DONALD WILLMOTT’S INTRODUCTION, 2014 

I was born in 1925 in the County center of Jenshow in the province of Sichuan (then spelled Szechwan) in West China.  Getting to Sichuan involved a 1500-mile trip up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, by Chinese junk through dangerous gorges world-renowned for their beauty.  My parents were educational missionaries sent to China in 1921 by the Canadian School of Missions, which was soon to become administered by the United Church of Canada when it formed in 1925.  Both taught English, and my father also taught technical skills such as photography, as well as often serving as an administrator.1  I spent most of the first twenty years of my life in a beautiful big house on the campus of the mission-supported West China Union University.  All of us Canadian “mish kids” attended the campus Canadian School in West China, and took the same exams that children took in Ontario. 

At that time, Chinese society had all the squalor, poverty, exploitation and brutality of medieval Europe.  Dozens of warlords had constantly battled for territory ever since the Qing Dynasty Emperor of all China had been overthrown in the Chinese Revolution of 1911.  After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and the retreat of the Kuomintang national government from Nanjing to Chongqing in our province, the warlord armies were subdued and frightened into the regular army (National Revolutionary Army).  The cities, like Chongqing, that had not been captured by the Japanese were subjected to disastrous Japanese terror-bombing.  Even Chengdu was bombed, although it had little strategic importance.   

Not long after the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbour, in Hawaii in 1941, the United States Air Force established bases throughout China, and the Army OSS (Office of Strategic Services) began covert operations and intelligence work there.   

In the year 1943, after graduating from high school and then taking English courses at university level for a year, I taught English at a high school a day’s walk outside Chengdu.  It was connected to Oberlin College in Ohio.  By that time Japanese forces had taken control of almost all of the major cities of coastal and central China, along with the railroads and river waterways.  Chinese guerilla warfare was being carried on in large areas within Japanese-held Chinese territory.  That was the year Canadian armies joined the bitter battles against German and Italian forces in Italy, and the year of the Allied invasion of France at Normandy.   

Some of my schoolmates had already joined the armed forces or had been conscripted at home.  I was faced with three choices the following year:  I could stay on as an English teacher in China.  I could seek a civilian or military job with Allied forces in China.  I could return to Canada and join up there.  In the end, at the recommendation of Canadian officials, I accepted an invitation to join the American OSS in China.  The need for Chinese-English interpreters was great.   

A large part of the material in the following stories was taken almost verbatim from letters I wrote at the time, so much so that it includes slang current then.  They were written over many years, in breaks I took from academic and other “demands.”  It was fun!  I wrote them for friends and family.  None were written in recent years.     

I wish to point out that my wife, Elizabeth, organized the printing of this whole book.  From scattered stories in the files of our two computers and in external drives, she selected, proof-read, suggested small changes, and printed my writings about my wartime experiences.  It has been an arduous task, and I want to express my deep gratitude to her.                                         

Enjoy!    Donald Willmott        March 2014 

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