Roberts - The Life and Times of Charles A. Roberts

In July 1937. Charles had arranged to meet wife and four youngest children in Shanghai, when the Japanese invasion of China escalated. Full-scale war did not permit Charles to enter Shanghai, and the American ship, S.S. Cleveland was not allowed to dock. The ship, with Grace and the 4 children, spent the night and next 36 hours at the entrance to the Yangtze River while J & C troops and some war ships fought across the bow of the ship. A telegram from Washington, D.C. ordered the ship to sail to Hong Kong the next day after taking on 150 refugees from Shanghai. Charles met them in Hong Kong now overcrowded with refugees. He soon made arrangements for the family to travel by train to Changsha. However. a few days later September 3, the worst hurricane in the history of Hong Kong almost destroyed the harbor and sank several ships. and the huge S.S. Hoover went on the rocks. Charles then flew back to Changsha while the family remained in Hong Kong and followed 2 months later by train. Arrangements for the four children to attend a missionary boarding school in Tientsin were canceled because the Japanese occupied the city. Two of the largest Chinese universities in Beijing moved south and were now stationed at the Hunan Bible Institute campus. Everyone in China was wondering what the future would hold. Grace began home-schooling the children. Then without -notice. in the last week of November. three Japanese warplanes dropped bombs on the railway station across the road from the campus. It was the first indication that the Japanese were heading south, proceeding down the railway line. Air raids and alarms continued almost daily and running to the "dug outs" below ground were a daily event.

It was a sober Christmas in 1937 as Charles decided that it was in the best interest of his wife and family of 4 children to return south to Hong Kong. In the meantime Japan had

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