Building Bridges between East and West through Education and Cultural Exchange
Album: Weifang (Shandong) — Japanese Internment Camp
This album is one of a series from my visit to Weifang in Shandong Province to find the memorial to Eric Liddell, the famous Scottish athlete and missionary. (See my blog, Eric Liddell — Early Olympic Hero in China for a fuller story of Liddell’s final months living in the camp.)
Click/tap first image for full-screen viewing.
The beautiful road and park area in Weifang at the site of the former Japanese concentration camp.
We visited on a day when only local people were on hand. No tour buses were present this day.
I am sure there is some significance to this bell, but I did not learn of it.
LeDaoYuan was the Christian mission site which was taken over by the Japanese for their camp.
There were many substantial buildings here. This was a hospital, founded in 1924.
In an historic account of life in the camp, this map comes from a book by Gilkey (1966).
Titled, “The Gate to Freedom,” this drawing was made in the camp by one of the foreign prisoners.
One of the early mission buildings on the school grounds. Now a museum highlighting the Japanese occupation.
Sign on the museum building: Weihsien Concentration Camp Exhibition House.
A second historic mission building on the school grounds with the sign in the foreground.
Gates to the Weifang Second Middle School and access to the concentration camp museum.
Other historic buildings from LeDaoYuan “The Courtyard of the Happy Way”.
Sign on building, showing its current use.
We are entering here from a back gate, adjacent to a parking lot of the new hospital complex.
These buildings once housed as 1500 foreign personnel for as much as three years prior to end of the war.
Front of the Shadyside Hospital founded in 1924.
The memorial marker I first came to see in honour of Eric Liddell, Olympic hero and missionary to China.
Buildings first constructed as residences for students, later used by the Japenese to house foreign inmates.
Entrance to an interior courtyard.
Such housing housed foreign families for the 2-3 year duration of their stay in the camp.
Most of these buildings have now been destroyed to make way for modern development.
The tourist entrance area, again, located next to a small river.
A veiwing platform next to the river.
A veiw of the small river in a well-maintained park.
More views of the beautiful gardens.
The parking lot that, at times, will have many tour buses.
The Weifang People’s Hospital, at the site of the original Shadyside Hospital of LeDaoYuan. FINAL PHOTO IN ALBUM.
First published: 2016/10/25
Latest revision: 2016/11/09
