Foreword

My friendship with Dr. Sonya Grypma first began with her telephone call, nine years ago.As a nurse historian, she was researching the work of the Canadian missionary nurses in China, which included my mother, Betty Gale.I could not have predicted, at the time, how interlaced our lives would become.As we spoke further, I began to realize what an opportunity this would be for my family.For many years, my brother Kendall, my sister Patricia, and I, together with our families, had discussed how to make our mother's story known to a wider audience.Through Sonya's research, this could now be possible.Canada has been quiet for too long on the nurses' contributions to the development of western health care in China.She has reopened this chapter in our history.Sonya's first book, Healing Henan, was published in 2008.Meanwhile, we continued to discuss her research into the life and experiences of my mother, both as a missionary nurse and as a civilian internee during the Second World War.Born to missionary parents in China in 1911, she later received her professional training in Toronto and returned to China in 1939 as a missionary nurse.China was already at war.Although the Canadian nurses were separated geographically, they were part of a large and cohesive missionary community.China Interrupted describes their lives in China during this time, how they were able to deal with their war experiences, and how these experiences influenced their life decisions.Sonya has meticulously reviewed all the available records and has met or corresponded with many members of the missionaries' families, including my own.When she asked me to write the foreword for China Interrupted, I was reminded how lives can suddenly be altered by world events over which one has no control.My parents met in China in 1939.My father, Godfrey Gale, was an English missionary doctor who was practising in Qilu.They were married in 1940 and I was born in July 1941.Pearl Harbor was bombed five months later.We were immediately placed under house arrest by the Japanese and spent the duration of the war in civilian internment camps in eastern China.Newly married and with the added responsibility of caring for

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