Looking Back: Our Captive Missionaries

from July 1944

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

AS we write the invasion of German-held Europe has been in progress for a week. The strain of suspense has given place to the thrill – and anxieties – of action.

The Moderator in a broadcast service a few evenings ago spoke of this war being unprecedented in the way civilians, almost hour by hour, share the fortunes of the men in the Forces. The nearness of the battle, the speed of transport, and the almost instantaneousness of wireless communication, have brought the struggle to our door and into our very homes.

We have seen the great armadas on the sea, have landed with our men on the beaches, have joined with paratroops as they and their chaplain knelt in prayer before embarking in their glider and transport planes, and have even heard the very voices of the wounded. Such knowledge, such participation, must make our prayers, very urgent and very real. And the countless stories of amazing, self-forgetting heroism that filter through must make them very humble. We owe a debt to these young men that we can never repay.

There may still be dark days ahead, but the darkness is lightened by such gleams of the spirit. God sustain them and us, and bring the struggle to such an end as shall be for the lasting good of Europe and the world!

OUR CAPTIVE MISSIONARIES

An intimate private letter from a repatriated American woman missionary, written earlier in the year, has brought some cheering news of our missionaries from Manchuria who are still in Japanese hands. It tells of Mr. and Mrs. Wedderburn¹ being in fair health and of their “friendliness and ready laughter”; of Mr. and Mrs. Dorward² (“two more mighty fine Presbyterians”) – of his gifts as a preacher and skill at woodwork and her skill as a housewife even in internment; and of Miss Elizabeth Macgregor’s endless activities – supervising the shopping needs, playing the piano, studying N. T. Green, etc., etc. After telling also of some of the Irish Presbyterian missionaries in this camp, the writer goes on :-

“I hope by now you don’t think my words unduly complimentary – they can’t be – so much as you realise the fact that those Scotch and Irish Presbyterians interned at Eastern Lodge, Kobe, represent what we choose to believe are the finest Christian missionaries and highest brand of Presbyterians anywhere on the face of the globe. Internment was practically synonymous with the highest in Christian fellowship because of them. And may I add that our association with the Catholic nuns – who quite outnumber us – was also one of the most enlightening and mutually helpful relationships one could have imagined.”

One is glad to read of the Japanese doctor assigned to the internment camps in Kobe that he is “in every sense a friend and sympathiser of each individual.”

¹According to Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, Laurence Dalrymple Maclagan Wedderburn was a missionary at Hailung, Manchuria, retiring in May 1952. Mrs Wedderburn died in 1958, Mr Wedderburn at Las Palmas in 1965.

²The Rev John Cochrane Dorward was Scottish Secretary, Moukden Medical College and China Christian Universities Association. In 1948 he was inducted to Menmuir, in the then Presbytery of Brechin and Fordoun. He retired in 1957 and died in 1986.

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