A Close Call

It was 1940 and the Japanese were marching around Guangdong Province. After months of continuous bombing, the provincial capital of Guangzhou had fallen to the Japanese in late 1938, and now their troops were taking over the surrounding areas. My grandfather was practicing medicine in the nearby town of Shilong at the time. Though he was initially reluctant to leave, he was finally convinced to flee to Hong Kong. He, my grandmother, their two children (both babies), and several of my grandmother’s relatives set out on foot, traveling with groups of other refugees. They walked for three days, staying in monastery- and church-run missions at night.

Then, on the third night, a group of Japanese soldiers came to the mission where my grandparents and a group of other refugees were staying. Through an interpreter the Japanese asked if anyone there was a doctor. Ever adhering to his medical ethics, my grandfather spoke up and told them he was. The Japanese took him to their nearby headquarters and ordered him to tend to one of their officers who was having a bout of intense stomach pains. My grandfather diagnosed the officer and prescribed some medication, but he wasn’t allowed to leave. He was told to sit on the floor while they waited to see if the officer got better after taking the medicine. With guns and knives sitting on the table in the room, my grandfather was hardly in a position to disagree. Fortunately, the officer did improve and told my grandfather he could go. They even gave him some reward money.

That reward money came in handy. After that hair-raising encounter with the Japanese, grandfather decided that it was too dangerous to keep traveling by foot. So at enormous expense, he managed to hire a car to take the family to Hong Kong. When the driver got there, he tried to renege on the agreement, saying that grandfather had told him it was just him, his wife, and their children, and that he had said nothing of his wife’s relatives. It was nothing that more money couldn’t settle, however, and the seven or eight of them crammed into the antique-model vehicle. Crouching down on the floor while driving through checkpoints, they managed to make it safely to Hong Kong, where they would spend the next two years before moving back to the mainland when the Japanese began their invasion of the island.