Qualla: Weixian Internment Camp

Weixian Internment Camp: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolfmueller, CC BY-SA 3.0. They called it the Courtyard of the Happy Way, though happiness had nothing to do with it. The name belonged to the Presbyterian mission compound near Weifang, Shandong, before the Japanese military converted it into one of the largest civilian internment camps in wartime China. From March 1943 until American paratroopers landed without opposition on August 17, 1945, more than 2,200 British, American, Canadian, Australian, Italian, and other Allied civilians lived behind its walls -- missionaries, businessmen, scholars, and more than 350 children, some separated from their parents for the duration of the war.

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Image: Rolfmueller | CC BY-SA 3.0

Weixian Internment Camp: A City Block at the Edge of Survival

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ngguls, CC0. The compound was roughly the size of a single city block. An internee described what they found: bare walls, bare floors, dim electric lights, no running water, primitive latrines, two houses with showers, three huge public kitchens, a desecrated church, and a dismantled hospital...

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Image: Ngguls | CC0

Weixian Internment Camp: Bread, Eggs, and the Black Market

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ngguls, CC0. Food dominated everything. Three kitchens served meals built around bread, tea, and vegetable soup. Two elderly Persian bakers trained a corps of internee bakers to staff the compound bakery with Japanese-supplied flour, though rations shrank steadily as the war continued. The co...

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Image: Ngguls | CC0

Weixian Internment Camp: Bricks with Messages Tied to Them

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolfmueller, CC BY-SA 3.0. Resistance at Weihsien took forms suited to a compound full of linguists and clergy. Father Raymond de Jaegher, a Belgian Jesuit fluent in Chinese, began by throwing bricks over the wall with messages and money attached, addressed to Chinese Nationalist guerrillas operating in th...

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Image: Rolfmueller | CC BY-SA 3.0

Weixian Internment Camp: The Weight of a Red Cross Parcel

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolfmueller, CC BY-SA 3.0. In January 1945, about 1,500 food parcels from the American Red Cross arrived by donkey cart. Each weighed roughly 20 kilograms and contained canned meat, butter, cigarettes, cheese, powdered milk, coffee, and chocolate -- enough for one parcel per person. But several Americans, ...

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Image: Rolfmueller | CC BY-SA 3.0