Snippets: Chinese Lady Remembers War

(I interviewed Eileen and wrote this article for the Newspaper.)

Eileen Lesher, then Chu, grew up in China during the war with Japan. She tells of her experiences beginning with the story of a carved olive pit. (She's holding it in the picture.)

At an outside market in interior China, while she browsed, war sounded. “I heard machine gun fire and hid under the tables.” When it stopped, she purchased the item she had been viewing. This was her life.

It started in the summer of 1937—the Japanese invaded China. Eileen, eleven-years-old, lived with her family in Canton, China.

The Japanese killed foreigners if they found them. “Because Mom was American, we had to hide. If the soldiers found her they’d probably kill all of us,” Eileen said.

Tweetable: Chinese Woman Recalls Growing up During War Click to Tweet

That began a ten-year journey for the Chu family. Chu Chih Tich, Eileen’s father, had to leave his teaching position and their home in Canton. The family moved to a shed like home on the side of the mountain, overlooking the village. “As long as we were together, I felt safe,” Eileen said.

Sometimes the family would return home for a day or two but only after dark. They kept the curtains drawn and the lights off. “I heard the bombing at night,” Eileen says. The Japanese bombed villages near Canton. “Our maid, a seventeen-year-old girl, told me her home had been destroyed by the bombing.”

The family found it necessary to move to Hong Kong and stayed there for a year. Late in 1941, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, and again the family fled. They traveled roughly 40 miles west to Macau.

The children went back to school in classrooms built out of bamboo. “I could see Japanese soldiers on the school rooftops watching us,” Eileen said. The soldiers had rifles. This became Eileen’s most fearful experience.

Japan placed an embargo on Macau and food became scarce. “All we had was field corn. Do you know how tough field corn is to eat?”

To get rice, one needed a coupon. Many homeless people slept on the streets. During coupon distribution discovery of dead bodies became a common occurrence. Boats would arrive daily to remove the starved to death corpses.

Eileen remembers one woman who for a living, carried water from a public water spigot. “She had a baby and no food for her infant.” (Field corn couldn’t be made into baby food.) “To keep the baby from crying, the woman mixed water with dirt and fed it to her child. The baby died. We were all very sad.”

Because of lack of food, again the family moved.

This time, they moved to the interior of China. The father went back first to find a job, then grandmother with the children, then three months later Regina, Eileen’s mother.

Eileen remembers their journey out of Macau. “The roads were blocked, so we had to sneak out.” Her two brothers, Eileen, and Grandmother all dressed in black, went to the hull of a cargo ship. A Chinese man working for the Japanese went to inspect the ship. The owner convinced the inspector his ship contained nothing except cargo. “The owner of the ship protected us otherwise we would have been killed.”

Before joining the family, Regina, Eileen’s mother, hid with relatives for three months, then escaped at night in a row boat with rough-looking men. Eileen remembered her mother commenting afterward, “If I had seen them the night before, I wouldn’t have gone with them.”

While walking on the side of a hill, cannon shots sounded overhead. “I was scared,” Eileen said. The Japanese and Chinese fought each other and Eileen found herself in the middle of it. She ran.

Eileen spent her high school years in the interior of China. After graduation, she worked with her Uncle in his coffee shop. “It was there, I heard America had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.” World War II was over. “We celebrated.”

They moved back to their home in Canton. “It was peaceful,” Eileen recalls.

In 1947, the family moved to America when her dad accepted a teaching position in Philadelphia. From there Eileen went to Denison University in Grandville Ohio. She majored in Biology. Upon graduation, she moved back to Philadelphia and went to graduate school. Then in 1974, at the invitation of her husband’s friend, they came to Yankton.

“Looking back, all this happened when I was young, so I didn’t know what was going on at the time. Also, there were no newspapers. As long as I was with my family, I felt safe. I grew up thinking running from place to place was normal until the war ended. Then I knew that wasn’t true,” Eileen says.

Randy Tramp

Amazon Review:

It's a military thriller with a heart. Commander Mark Steele has an exciting job in Special Forces. Though it's dangerous, he knows his work is critically important. But that job separates him from his wife and child. When an injury brings him home, his wife is glad to have him back. But other issues cause struggles within the family, leading to distrust and hurt. Steele takes dangerous risks in his new work. The thriller plot thickens, as he seeks to save a life. But can he save his family?

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