From the Land Down Under to the Rising Sun

The last blog post following June and Milton’s missionary story had them arriving back in Sydney by ship that had sailed down through the Philippines and Indonesia, after a bumpy island-hopping flight to Hong Kong. This was their first furlough – a year back in Australia, after five years in Japan.  

Milton

The ‘farewell’ friends who saw us off five years prior were not there for the homecoming. Crossed doctrine erased us from their diaries. I saw my dad for the first time in many years. He was gaunt and stooped. For a minute I didn’t recognize the friendly giant of my childhood. It was the last year I would ever see him.

(Mary – when they first left Sydney, they were with the Plymouth Brethren group but parted ways shortly before this furlough)

June:

We went to live with Milton’s family. Milton’s mother had never bought a washing machine for herself and preferred to use an old washtub and wringer, but she bought one for me. She never interfered with our lives but was always helpful and kind. Milton’s younger sister was still unmarried and lived in the same house. She usually had great trouble getting to sleep. Unfortunately, my baby girl Margaret would wake crying about every 2 hours demanding food.

My sister-in-law, the gentle person that she was, never complained about being awakened. But my fear of waking my sister-in-law made me nervous and I developed almost continual indigestion.

June: I went to the doctor about my indigestion, and he ordered an examination of my stomach. In those days, the system was to put a wide tube down a patient’s throat and check the contents of the stomach. The hospital did that to me, and I was asked to wait for the result. I waited. When the doctor came in with the results, he found me sitting on the edge of the chair with my legs intertwined around each other, my fists clenched, and a tense look on my face.

The doctor said: “You either have a stomach ulcer or you are about to get one… Look at you – all tensed up. Relax girl!”

There was no prescription for medication. Just “Relax girl” After that, I would catch myself tensed up and remember the doctor’s words; “Relax girl.” That cured my indigestion.

Mary: Interesting side note – decades later when Mom was working on her master’s in psychology in Tokyo, I remember her testing some theory out by having me sit and wait for her to bang something loud behind me to see how much I would react. Even though I knew a loud noise was coming, when it did, I almost jumped out of my skin. So of course, I had to do it to her – and even though I tried to make the timing as unexpected as possible, when I made the loud noise, she didn’t flinch. She then told me it was much healthier to react outwardly as the tension wouldn’t be held inside. She admitted that she tended to hold the tension inside. Now that I read her comment from the doctor, I should have reminded her to Relax!

June:

Stanley went to school in Burwood, NSW. I had brought Japanese books and music with me, but Stanley would not listen to it. He said he had to learn to talk like the boys at school. Although we had always talked English at home in Japan, our English was not the same as “the boys at school”. Stanley had an outgoing personality and loved school even though we moved him around Australia, and he went to several schools in one year.

Milton:

We deputized and traveled. Stan studied at about five different grade schools in about as many months We joined the Stanmore Baptist Church.

Mary:
Dad gave that first furlough year barely a paragraph in his memoir but fortunately, I found some archived newspaper church announcements. These helped shed a little light on what deputizing and traveling involved.

They arrived back in Sydney in December 1953. His father, Matthew Whan had indicated he wanted them to come and spend Christmas together. By the end of January (1954), they were down in Tasmania visiting churches.

The January 30^th Examiner of Launceston, Tasmania – Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, 21 Mary Street. Today 3:30 pm and 6 p.m. Mr. Milton Whan, missionary from Japan. Everyone welcome – and bring your friends.

Then February 13^th, The Advocate, of Burnie Tasmania announced a meeting in Latrobe and Sassafras for Mr. M Whan at 2 pm. Also noteworthy in my opinion was that another speaker, Mr. D Anderson a missionary from Syria was at those churches.  Something I don’t think you would hear about today- a public announcement of a Christian missionary to Syria.

February 27^th – in Hobart at the Davey St. Congregational Church Sunday night’s guest preacher was “Mr. Milton Whan from Japan.” So at least a full month in Tasmania if not more.  This ties exactly with Stan’s memories.

Stan:

Dad had contacts from their earlier days who got him speaking engagements in churches to get them interested in starting churches in Japan. One contact was a family who lived in Hobart, Tasmania. They had a huge house and about four kids. One of the daughters was my age and one boy was about 14.  We stayed a month while Dad went preaching.

One hot Saturday we all went to a huge river to swim and picnic. After playing close to the shore for a bit, while the adults were talking and laughing close by, I ventured further out. The river current grabbed me and started carrying me. I panicked and started going under, water in my mouth, and unable to scream. I miraculously made eye contact with the 14-year-old boy, and he saw the terror on my face.  Without hesitation or consulting with the adults he sprinted like an athlete toward and into the water – in 10 seconds he swam and reached me and had me by the neck and brought me to shore.  He saved a six-year-old boy from certain death. The adults were embarrassed that this happened on their watch, but everyone including me thanked the boy.

Another time we were driving through Hobart with the family and I remember explaining to the boy that the neon lights going around on marquees were not actually moving; that it was lights going on and off. He believed me but his mother did not! My experience in a bigger city – Beppu- taught me that whereas Hobart was still not very high tech.

Mary: this last funny memory dovetails straight into an article I found that detailed some of Dad’s remarks at a talk in Victoria in July. Some of his thoughts on Japan and its rebuilding post war were uncanny. Here is an excerpt:

“In a few years from now, every Australian will be conscious that we have neighbors in the Pacific ‘lake’ – 90 million of them,” he added. Mr. Whan said the ignorance of Japan in Australia was amazing. He said Japan was fully electrified, more Japanese homes had electric light than in Australia, Japan had the best railway system in the world. 98 percent of Japanese were literate and there were 500,000 university students. “Japan is destined to be one of the leading powers in the Pacific with industrial might undreamed of here,” Mr. Whan added.

Mary:  I couldn’t find any announcements during the month of March so perhaps they had some family time back in Sydney. On April 3, at the Sydney Bible Training Institute in Strathfield (Sydney area), the Blue Mountain at the Christian Holiday Center June 11 -14 then back to Strathfield on the 19^th!

Stan remembers picnics at the beach with the Mershes – Milton’s sister Loma’s family. “Darelyn and I would compete for silver coins in Nanna’s pudding at Christmas”.  For the younger generation that just read that and said “What?? A coin in your Christmas pudding?” here’s a little description from the Australian Mint website: “Before decimal currency, many Australians enjoyed the Christmas tradition of putting threepences and sixpences in their Christmas puddings, to be found by lucky family members during Christmas lunch. Sadly, decimal coins are made of different metals and are not suitable to mix with food.”  

July and August were spent in Victoria. Cities with announcements that I found were Horsham, Morwell, and Melbourne.  Another memory from Stan was in Victoria and involved one of those five schools he attended:
Stan: One teacher in Victoria was so mean in math – 1^st grade – she called on a boy who couldn’t answer the query and just then some kookaburras started laughing outside. She said “see even the kookaburras are laughing at you”. Everyone laughed except me and him.

Mary:
In October they were in the Newcastle area where the announcement mentions Mr. Whan “will be accompanied by his wife and children.” June would have been close to eight months pregnant…oops spoiler alert! A new addition to the Whan family!

June:
While we were in Australia, I took the opportunity to have another baby, so David Paul was born at King George V Memorial Hospital. In the last stages of labor, the nurse told me not to push because the doctor had not arrived. I said to the nurse, “You will do”. However, the doctor arrived just in time. After the baby was delivered the nurse rebuked the doctor for his method so I imagine he was new to the job. I did not see David till about 12 hours later and no explanation was given to me. I feared the worst, but the baby was normal in every way.

Milton:
Dave was born in Australia. After a year we headed back to Japan with two babies. I watched Stan’s days of being my constant companion fade behind as he walked alone in a family of five. Sometimes amidst the baby laughter, I felt sad.

Mary: Aww so sweet. I am chuckling at Dad’s description of two babies because technically at this point Margot was two years old.  I haven’t quite figured out the date of when they left Australia it was about April or May of 1955. Dave was born in early December of 1954 and just from looking at pictures it looks like he was few months old by the time they returned to Japan and the new city they would live in: Kobe.