBA China History Project Records, Series 7 Subseries 3-5
MFBA Newsletters, Series 2 Subseries 1
MSA China-Hong Kong-Macau Missions Collection, Series 4-9 and 11