Account of a missionary's experiences in Japanese labor camps, WWII

Many of you, by prayer, have walked the trails of New Guinea with me, and I thank you for that. If there was a verse that I would choose, with which to preface what I'd like to share with you this afternoon, it would be the words of the psalmist, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. So many people have said, what a terrible experience.

What a sad tale. Isn't that at all? It's the sweetest thing God ever did for me. Because at the end of those four years, I knew him, not by precept, I knew it experientially that every promise in this book is real.

We had arrived on the field, Mr. Diver and I, on our first wedding anniversary. I was 20 years of age, and I was thrilled to death to be there. I knew that's where God wanted me to be.

And then, those years, when I waited for the government to give me permission to join him in the heart of New Guinea, and walking over that trail into the interior, oh, I had such joy. And to see those people and to sit down with them, I've never found anything about that a hardship. I felt it was such a tremendous privilege.

Yet there was a day when, as a little girl, under the ministry of Dr. R.R. Brown, who gave the appeal at the missionary conference, God touched my shoulder and said, My child, would you go anywhere for me, no matter what it costs? I did not know then exactly the implications of the vow I made to my Lord. But by his grace, I have endeavored to fulfill the vow I made to him without murmuring. Nobody realizes how quickly the war spread from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to Hong Kong and China and Vietnam and Burma, and down the back door into Singapore.

And while this was happening, we were in Macassar on the Enslavis, Russell having been chosen as the assistant superintendent for the field. I remember the day when we heard the last broadcast from Manila. And when that young man who was on the radio began to cry out, The bombs are falling all around us.

There's nothing more now that we can do. I'm going to have to leave because the bombs are coming nearer and nearer. And then with a great cry of agony, he said, Oh, come on, America, come on.

And the radio went dead. We did not know how quickly the Japanese would come down through Borneo, Sumatra, Lombok, Sumbawa, Bhutan, and Muna. And on the 8th day of February, just two months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese landed on the island of Enslavis.

They did not come into Macassar. They came by the way of Borombo, a base that was down on the south coast. We had gone into the interior.

And just a short while after they had landed on the coast, they came up into the interior. Many of the Dutch women were also there about five kilometers to the east of us. That day when the Japanese shock troops arrived, and shock troops always had a ring of horror to it, we had heard these stories of the nurses that were forced into a cave on the island of Palawan and were killed by means of the flamethrowers, burned to death.

We knew some of the other atrocities that had taken place. And that day when they arrived, the men were beaten. We were told that we were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army, that we were not to leave our posts there, that if we were ever seen off the property, we would be shot on sight.

Two weeks after they came, the first time they came back was Friday, the 13th of March, and I have a bit of Irish in me, but I'm not at all superstitious. I really believe that God means exactly what He says when He said that all things work together for good. Sometimes we like to read that all the nice things that happen, all the instant answers to prayer, all of these things work together for good, but that isn't what it says.

It says all things. Even the hard places work together for our good. That day the Japanese said they were taking our husbands somewhere else to intern them.

They figured that Dr. Jaffa would not live very long and therefore he could just stay there and die on the mountain with us. And that day as I grabbed a pillowcase, because they weren't allowed to have any suitcases, and I put some clothing and Russell's Bible, a notebook and a pen in a pillowcase. I ran out because I wanted to say goodbye to him and I wanted to say something else, but the truck was already revved up and they were starting to move out, and I ran up to the back of the truck and I reached up and he leaned down.

He took my hand and he said, I just remember one thing dear, God said he would never, never leave us nor forsake us. And the truck pulled away. I watched him until it was out of sight and I never saw him again.

We were there, seven women, one old gentleman. We learned a lot about digging roots and other things and using seeds off of bushes. We were grateful for those of our young people from MacArthur who bravely, the troops that were in between us came during the night hours to bring some food to us.

We had among other things to contend with these terrible rats. I said always in my life I've had in my missionary career rats. We even had them in the baleen that weighed 20 and 30 pounds.

But I'll tell you something about where we are now in the outback of Australia. I don't have any rats and I don't have any mice either. I have great big pythons.

They take care of them and so long live the pythons. But we had rats. They came in because it was rainy time.

They could come through most any place in the house. It was just a single walled house. I remember those days when Margaret, Jackery, and I would go through that house, each of us armed with a broom, and we would just run those rats out of the room and get them into the kitchen where we could shut the doors and it was the only way that we could and the only place where we could shut off their exit.

Each of us armed with a broom. We fought those rats. They'd run up the wall and jump on us and we'd scream and yell until we finally killed all that we had corralled.

We were living among the Bugis people who are much feared because they were great pirates throughout the islands. And they had, just before the Japanese arrived up in the mountains, killed four Dutch people, stabbed them to death there, and the men were apprehended on the property by the Dutch police. They were just covered with blood.

We knew something of the history of these people too. They wanted independence from the Dutch. And that one day when we had run the last of the men of the rats that we had corralled and we had killed the last one and we threw out the remains, I can remember us going to bed that night.

And you know how sometimes in sort of your half-sleep you're conscious of things going around you but you aren't quite awake and suddenly about midnight I came fully awake and I sat up in bed and I thought, there are rats everywhere in this house. And I shook Margaret Jabber and said, Margaret, we better get up and we better light the lamps and see if we can get some more of these rats because they even ate your shoes if you didn't put them away. They ate your clothing, anything that was loose.

And especially food was very precious to us at that time. When I came to the door in the hallway that ran from the living room down to the bathroom at the other end of the house, the living room, dining room, I opened that door and in the light of a tiny little oil lamp that we kept there for Dr. Jaffrey, a man who sometimes had to get up during the night hours, and I saw someone just swish past me in the dim light of that little oil lamp. And I thought it was Dr. Jaffrey and I thought, what a strange way for him to be acting in the middle of the night.

Why is he running down there? And when I came out into the hall, I saw one of these boogie spandrels. They wear the black sarongs. He threw it up over his shoulder.

He pulled out his long machete. And why I did what I did, I don't know because I'm really not a very brave soul. But I took off down that hall after him and he was a bigger coward than I was.

He ran! And I went right after him through that bathroom, across the porch, down over the mountainside. And when I saw several others join him on the outside, I just stopped dead. And I said, Lord, what a stupid thing for me to do.

And just like that he answered me. He said, The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivers them. Just as quickly, when the war was over, I went to find a young man I thought was involved in that.

And I said to him, Noma, were you there that night? He said, yes, I was. They had just taken everything that was loose. All our books were out.

Evidently thinking there was money hidden there. He said, we were also having a hard time. And I said, Noma, how is it that even though we heard you come back night after night, that you didn't come in the house again? Because there were plenty of places where they could have gotten in.

And especially the door I had nailed up because they had removed the doorknob, the lock, and everything that went with it. He looked at me and he said, Mama, we came back there. But he said, you always had those people in white on guard around your house.

There was a day when they came and finally said, you're living in much too much luxury. Now that was really a relative term because we didn't have much luxury then. And so we were moved to another shack across the mountain.

We went over there and we lived for several months. We learned about one bush that had seeds that the more water you added to it when you were cooking outside over an open wood fire, we would stir it, Mrs. Presswood and I would sing. And the song I think that we sang the most was He Makes the Rose the Object of His Love.

Didn't know then I was going to be a rose. He guides the eagle through the pathless air. Surely he remembers me.

My heavenly father watches over me. I blocked out many things about those days there. Then one day the Japanese came and said, we're going to take you somewhere else and intern you.

And so we spent the night in the church. It was a very difficult night. Babies crying, women crying.

Then very early before the sun was even up, the trucks were being revved up. We got into the truck. Those of us who were young, we got someone who could hang onto the cab and the rest of us made a cordon around our older people.

It was a steak bed truck. And they drove like idiots all the way down there. We could easily have been thrown off.

But God helped us to hang on until we got the women and the babies that were in the middle of the truck bed safely there. I recognized the buildings when we arrived. It was 15 kilometers from Mecosta.

We saw that it was the old TB sanitarium. And they were putting up bamboo barracks with grass rows, mud floors, double-decker bamboo racks on which we were to sleep. I was chosen head of the largest barrack in the camp.

We were all the foreigners, about 57 varieties. We were the Heinz barrack. I'm sure the reason that I was chosen was although I was one of the youngest ones in the barracks of the women, was that I knew the three languages, English, Dutch, and Indonesian.

And so the first night I said, every night I want you to gather with me. We're going to read and pray and ask God's protection. God kept us and we stayed together when others were having trouble and under distress.

Many of the people continued to move from one place to another trying to find somebody that would take them in. And yet God brought some of those women to the Lord. And I thank God for it.

We had to work. We did coolie work. I wore a brace for several years after I came home because my back was injured.

I was on the coolie gang. You backed up to the trucks and grabbed the ends of these bags of sugar or rice and you walked away with them or else. And we built roads for the Japanese.

We worked in the rice fields, mud up to our hips so that we could have vegetables for them. We raised their pigs. The camp commander went out into the villages and he shot the dogs, brought them in.

We skinned them, dressed them, and cooked them with the stems of the banana plants so that the pigs could have three hot meals a day. In came the garbage from Makassar. Dreadful waste.

There were lots of things that you could just run your hand through. If they didn't fall between your fingers, they were big enough to eat. We called it the finger test.

We began to eat the dog livers. And when he found out we were doing that, he said, if I ever catch anybody, I'll beat you and you'll never forget it because those pigs needed the nourishment. Sometimes we had enough to eat.

Sometimes there was not enough to eat. When they brought in the little fish, they were about this long, about six inches long. And we didn't take anything off of them and not a thing out of them.

And I looked at Ruth one day and she was struggling with the head of the fish. And she said, Boy, I think I could eat that if it didn't look up at me so pitifully. I said, Long since lost my pity, Ruth.

Here, I'll trade you a piece of the tail for your head. The only thing about a fish you cannot eat is the pupil of the eye. It becomes just like a PB when it's roasted.

And then the day came when we had many, many people down with dysentery. A third of the camp was down. We set guards over those in the last stages of dysentery to keep the rats off of them.

They smelled death. Had rats in our beds. I looked up one night and I saw coming toward me, up my blanket.

I had a little blanket there that Miss Jaffer had given me. And I saw this big rat coming toward me. And I quickly pulled my feet in underneath me and I yelled to Margaret who was sleeping beneath me.

Margaret Kemp. I said, Margaret, when I give you the signal, would you just pull this mosquito net out? Margaret got up and I said, I saw the rat just go around me and he had just gone on my left side. And I said, Pull it out.

And I got the mosquito net between the two of us and I slid down the pole and I grabbed a stick to go up and get him but he had gotten scared too so he left. But we had to fill in two and three jobs a day because there were so many women that were ill. And I said to Mrs. Jouster, the head of the camp, I have a lot of young people here and we can do two or three things.

So one day I came running back. My third job, I was pumping water so that our camp commander could have a large cement tub filled with water. Gallons and gallons and gallons.

We probably pumped three hours in order to fill that so he could have a hot bath. The fire was filled in underneath. And I came running back from there and Mrs. Jouster, the head, the Dutch woman, who was head under the Japanese, was standing there waiting for me and she said, Mevrouw Deibler, I just came to talk to you today and I said, Oh yes, about the work.

I said, Mrs. Jouster, we still have a lot of young women in our barracks and they're all willing to help out for those that are sick. And we talked about the work and finally she stopped and she said, But I didn't come to talk to you about the work. And I said, What is it? And she said, Your husband, up in the camp in Pari Pari, I found out then where he had been.

He was up a hundred kilometers north of me, about 60 miles. And she said, He's been very ill. And when I saw the tears in her eyes, I just reached out and I grabbed her shoulders.

I said, Mrs. Jouster, you don't mean he's gone. She said, Yes, some three months ago he died in the camp in Pari Pari. Love is a many-spended thing.

And I suddenly saw my hopes of going back to New Guinea and having a happy life when the world was over, completely shattered. And I turned and I walked away from her to the only one I knew to go to. And I said, But God! And immediately he answered me.

He said, Did I not say that when thou passest through the waters, I would be with you? And through the floods they'd not overflow you, and neither would the flame kindle upon you. Oh, beloved, I learned something then of the comfort of the Holy Spirit. You know there is a peace that cometh after sorrow, of hopes surrendered, not of hope fulfilled.

A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow, but simply upon the tempest that is stilled. A peace it is which lives not now when joy is excessed, nor in a happy life of love secure, but in the unerring strength the heart possesses from conflicts won while learning to endure. A peace that is in sacrifice secluded, a life subdued from will and passion free, it is not the peace that over Eden brooded, that untried peace, but it was that that triumphed in Gethsemane.

As I walked back to the barracks, all I could think was, Dear Lord, there is so much sorrow in this camp, and would you help me just to dry my tears and make my sorrow mine alone. We'd had the people from the Kempeitai. Now, you maybe don't know what that was.

It was the Gestapo. It was a form of Gestapo patterned after the German Gestapo. One day they came, and they took Miss Kemp and Miss Sealy away, my fellow missionaries.

And when I saw that beautiful black limousine, we always knew the Kempeitai. Women had been taken away before. Some came back, and those that came back never talked about what happened to them, and some never came back.

And that day, as we saw the big black limousine move out of the camp, I just cried out to the Lord, and I went back in, and I crawled up on my double-decker rack, and I said, Lord, why did you allow them to take Miss Kemp and Miss Sealy? What have they done? They've done nothing. They've been missionaries. They're godly people.

And the Lord said, I do all things will, my child. And for two weeks, we cried to God that he would spare them, that he would bring them back. And then one day, with joy, we looked, and there was the big black limousine coming.

And we all whispered to one another, Kempeitai, Kempeitai. And that day, when the car pulled in in front of the office of the camp commander, Miss Kemp and Miss Sealy did not get out. There were soldiers, and there were the Kempeitai officers.

They went up into the headquarters, and I knew in my heart they would come for me. So I started to walk over toward the office, and just then, the office boy came running down, and he said, yes, come quickly. He said, they're calling for you.

I ran then. I went up into the office, and there was a little table there in the center of the room, and they were walking about me. All I could understand was America.

Languages came easily for me. I tried my best not to learn any. I had to learn to say thank you very much.

I'm really not sure what for. But I had to learn to say that as did the rest of us, and say good morning and good evening, and we all bowed when he came to take a bed check to make sure everybody was in the barracks. All I understood was America, and then they would laugh.

And then I saw the man just reach out and place in front, on the table in front of me, a paper on which was my name, Darlene Daigler. I looked at it, and I recognized Philo MacNeely's handwriting. And he said, is that your name? I said, yes, sir, but I didn't write that.

He said, I didn't ask you if you wrote it. He said, but what do you know about Morse Code? And I said, sir, I have never studied Morse Code. I do not know anything about it.

He began to tap out messages on that desk to me. I didn't respond because I did not know Morse Code. And I said, sir, I don't know Morse Code.

He said, we're going to take you somewhere else to examine you. We'll see how much you know about Morse Code and what you've been doing. He said, go and get another dress and come back quickly.

I ran. I grabbed a dress that had been given to me by people that I see here today, friends of mine who were sent for a birthday gift, and somehow I had always kept it. And why? I had a dress on that day.

I can't tell you, but God knew where I was going. And Betty and Nina Knudsen had sent it to me, and it had a complete, full, circular skirt. I grabbed another dress beside the one I was wearing and my Bible.

I came back. I got into the car, and I was being sped down to the city of Mecosa, which I knew because I had worked there. And I saw them pull into that circular drive in front of what had formerly been our native insane asylum.

And there I saw Miss Kemp in the first cell block, and I saw her hanging onto the bars on the window, and she was shaking her head, and I could see that woman who had weighed about 170 pounds in just two weeks with skin and bone. And I could see her arms there. They were black and blue, and she was going like this, shaking her head.

And I just cried out, Lord, You took Russell. Do I have to go through this? And so sweetly, my Lord answered me. He said, My child is the ones I love that I discipline.

I said, All right, Lord. And then, just like that, I remembered the words that Dr. Jagger had spoken to me the day they took him away from our camp. He looked down over the tailgate of the truck at me, and he said, You've been like a daughter to me.

I love Mother. I love Muggie. But next to them, I love you.

And he said, Whatever you do, Lassie. He said, Be a good soldier for Jesus Christ. And those words were ringing in my ears as I felt the bayonet go into my back, and he told me to move.

And I started in, and they took me to the office. They grabbed my Bible, the first thing. They said, You cannot have that Bible.

You'll just sit there and think about that Bible and not think about your evil deeds against the Imperial Japanese Army. And they ripped it out of my hands. And I remember when he ordered me out the door, and the soldier was there.

And I started down through the next cell block. I could hear Miss Seeley. In two weeks, that woman was a raving maniac.

And I could hear her, and then I went across a courtyard, and there was the last cell block in this prison. And as I turned, I followed the guard. Then he walked in front of me looking at the doors, and finally came to a door on which was written in chalk, Orang Inimustimati.

This person must die. And I knew I was in death row. They had completely boarded up that window so that nobody could see who was in, and I could not see out.

I remember the terrible fear that came over me when I saw that door thrown open in that little six-by-six-foot cell. And then he just put his hand in there and shoved me. I hit the other side, and I turned around quickly, and I ran back to the door that was being pulled shut, and I was watching the end of the key because I knew when it made a complete revolution, I was locked in death row.

And I was sitting on my heels, and suddenly I realized I was singing a song I learned as a little girl in Sunday school back in Brunei. And it was the second verse. I don't remember memorizing it, but it said, Fear not, little flock.

Whatever your lot, he enters all rooms, the doors being shut. He never forsakes. He never is gone.

So count on his presence from darkness till dawn. They could lock me in, but they could not lock me out. I don't know if you can understand it, but that little cell became a sanctuary for me, and I remember the words of the song of Madame Gayon.

It says, My lord, how full of sweet content while she was in prison, I passed my years of banishment, and those precious times to me because my lord was there. I don't have time to tell you about all of those hearings. They said I'd been an American, and that I was passing on the word to the allies as to troop movements, the numbers of soldiers, and so forth.

It was ridiculous, but what do you do? You have no defense when they tell you that you have done this, and they just yell at you, scream at you, and they kept flicking me right between my eyes. My eyes were all, have you ever run into a door? You know what happens to your eyes. I had two beautiful black eyes, and I would come back from those hearings, and I had said, Lord, please, if I ever come out of this, I don't want you ever to be ashamed of me that I was not a good soldier, and if America ever hears about this, I don't want them to be ashamed of me either.

Make me a good soldier, and I never shed a tear before them, but I'll tell you this. When I got back to that cell, and that door was locked, and I knew that there was no one there that could hear me, I wept buckets and buckets of tears, and I would cry, Lord, please, I can't go through another one, and my Lord would always answer back, but my grace is sufficient for you, and then I remembered, and I knew, oh, my God, laid it on my heart just two weeks before I'd come down. I had to memorize a poem by Annie Johnson Flint, that woman who all her lifetime had such terrible arthritis, and the pillows and pillows that they had piled under her to try to ease the pain, and yet out of that suffering came a poem that God knew someday a young missionary would need, and when he would say to me that my grace is sufficient for you, I would sit up in that cell, and I would begin to sing, He giveth more grace when the burdens go greater.

He sendeth more strength when the labors increase. To add a reflection, He addeth His mercy to multiplied trials, His multiplied peace. When we have exhausted our store of endurance and our strength is failure, the days have done.

When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, Father's full giving has only begun. His love has no limit. His grace has no measure.

His power has no boundary nor meant to bend, for out of His infinite riches in Jesus He giveth and giveth and giveth again. And I could go through those hearings time and time again until I was sentenced to be beheaded as an American spy. And then when I had the tears there on the floor, I'd just take up the skirt of that beautiful dress, and I would just wipe up my tears because I did not dare to leave them there because I knew that there were those that had to eat their faecal matter off the floor.

I had dysentery. I had cerebral malaria. I had beriberi, a form of dropsy that creeps up toward the heart.

My legs were about that big around, and the rest of me was, my hands looked like bird's claws. The first day, when they had, realizing that I had dysentery, they had changed and instead of giving me a little glob of rice in the center of a tin plate, they slid across the floor to me a plate that had porridge in it. It was porridge that hadn't even been, the rice had not even been washed.

It was just cooked in water, no salt, because of the beriberi that I had. And I looked at it, and I was so excited because on the top was what I was sure was grated coconut. I love grated coconut.

And I just said, Oh Lord, thank you. Somebody knows I love grated coconut. And then when I got it over, I lifted it up, and when I got over to where the light from the trance from above the door fell on it, I saw it wasn't coconut.

It was just full of worms. And so I just pushed those worms up to the side, and I thought, Oh, I'll just get those out, but because I had dysentery, because I had nothing but an open tin, and that's the story that I could only share if you're just swimming here. But thousands of these great big black, what do we call them, horseflies-like, the blue bottle fly were in that room all the time and everything.

I had to just keep the flies away from it, and I was trying to keep the flies away from those worms up there, and they still were just having a, they were gorging themselves. And I thought, This is ridiculous. If they can eat those worms, so can I. And I never took another worm out of there.

And I would just take this chaff and the little pebbles that were in there out. I remember the many times when my Lord would just come into that room with such a brightness of His presence that I would sit up and I would think, Oh, I need glory, and then I would see the walls about me. And I knew I was still in the prison, but my Lord was with me.

One day I was having an attack of malaria. It wasn't so bad when you had the fever. I could just lie there and be awash in that heat that was just flowing through my body and the perspiration just dripping out of me.

But when the chills started and then the fever again, and I said, Lord, I just need some air on my face. And so I was thankful for my training as a gymnast and I got up there and I got a hold of the bars on the window and I pulled myself up till I could just reach across and grab the bars on the transom above the door and there I stood balanced on the doorknob and the casing of the window and hanging onto the bars. And suddenly I realized, Oh, out there coming onto the courtyard were all of the native prisoners.

They were there for just minor misdemeanors and I saw them walking back and forth. But the one that caught my eye was a woman who every time the guard would stamp his feet and go off that way, she would just scuttle along the ground until she was headed toward a fence that was on the end of the courtyard covered with Honolulu creeper. And when he would stamp his feet again and start to come back, she just stopped dead.

And I was watching this. There he goes. There she goes.

And I thought, She wants to go over there. Why doesn't she just go over there? Well, there he goes again and there she goes and suddenly she got up next to that fence and he went that way and I saw a hand come through that Honolulu creeper with a big bunch of bananas on it and she just put it under her sarong and she walked away and nobody I'm sure knew she had those bananas, but I did. I tell you, I wanted anything to eat, but seeing those bananas, I could smell them, I could remember the taste.

I just dropped down onto the floor and I got on my knees and I said, Lord, I'm not asking you for a whole bunch of bananas that she got, but could I have just one banana? And then I do what many of us do. I tried to figure out how God could answer my prayer. And so I, instead of linking my impotence with God's omnipotence, I said, Lord, now, there are those two men that have been trying me.

And then I remembered, I said, Lord, just check those off because they would never give me a banana. And I said, Lord, here's that guard out here. And I said, no, that fellow either.

He stabbed me. He wouldn't either. And I said, Lord, here's that older Indonesian man that comes at night.

I think he might, but Lord, don't tell him to because if he were caught, then they would shoot him. So Lord, I said, there isn't any way you could get a banana into this cell to me. And Lord, please don't think that I do not appreciate this bitter rice, about two-thirds of a cup of rice a day.

Please don't think that I don't appreciate it. I could be here without anything at all. Very often, when the ships came in, then they brought the officers down, and you were brought out, and you were put on display, and they would laugh at you, and I tried to really do a beautiful 90-degree bow because if you didn't, they cracked you over the back with the bamboo canes that they always carried with them.

And I heard, and I knew, your ears become very sensitive. I knew that there were officers coming, and they were talking, and I stood up, and by this time, I had lost so much weight. When I finally came out of this cell, I weighed 60 pounds.

And I had lost so much weight, and I didn't have very much strength, but I used to walk one way, and then I'd turn around and walk the other way, and I thought, I'll never let them get the best of me. I'm going to survive. I am.

And that day, I was so weak. I waited until he got the key in the door, and then I stood up, and I said, Lord, help me to make a good bow. But when the door went open, I saw the two men who had been examining me, but with them was the Japanese camp commander from that other camp, Kampili, from which I had been brought.

And he was smiling, and in all those weeks, in the weeks that I had been there, I had not seen one friendly face. And he was smiling, and I just clapped my hands. I said, Oh, Tonya Maji, so pretty, so butler, so but young llama.

I said, Mr. Yamaji, it's almost like seeing an old friend. And the tears came in his eyes, and he walked out of the cell and never said a word to me. But a long, long time he talked to those men out there.

I don't know what he was saying, but I think that he was telling them about the day when I heard that Russell was dead, had been dead for three months. He called me over late that afternoon to the office, and he said, Nyonya, you have been such a help to the women here in the camp. He said, I just came to tell you that this is war.

Did I not know it? He said, women in Japan are hearing just what you heard today. And I said, I understand that, sir. He said, you're very young.

He said, you can go home someday. You can go dancing. You can go to the theaters.

You can marry again. And you can forget these dreadful days of war. And I said, Mr. Yamaji, may I have permission to speak to you? You always ask permission.

Otherwise, you'd get this across your mouth. He nodded to me. He said, sit down.

I sat down in the chair that was across the desk from him. He sat down in his chair. And I said, Mr. Yamaji, I just want to tell you something.

I want to tell you about a person. I said, I'm not like people who have no hope. I said, someday I know that I will see Russell again.

But I said, one day, a little girl, just nine years of age, back in Boone, Iowa, in America, I came to know someone who changed my life. I said, his name is Jesus. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, Mr. Yamaji, but he was the son of God, the creator.

And God sent him here because he loved us. And he died on the cross for us. And as I had the most beautiful opportunity to lay the plan of salvation before that Japanese camp commander, and as I talked to him, I said, and I saw the tears start down his cheeks, and I said, that's why I don't hate you, Mr. Yamaji.

I said, where there's a heart filled with the love of God, there's no place for hatred. And I said, I just, maybe God brought me to this time and this place just to tell you that he loves you and he died for you. And he stood up, tears running down his cheeks.

He went into his bedroom and I knew he was crying in there and I waited and waited because he did not leave until you were dismissed, but he did not come back. And I walked down out of the office, but I knew from that moment on, that man was my friend. I think he was telling these people this, because their head kept getting lower and lower.

And finally, he turned around and came back in. He looked at me and he said, My, you're very ill, aren't you? And I said, Yes, sir, I am. He said, I'm going back to the camp now and the women are all asking how you are and could we find out anything about you.

I learned later, that man had spent three days getting to get permission to come in to see me. And he said, have you any word for the women back at the camp? I said, Yes, sir, Mr. Yamaji, when you go back, would you tell them for me that I'm all right and they will understand I'm still trusting in the Lord. He nodded.

He turned around. He left. I didn't know that the Gestapo had been up there the week before and told them that Mrs. Diver would never return to camp.

She was dying of tuberculosis, did not want them to know that I was to be beheaded. After he had left, the door was pulled shut and it hit me. I didn't bow to those Gestapo men.

And I just cried out. I said, Lord, why didn't you help me to remember to bow to them? I said, when Yamaji's gone, they're going to come back and they're going to get me and I'm going to be taken back to the hearing room. And I stood there in fear and trembling and I heard the guard coming.

So I stood up and I wiped my tears on that beautiful skirt and I said, I need what it takes again today to be a good soldier for Jesus Christ. So help me. The guard came.

He opened the door. He walked in. He laid them all on the floor.

Do you know what they were? Yes, most of you do. They were bananas. I sat down.

I looked at them. He said, they're all yours. They're all for Mr. Yamaji.

He pulled the door shut, was gone. I sat down. I began to count.

There were 92 bananas. God doesn't just do things in a stingy way. I looked at those.

I never, ever remember then or since when I've ever felt such shame before my Lord. And I just pushed them off in the corner and I said, Lord, I couldn't even trust you. They're one banana.

Look what you've done. Oh, Lord, look at them. And so sweetly he spoke to me and he said, but my child, that's what I delight to do, the exceeding abundance of anything you ask or think.

And I wanted to eat them all at once. I knew I didn't dare. I knew that I would be sick.

And that wasn't a very pleasant thought. I said, Lord, I don't have very much character, but could you just help me not to eat more bananas than my body can digest at that very moment. And so every day I would just take just so many bananas.

And the day came when I peeled the last banana. The guard opened the door. He said, we're going to take you somewhere else.

And I thought, yes, I'm going now to the headquarters where the executions take place. And so I stood up and I said, Lord, just once more, just put some fiber in me so that nobody will ever be ashamed of me. And I followed the guard, got out there, got in the car.

The Lord was trying to tell me that he was going to protect me. He kept saying that three days before that, who delivered and doth deliver, he will yet deliver. Just those three phrases.

Who delivered and doth deliver, he will yet deliver. And I'd say, Lord, I do thank you. You delivered me from the law of sin and death.

I'm free. I'm free in you. And yet, the Lord kept saying those verses to me, that verse to me with just those three phrases.

I got in the car. Miss Kent and Miss Celia were there. They had to write out, they were asked to write out a statement for them that they were so grateful to the Imperial Japanese Army that they had been so kind and had forgiven them.

And Margaret said, Please, darling, would you write it? I can't. And Miss Kent, Miss Celia couldn't have written anything at that moment. And then I was taken where the executions took place.

This man who was head of the team that had been trying me, he stood before me with a great raft of papers and he kept going through them and reading all the things. I've done the most enormous list of things that were not true. And finally he just said, You have done those things whereof you're worthy of death, he said.

And he drew his finger across his throat and grabbed his sword at his side. And as I saw that coming out, I felt like I was frozen inside and suddenly my heart was just singing, I'll live for him who died for me. And I said, Lord, that's a strange song at this moment and I'm going to die.

He was trying to make me understand that nothing is too hard for the Lord. And just at that very instant when I was watching, fascinated at that hand drawing that sword out, cars coming from every direction, horns honking, people running, ceramic tile on the floor there and they always wore the big jack boots like the Germans wore. And they were running, yelling for that man.

He just slid back in and he went into the headquarters room where they were all in conference over something and there was such yelling and I just stood there waiting and jumped into the back of the car of Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley and we started out going to Makassar, back from Makassar to the camp at Kampili from which I had come. And as we came up to the moat that was surrounding the camp and they opened the gate, that man reached up and he took a hold of my arm. I thought he was going to break my arm and I bit my lip and I said, God help me not to scream.

I'm not sure he was going to break my arm. He said, if you ever tell anybody anything that happened to you, I'll get you the next time. When we got there, the women were afraid to come up close to the car.

We stepped out and I remember I immediately saw the nurses and I nodded to them and I put my arms like this on Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley. They needed to be taken to the hospital. Miss Kemp's memory was gone.

Miss Seeley was just a raving maniac. And there they were, women of such faith. And I could see Margaret's arms and her legs when we got her into the hospital eventually.

I went over to see her and she was black and blue from her shoulders to her wrists and from her waist to her knees where they had tried to beat it out of her that she would write out a confession that I had been doing spy work so they wouldn't have to try me. And she said, I know she hasn't. She said, I can't.

And she said, I'd cry the pain of it. And she said, the more I cried, the more they beat me. And I looked at her and I thought what those women had suffered for my sake.

And they never broke down and wrote anything out for them. And then the women saw the car take off again and they rushed up to me. And then suddenly they kind of backed away and Mrs. David, who was my helper in the barracks, she just said, my God, what have they done to you? I was afraid to tell anybody.

I couldn't share it with them because I was afraid they'd come and get me. And when I went in, there was a mirror hanging there and I saw that my hair was white and I turned to Mrs. Presswood and I said, Ruth, look at my hair. She didn't even answer me.

The tears were running down her cheeks and she walked away. I was scared then to go to sleep. I said, Lord, look at those women of faith and I'm nothing.

I said, Lord, I am so afraid. And it was like a physical hood that had settled down over me. At night, I would lie there on that rack and I would just remind him of how much I loved him and I would remember the songs and especially the 27th Psalm.

But I said, but Lord, I am afraid. If I even dropped off to sleep, I would wake and I was so afraid that my mind would go and I didn't dare to sleep. Then I would get up and work the next day and then I would come back and I couldn't sleep.

And then I would go to work again for six days and I finally went out to the little pot, grassy pot in front of the dining room and I walked back and forth and I said, Father, I've tried in every way to reach up to you. I've tried to trust you. I've tried to be a good soldier for you, Lord.

But I said, I can't go on any longer. And I threw up my arms and I said, I'm gone, I'm gone. And like that, it was like arms went underneath me and I found I was singing a song written by Dr. Simpson underneath me.

Oh, how precious. You have not to mount on high but to rest upon His promise and entrust both rest and lie. And the billows of peace just rolled over me and the fear was gone.

We'd had bombings the year before. We had dug for ourselves slit trenches so that we could be somewhat protected from the shrapnel. We were between two of their large airfields and this one day, we, about noon, we were standing there and getting ready to go back when the bell would ring to have our noon meal and we saw planes.

We heard planes. We looked up and in the east, coming from the east were all these beautiful big double fuselage silver planes. We'd never seen them before.

And they were rather high and we saw silver things coming out of the back of them. Mind you, in all those years, we never had any Red Cross help. We never had pamphlets.

We never had food or packages or letters come in. We were locked behind the barbed wire. And when we saw that, we were so grateful and we were just shouting, oh, I said, chocolate bars.

And then, just like that, we heard the whistling of the bombs and we knew we were wrong. And over that little camp, just two acres square, the Allies laid 5,000 incendiary bombs. In just a matter of minutes, everything was going up in flames.

I ran. I jumped into the ditch where I was always supposed to lie. I had apportioned out one foot of space for everybody in my barracks and I jumped into that ditch and just then, the Lord reminded me that I had borrowed a Bible from a little Chinese woman in my barracks.

My Bible had gone to pieces and she said, darling, why don't you use this? And I had taken it from her and the Lord said, Mrs. Lee's Bible. I said, oh, right, Lord. I said, I have no right to let that burn.

So I ran to the barracks and they were burning and I grabbed her Bible off of the upper rack where I slept and I came running out and Mrs. David said to me, darling, what do we do? I said, Rose, I don't know. And she said, if you don't know, who does know? And just then I saw them open that gate down there and I said, come Rose, come on everybody, run, run for the gate because the gate is open. And so we ran out that gate and when we came across the moat, we saw that there was, there were machine guns all along there and thousands of soldiers.

They had been withdrawn from the other islands. There were a hundred, we heard later, there were 138,000 soldiers that came there to make their last stand. And as we got down there and ran into the midst of them, they just wheeled on you with their bayonets fixed on their guns and yelled, teeter! So when they yelled teeter, we teetered.

We just threw ourselves right out on the ground in the midst of them. They were running back and forth and ran over you and then they began to machine gun the planes. Our planes turned around, came back and strafed us with machine gun bullets and I dropped my head when I heard them coming and I said, Lord, if anybody's alive at the end of this day, it will be a miracle.

But when the last of the planes had gone and I saw the smoke had died down and I lifted my head from my arms, I realized a miracle had taken place. I was alive. I looked up to try to find somebody that was from my barracks.

I saw Ruth Presswood. I said, Ruth, let's go out quickly and see if we can find our cans. We had been eating out of cans and out of spoons.

And I said, maybe we can find our tins and so forth there. Maybe there's something that's left. And when we came to where the barracks had been, I don't know really what happened except that I know that God wanted to teach me a very valuable lesson.

When I got there, I saw the barracks had fallen backwards and nobody knew that I had my bride's book all those months with me. I had sewn it inside of a native mat on which I slept. And when that barracks had burned, my bed dropped flat down, the mat was burned away, there was the bride's book and it was right at the middle where the certificate was written in gold ink.

And the last rays of the setting sun, I looked down and saw, oh, look at that beautiful gold on that black page. And I said, Lord, that's the only thing I had left. Could I have that, Lord, and have anything else left? The minute I touched it, it was gone.

I said, Lord, couldn't I just have had that? As I stood up, He said, my child, that's what I want to do with you. Even if I have to take you through the fire seven times, I want pure gold. And I bowed before the Almighty and I said, all right, Lord, here I am.

I'm available. Just then I saw the lady in the barracks next to mine. She was the head of the barracks and I saw she was crying.

I went over and I said, please don't cry. She said, but my mattress burned. I said, oh, yes, everything is burned.

She had a little mat that they'd allowed her to keep. She said, I didn't leave it in the barracks. She said, I grabbed it out and I ran and I threw it in the ditch where you always lie.

I walked over to that ditch and right where I had been lying was the casing from the bomb and the ashes from her mattress. And I felt the goose flesh come up all over me and I knew I was in the presence of the Almighty. I walked away and I said, Lord, you weren't concerned about Mrs. Denise Piper, were you? You knew that was one way to get me out of the ditch.

So I said, Lord, for all the time that may be left to me on this earth, I want you to know it all belongs to you. Another, I thank my God for what he's done. If I had not gone out on the last plane, Lord, of the boys that came that were being ferried out to get them to medical aid, the next year I would still have been in that camp because it was one of the last camps that was ever found.

There came a day when I knelt beside a little wooden cross up in the jungles. There in Sulaibis, and on that cross was the name Reverend C. Russell Diver. As I dropped to my knees, the Lord said, my child, this is not the place for you.

There are people out there that still need to know me, so stand up. I stood up and I walked away from the grave. Then I borrowed some clothes the boys said were going to take you.

Tomorrow I came to the shores to which I had come eight years before. I got in a boat to go out to the plain, and suddenly great bitterness filled my heart, and I said, come back to these islands again. And here I am going home, widowed at 26, not a thing in the world I can call my own.

And just then I heard the sound of running feet, and I turned and I looked, and there were our believers from the tabernacle, and they were waving at me, and then they began to sing, God be with you till we meet again. The tears and my sorrow washed away the bitterness in my heart. I finally looked and I waved my hands to them and I said, someday I'm coming home again.

He brought me home. There's much more I could share with you, but the time is gone. But beloved, I thank my God for every day in which He walked with me.

I understand whatever your problems may be. It's just like going back to my people in New Guinea. I could kneel down beside them, no matter what they were going through, and I could say, I understand, I've been through it, but let me tell you what the Lord can do for you.