Description
Book SynopsisAn action-packed human interest story about four young men and their life-changing experiences in China during WWII. When three Yale graduates traveled to China in the summer of 1941 to teach English to middle-school students, they routinely taught classes outside a bomb shelter. When air raid sirens wailed, classes continued until the Japanese planes could be heard, then all quickly scrambled inside to safety.
- The US entry into the war turned their educational mission upside down.
- One was recruited for a stint driving supplies along the Burma Road.
- A second Yale teacher took a senior staff position with Flying Tigers commander Gen. Claire Lee Chennault.
- The third man, a conscientious objector, remained at the school to keep it running during the war.
- Their mission was inextricably linked with the broader Yale-in-China medical mission, headed by a young surgeon in Changsha.
This is an engaging story of Americans in China, educating civilians, healing the wounded, and supporting Chinese military resistance against Japanese imperialism. It is the untold story of life on the ground in Free China during the Japanese occupation.
Trade Review"China was one of the most deadly theatres of World War II, as its people fought for eight long years against the Japanese invaders. James Bevill tells the fascinating story of a small group of intrepid young Americans who worked in wartime China and became part of that country’s heroic struggle. Trained at Yale, and sent to China, these men became part of the bigger story of resistance: dodging air-raids in the wartime capital of Chongqing, giving medical aid, and teaching in the face of disaster in the city of Changsha. Bevill’s meticulous work with original documents makes this a compelling, original tale that adds to our knowledge of the Second World War, and illuminates the sacrifices needed to win it."
-- -Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford
"James Bevill’s Blackboards and Bomb Shelters offers an engrossing tale of three young Americans who worked for the Yale-China Association in China during the World War Two Japanese invasion. The three, including Bevill’s own father-in-law, Paul Springer, graduated from Yale in 1941 and arrived in China just in time for Pearl Harbor. Bevill uses Springer’s letters home and archival research to show readers how they set up their blackboards outside bomb-shelters, read student essays as bombs fell, and ventured into parts of China where Americans were unknown. Some of their students were killed in the bombings, colleagues came within yards of being killed, malaria and small-pox were rampant, but the Yale-China schools and hospitals adapted and survived. Bevill works in the style of David McCullough or Ron Chernow, using vivid biography to remind us of a larger, now obscured story: Americans working side-by-side with Chinese colleagues to face daunting challenges."
-- Charles W. Hayford, Editor Emeritus, Journal of American-East Asian Relations
