Diary of a Country Missioner—Manchuria,1940

Abstract

Thanks to the foresight of Maryknoll's founders, the archives contain an estimated 90,000 pages of diaries and related materials from the China missions, dating from 1918 through 1952. The excerpts printed here were selected from the diaries of Father John A. Fisher who was assigned in 1940 as pastor of the parish of Ch'iao T'ou (Chiaotou), a market town south of Mukden (Shenyang) in Manchuria. Father Fisher was also responsible for the outstation of Pen Hsi Hu (Benxihu), and all Catholic families in neighboring villages. In contrast to the Maryknoll Sisters who always lived and worked in community, he was, like most Maryknoll Fathers, the one missioner in his station, assisted by Chinese catechists. With thirty American priests and twenty-eight Sisters in 1940, Maryknoll served a territory in Manchuria of 40,000 square miles with a population of 2.5 million.

Manchukuo (Manchuria) at that time was a frontier region under Japanese domination, only partially settled. Impoverished peasant families from China were migrating northward in search of livelihood. Father Fisher's diaries record their difficulties, some beggars, some poor farmers, and some who worked in the coal mines.

While Father Fisher helped the poor and needy as he could, his main tasks were pastoral—celebrating Mass, administering the sacraments, visiting the homes of the sick, the elderly, the lapsed members, arranging dispensations for mixed marriages, organizing catechumenates for new Christians and reaching out to non-Christians. One entry describes a funeral Mass held in a rural home, the first Christian service ever held in that village or entire district.

These diaries record both the special problems of his time and place, and the routine events of daily living. This was a time of inflation and rationing, a constant struggle to get flour, coal, and other necessities: Japan was at war with China. The church and rectory are prepared for winter, the stoves installed, coal laid in, storm doors mounted, and windows papered. An ironsmith makes basketball hoops. The pastor substitutes in the primary school when the teacher is sick, works in the vegetable garden, swims in the mountain streams, and plays basketball with the school-boys.

This was a lonely life; he had one American visitor during the period of these diaries. It was a dangerous time and place. Gerard Donovan, a fellow Maryknoller in the same vicariate, had been kidnapped, held for ransom, and finally murdered by strangulation just two years earlier.

As for the larger historical context, Father Fisher scarcely alludes to the heightened tensions that would bring his own country to war with Japan in just one more year, leading to arrest and imprisonment for all Americans in China. A single reference (October 11) reads: “News of the Americans being ordered to evacuate in all the newspapers today. Has the people wondering and a few of the local authorities more vigilant…. A load of materials arrived for building the hen-coop.”