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THOSE WHO RETURNED
RUTH V. HEMENWAY, MD
A REMARKABLE WOMAN IN REVOLUTIONARY CHINA 1924 - 1941
While in Foochow, Ruth met Little Thunder (Hwa Hui),
the seven year old niece of one of her colleagues. She would be the
first of four girls that Ruth would adopt in China. Hwa Sing (on
Ruth's lap) would later become a physician.
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Ruth V. Hemenway was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts
in 1894 and died in nearby Northampton in 1974. After graduating from
Northampton High School in 1910, she taught in the one room school in
Conway and later in the Williamsburg-Searsville School to save enough
money to pursue her childhood dream of studying medicine in Boston.
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Earning her way through Tufts
Medical School by waiting tables in a small private girls' school in
Back Bay, Ruth graduated in 1921 and decided that the need for her
medical services was greatest in China. In 1924, she accepted an
appointment by the Methodist Women's Board of Foreign Missions to
direct a 100-bed hospital for women in Mintsing, Fukien Province,
China.
Min River - Water color by Ruth Hemenway
She arrived in China a single woman,
without knowledge of the Chinese language, in the midst of political
and social chaos. The Manchu Dynasty had collapsed just twelve years
before, and China was torn by warlords, bandits, and political parties
(including the Communists and Nationalists) battling for control.
Rather than remain in the relative safety and comfort of the treaty
ports, Ruth chose to work in remote villages among the Chinese
peasantry.
Mintsing Hospital - Watercolor by Ruth Hemenway
After her arrival in Mintsing and her initial
shock at the dreadful condition she found the hospital to be in, she
wrote: "I found the language barrier frustrating. It was painful to be
unable to understand people and not to be understood. Then there was
the isolation. Mintsing seemed the furthest point in the world from
home. There was no radio. Newspapers from Shanghai arrived two weeks
late. There was no music except what I brought with me on the victrola.
Sometimes I was seized with a frightful longing for my familiar world
across the Pacific, a longing so sudden and so intense that it brought
tears to my eyes. I began to see firsthand something of the results of
the poverty and ignorance, superstition and fear, which characterized
the lives of the people. Opportunities seemed to me very limited. Their
background was so very different from mine; there seemed to be a great
gulf between us. How was I to bridge that gulf?"
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Ruth soon became absorbed in her work and learned to
speak the language proficiently. She discovered that the local Chinese
referred to the United States as "Beautiful Country".
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Dr. Ruth, second from left and her hospital staff
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She found that she was irresistibly drawn to
these people who were so largely untouched by the outside world. She
dreamed of lifting the burden of ignorance from them, as well as
healing the sick. While she continuously questioned the tenets of her
own Christian religion, she wanted to know more about the Chinese
people and what they believed. When she found that her Chinese staff
had not understood the self righteous rantings of a visiting
evangelist, imploring them to give up their idols, she wrote: "I thought then that it was not just the "heathen" who
have idols. Almost everyone has a paltry little god that he sets up on
a pedestal and worships. Many of us worship power or prestige or
possessions or pleasure. The idols we worship are more pernicious and
perverting than the "heathen's" because we do not realize the nature of
our adoration and are unaware that such worship destroys our character.
What would the good missionaries do to me if they knew my thoughts?
Well, I would never utter them, for I had found a place to give myself
in service. I would take no risks of being sent home as a heretic.
Perhaps I was not honest with the missionaries. But I was now seeing
that the most important thing was to be honest with myself."
Outdoor Operation - Watercolor by Ruth Hemenway
In her memoirs, Ruth recounts many incidents of
her medical practice. She came in contact with many of the casualties
of the protracted power struggles. Among them was Precious Cloud, the
vicious leader of a 1000 man gang of bandits, who terrorized villages
throughout the area. At one point she was summoned to treat Precious
Cloud at his mountain hide-out. Ruth went, despite the personal danger,
and against the warnings of her fearful staff. She returned unharmed to
continue her practice. In the following passages she recounts some of
her encounters:
"Just a few days before, a man had brought his two little sons
to the hospital. They came from a small hamlet near Tenth Town. The two
little boys were five and eight years old and came to have their
lacerated faces repaired. Each child had several deep gashes up to six
inches long; every one was cut right down to the bone. "How did this
happen?' I asked, as I sewed up cut after cut.
"We could not pay the bandit tax," the father answered sadly.
When the faces had been treated, I examined the boys and found large
areas of old scar tissue from burns. "What does this mean?" I asked the
father.
"Last year we could not pay our taxes, so Precious Cloud's men
wrapped my two sons in straw and set them on fire." His face was white,
drawn, desperate. The five year old son had lost his mind."
Ruth discovered that old ways died
hard in the back country. She wrote: "In those years when China was
controlled by warlords, we paid hardly any attention to politics and
little realized we were soon to witness a revolution. For us in the
back country of Fukien, life seemed to go on pretty much as usual,
despite the gathering of political forces elsewhere. For example, in
December 1926, a fifteen year old girl was brought into the hospital by
her mother-in-law. She was a northern child, sold by her parents during
a famine. She had been brought south to Mintsing where three months
earlier she had been married to the son of her purchaser. Her new
husband loved her very much, but it was tradition for sons never to
interfere in the relationship between mother and bride. Unfortunately,
his mother hated the young girl. When we examined the girl we found
that her back was raw with whiplashes, her neck had been burned with a
red hot iron, and one hip had been beaten with stones into a discolored
mass. We found deep knife wounds here and there on her body, and her
breasts had been twisted and pinched until they were black. She had not
been allowed food or drink for a number of days and was in a state of
shock. The local police would do nothing."
At another time she recounted: " A
beggar woman brought in her little son who was almost dead. She had
starved him viciously in order to enhance the appearance of her misery
and thus improve her income. The baby was sill alive, so we took him
into the hospital. A week later he opened his eyes and stretched out a
thin little hand. Now the mother wanted to take him out of the
hospital. "If he gets well, he will spoil my business," she explained.
Since I could not change her mind, I called Miss Liu Tai-ching, our new
social service worker, and told her the story. She turned to the beggar
woman and made her eyes very big. "If you take that baby home I shall
report you to the police," she said sternly. The woman left hurriedly
and we kept the boy until he was well."
On more then one occasion, Ruth was
ordered to leave the area by the American Consul due to the threat of
marauding armies and bandits. A local girl once ran to her warning "The
bandits are really going to get you because you are just back from
America and must have money." She was given men's clothing to wear and
told to exit the compound through a back gate if need be. Once again
Ruth stayed and luckily, avoided any harm.
On another occasion she wrote: "We
awoke one morning late in June 1929 to the sound of rapid gun fire all
around us, screaming in the street, and the quick slamming together of
shop fronts. Nurses came running, breathless and frightened. "Precious
Cloud" is coming." They said. "And Bing Hu is running toward Fourth
Town with his (opposing) army."
"Tell every girl and woman to run to their own homes, if they
wish," I said quickly, "although I think they might be safer here."
Bandits - Watercolor by Ruth Hemenway
…"The bandits now entered Sixth Town from
downriver, from Third Town, and from Ko long. At the same time the
town's citizenry rushed their women and children out of town. Some were
running with precious possessions on their backs. All of the girls at
the hospital stayed with us. They reasoned that my gesture in going to
treat Precious Cloud, even though I did not succeed, entitled me and
the whole staff to special consideration. In their own homes no one
would be safe. We kept our gate locked all day. No one went in or out."
"They are going right through the village looting everyone,"
someone else reported later. Far into the night we heard women
screaming on the other side of the walls."
The next day the cook asked permission to go home. "My fourteen year
old niece died at their hands last night," she explained. "I must go
home for her funeral."
"I looked out the window and saw bandit soldiers leading off
long lines of people who were tied together with ropes in single file.
Other captives followed carrying big bundles of loot on their
shoulders. But no one molested us. It looked as though we were safe, so
finally I ordered the gate opened to let in the wounded, including the
bandit soldiers, for treatment."
Warlord soldiers marching through Mintsing -
Watercolor by Ruth Hemenway
"One morning I said to these bandit
patients, "Would you like to attend our chapel this morning?" From the
horrified looks on the faces of the staff I could see that they
considered this an awful mistake. But something had told me to ask
them, and I was sure it was right. Thus, thirty bandit soldiers
attended our chapel service and conducted themselves with propriety."
Ruth abhorred racism whenever she
encountered it, whether from Chinese or Western missionaries. After being refused accommodations by missionaries
because she brought one of her Chinese daughters along, Ruth lamented:
"It was very hard for me to digest the fact that those who came to
"convert the heathen" could show such discrimination. After all the
hard experiences and isolation of the last four months, this was a
blow. I was bitter, but I did need rest; so Mary Carleton kindly took
Hwa Sing, while I lived with my Western colleagues. I felt that all
missionaries ought to undergo psychoanalysis to root out whatever
feelings of racial superiority might lurk in their subconscious before
they were allowed to preach Christianity in China. People had described
the Chinese as rigid traditionalists. But they could not be more rigid
than some of our "good" missionaries in the field."
Ruth was enchanted with many
traditions she observed in China. She described one scene during a
local Ceremony of Atonement. "The temple was a blaze of glory. Lovely
silk Chinese lanterns with wooden frames hung everywhere, some in the
shape of temples, while others were fashioned into pagodas. Beautifully
elaborate gold tapestries hung in a solid mass over the wall behind the
alter…Large paintings hung on both side walls as well as on the rear
wall of the temple's interior. Two depicted the sufferings of the
wicked, but also the blessings meted out to the good. The good people
were arranged in family groups; they sat with contented faces and
enjoyed eating on tables set among hills, with trees and waterfalls
nearby and with mountains in the background. The sinners were all alone
and suffered the same gruesome punishments portrayed in the booths
outside. Monks in red gowns stood against the golden tapestries by the
altar and sang in cadences, accompanied by string and wind instruments.
It was beautiful, and I wished that I could somehow capture this
gorgeously exotic picture for people in America to see. When we emerged
into the night a fire blazed in a great kettle held on a tripod. With
the flames throwing weird, phantom like images, it provided just the
right touch to end a beautifully mystical evening."
Ceremony of Atonement - Watercolor by Ruth
Hemenway
After the county seat was leveled by
a disastrous fire, Ruth made this observation about the Chinese as they
rebuilt the city: "With this kind of spirit, I thought, China could
never be vanquished. I sensed a renewed thrill of wonder at the great
potential these people possessed. They had centuries and centuries of
high culture and profound spiritual concepts behind them, as well as
magnificent historical achievements. I admired their strength and
stamina. They were stubbornly loyal to what they believed; they
suffered and even died for what they thought was right. I had great
faith in their ability to grow and develop in new ways. I believed the
Chinese would eventually build, perhaps when the United States had
begun to decline, the greatest country in the world."
"It had been most interesting to
compare my country with China, I marveled at the spirit of progress and
efficiency, the modern knowledge and techniques, the humming speed of
American civilization. At the same time I remembered China with her
long history of philosophy and high ethical teachings, her love of
beauty in nature, in literature, in music and all arts. I thought of
China's young people with their great artistic ability, their high
intelligence, their reverence for learning, their respect for the aged,
and their passionate patriotism. I remembered Chinese ways of courtesy
and gentleness; their fine sensitivity and intuition were
characteristics in even the illiterate mountain people. Even the
poorest people possessed a wonderful graciousness and dignity.
Confucius and sons had given their people a great deal."
During her time in China, Ruth
learned about the new regime of Chiang Kai-shek and The New Life
Movement. Chiang's government instituted many reforms and new laws. It
seemed as though a new spirit had come to the country. "He is a man of
very noble character," noted one Chinese. "His influence is working all
over the nation," said another. "Many of his public officials have
become Christians."
While in Chungking, Dr. Ruth and her
colleagues had a distinguished guest. General Feng Yu-hsiang was a tall
man who must have weighed more than 200 lbs. He was big for a Chinese
and appeared to be a man of high intelligence. It was said that early
in life he had been caught by a rather fundamental sort of
Christianity. Popularly known as the "Christian
General," he was reputed to have baptized his troops with fire hoses.
Ruth wondered if he had later been able to rework his religious values
and longed to discuss the subject with him. She wrote: "Feng's
criticism of missionaries who lived well in China was a frequent one
offered by Chinese people of all classes; it was a problem that I too
worried about during all my years in China. Feng had the
reputation of supporting progressive programs that would build up
China's strength. He hated waste and ostentation. It was said that
after a certain high official in Nanking had built himself a palatial
residence a few years before, General Feng, who was living in Nanking
at the time, immediately put up a mud hut across the street on which he
hung a sign. On this sign was written "Feng's Palace."
On her way to Chungking, Ruth passed
through the famed Yangtze river gorges. She eloquently described the
sight: "Enormous ledges loomed above us-immense rock cathedrals in red
and blue, their irregular outlines sharply silhouetted against the gray
sky…Strange towers , spires, pinnacles, and ramparts 2,000 feet high
created the feeling of entering a vast sanctuary in dim, religious
light. Hacked out of the ancient rocks could be seen a rough narrow
stairway, worn by centuries of trackers who through the ages had toiled
and sweated in their harnesses to drag boats and heavy cargoes up the
rushing river. The river, imprisoned between stone cliffs, roared
wildly and boiled over tremendous boulders. Again and again, the
current turned to rush back upstream, forming madly racing whirlpools
up to 200 feet in diameter."
Yangtze River Gorge - Watercolor by Ruth
Hemenway
"In places we could see tributaries
far above come rushing over the top of a cliff and beak into a
waterfall, falling down the red-and-blue cliffs in soft, long threads
of white silk. Sometimes these waterfalls did not reach the bed of the
river, but fell through space until the water was transformed into a
delicate gray-blue mist that was carried down the gorge by the wind.
Further down, the mist sometimes struck the face of a cliff, where it
was transmuted into a waterfall with the suddenness of a rocket's
flare. Occasionally we spotted an enormous cave up the face of a cliff,
from which rushed a foaming green-and-white falls."
In Chengtu, Ruth met many Chinese
who had fled the Japanese invasion taking place in the east. She wrote:
"They told stories of horrible bombings. They had been witnesses to
wholesale looting, burning, butchery, and raping by the Japanese
invaders. This had made them firm in their commitment to fight to the
end."
THE RAPE OF NANKING
Unbeknownst to Ruth, other
Westerners chose to stay behind in the capital of Nanking as the
Japanese assaulted the city. Among them were John Rabe and Minnie
Vautrin, an Illinois missionary who would later be called the "Goddess"
of Nanking. Minnie Vautrin was raised near Bloomington, Illinois and
joined the missionary movement after graduating from the University of
Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. At the time of the Japanese invasion of
Nanking, she was a professor at the Ginling Women's Arts and Science
College in Nanking. She refused to leave the campus when Japanese
soldiers ordered her out and proceeded to convert the school of only a
few hundred students into a refuge for nearly 10,000 Chinese women and
children. Vautrin spent days pleading for the lives of innocent Chinese
people, often successfully, and worked tirelessly to feed and protect
the refugees.
"When Nanking fell to the Japanese
on December 13, 1937, a rampage of rape, murder and looting ensued. In
the midst of this human atrocity, a small band of Americans and
Europeans, about 20, created the International Committee for the
Nanking Safety Zone. They established a neutral area where foreigners
and Chinese civilians would be safe from the pillaging of the oncoming
Japanese.
Western missionaries, teachers,
surgeons and business people who had every opportunity to flee Nanking
before it fell, stayed in Nanking as safety zone leaders, risking their
lives to defy the Japanese soldiers and rescue tens of thousands of
Chinese refugees from almost certain extermination. Their extensive
diaries tell story after story of the horrors perpetrated upon innocent
Chinese people." - Don Follis campus minister, University of Illinois
December 16, 1937 Three days after
the fall of the city to the Japanese. From the diary of Minnie Vautrin.
There probably is no crime that has
not been committed in this city today. Thirty girls were taken from
language school last night, and today I have heard scores of
heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last
night-one of the girls was but 12 years old. Food, bedding and money
have been taken from people…I suspect every house in the city has been
opened, again and yet again, and robbed. Tonight a truck passed in
which there were eight or ten girls, and as it passed they called out
"Ging ming! Ging ming!" - save our lives! The occasional shots that we
hear out on the hills, or on the street, make us realize the sad fate
of some man-very probably not a soldier. …Djang Szi-fu's son, science
hall janitor, was taken this morning, and Wei has not returned. We
would like to do something but do not know what we can do-for there is
no order in the city, and I cannot leave the campus. Nanking is a
pitiful broken shell tonight-the streets are deserted in darkness and
fear.
I wonder how many innocent,
hard-working farmers and coolies have been shot today. We have urged
all women over 40 to go to their homes to be with their husbands and to
leave only their daughters and daughters-in-law with us. We are
responsible for about 4000 women and children tonight. We wonder how
much longer we can stand this strain. It is terrible beyond words.
Winter, 1938 After the worst of the massacres. From the diary
of John Rabe
Groups of three to ten maurading
soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever
there was to steal. They would continue by raping the women and girls
and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance,
attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. During their misdeeds, no difference was made
between adults and children. There were girls under the age of eight
and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most
brutal way possible, knocked down and beaten up. We found corpses of
women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots.
I saw the victims with my own eyes-I talked to some of them right
before their deaths and had their bodies brought to the morgue at Kulo
Hospital so that I could be personally convinced that all of these
reports had touched on the truth.
You would have thought it
impossible, but the raping of women even occurred right in the middle
of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5000 and 10,000
women. We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in
order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against
these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who
tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners-but
nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We
asked ourselves mutually, "How much longer can we maintain this bluff?"
The Japanese army slaughtered an
estimated 300,000 people and raped between 20,000 to 80,000 women,
reducing Nanking to a veritable hell on earth. Minnie Vautrin wrote:
"Never shall I forget the scene. The dried leaves rattling, the moaning
of the wind, the cry of women being led out…Oh God, control the cruel
beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking tonight!" Later, in 1940, as a
result of her experiences, she suffered a nervous breakdown and
returned to the United States where she committed suicide one year
later. Although she was responsible for saving thousands of lives, she
considered herself to be a failure. But to those Chinese people she
will always be known as "The Living Goddess", "The Goddess of Mercy",
indeed The "Goddess" of Nanking.
Dr. Ruth Hemenway returned to the
United States in 1941 and established a medical practice in her
hometown of Williamsburg. Just months before her death she wrote:
"Even now in 1974, with my mind still
shuttling back and forth between these two great nations which are
based on different civilizations, I feel frustrated and unable to share
my thoughts; I yearn to withdraw from this philosophy of ease and
comfort. But most of all I wonder about the future of the United States
and China.
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Yet even as a person must
experience hardship, suffering, and bereavement to attain maturity, it
may be that our own country, like China already, must be bathed in
tears and blood in order to find itself in its rightful place of simple
equality among the nations of the world. For it is through pain and
heartbreak that humility is born; and it is from humility that wisdom
and understanding come. Physical deprivation, hardship,
bereavement-these may not be evils but blessings if they initiate
constructive change."
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Excerpts taken from - Ruth V. Hemenway A Memoir
of Revolutionary China by Fred W. Drake
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Ella Shumway Hemenway with two of her sons, Carl (left)
and Justin (right) in their WWI uniforms
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Elijah Hemenway, father of Carl and Ruth Hemenway
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Carl Hemenway
CARL HEMENWAY "A Pillar of the Community"
Carl Hemenway was born in
Williamsburg, Massachusetts in 1898 and returned there to run his
father's farm in 1941 after leading a rather restless life. A veteran
of the Punitive Expedition and World War I, he saw action in the
campaigns of Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Meuse-Argonne, and was
among the soldiers adversely affected by poison gas. He returned from
the trenches shell shocked, and was hospitalized at Walter Reed
Hospital for a time, unable to walk. Carl was the brother of Ruth,
Justin, Fred, and Rachel, and the son of Elijah and Ella Shumway
Hemenway. Elijah was the grandson of James, the only son of Ichabod
Hemenway III to remain in Williamsburg. After returning to
Williamsburg, Carl married Jeanne Everett, raised a family, and served
in both town and county government before he passed away in 1966.
PERSHING'S PUNITIVE EXPEDITION IN PURSUIT OF PANCHO VILLA
In 1916 Carl joined the Massachusetts National
Guard and served under General John Pershing in the pursuit of Pancho
Villa after his attack on Columbus, New Mexico. This Punitive
Expedition would serve to prepare the troops for later combat in World
War I.
Columbus after the raid
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