A thrilling chapter from a new missionary biography concerning Mrs. Lillian Dickson |A \s Sx&M 'S - - wan
angel
shoulder
by Kenneth L. Wilson
Mrs. Dickson and one of her lepers.
F RM O SA was a bubbling brew when Jim Dickson re turned late in 1945. He went immediately to the mission compound at Taipei. The houses were intact on the outside except for broken windows. Inside, the ceil ings were down, and all was a fearful mess. Troops were living on the compound and were also occupying the Mackay Memorial Hospital, even though, before the missionaries left, the property had been turned over to the Formosan church. Jim went to the hospital to look around. At the door, two soldiers crossed bayonets in front of him and said, “You can’t go in.” “ I want to see your commander,” Jim insisted, and finally they let him go by. He approached the Chinese officer in charge. “ The missionaries are coming back,” he said. “We will be wanting the hospital in a very short time.” “You can’t have it,” the officer reported. “ It’s ours.” “ But this hospital belongs to the church,” Jim said. “ The Japanese recognized our property rights. They used the hospital but they paid rent to the church. I am here by permission of General MacArthur to make a survey. I would hate to have to report that our allies treated us worse than our enemies!" Jim wrote to Lil, “ I think the house will be ready by the time you get here. They will surely turn over the
hospital, too. In a few months I will come back home to make my report to the mission board, then we will return to Taiwan together. . . . The mountain churches have grown amazingly since we left. They call it the Pentecost o f the Hills. Remember little old Chi-oang, our unlikely student? She did most of it. Wait till you see. . . !” Things had changed, and most of the changes were caused in some way by the greatest military cataclysm ever to sweep the globe. A pledge made by America’s President Roosevelt and Britain’s Prime Minister Churchill to China’s Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference in 1943 became a part of the Tokyo Bay surrender treaty: Formosa and the Pesca dores were returned to China. Japanese troops, police, and residents were evacuated from Formosa to Japan with the help of United States ships. Taiwan became a province of the Republic of China. For fifty years the islanders had been adjusting to Japanese rule. Now they had to accustom themselves once more to a new way of life and to another landlord. The Taiwanese—these Chinese who had lived on the island for generations—spoke Amoy. The Japanese had introduced their own language into the schools as the official tongue. Now the Chinese coming from the main land in increasing numbers brought their official lan-
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THE KING 'S BUSINESS
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