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The Wolfe Ismond Story
Southern Publishing Association Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright © 1972 by Southern Publishing Association Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 72-86322 SBN 8127-0065-1 This book was Edited by Richard Coffen Designed by Dean Tucker Text set 11 / 13 Garamond Printed on Trade Litho Hibulk Cover: Kivar 9 Printed in U.S.A.
t~ttl'I~I~I'I~S Vision of Escape
7
Befriended on the High Seas
14
Planting Debits and Credits
22
Fomentations and Prayer
29
Hurdles to Christianity
35
Elk Lake Days
45
Lettuce Farmer
51
Mongolia by Model A
57
Terror on Nanking Road
75
Evacuation Again
90
Trapped in the Philippines
98
Behind Barbed Wire
111
The Taste of Freedom
135
Manchuria Mission
150
Life Under Mao
162
Postscript
174
I.I"NANY
Try this word a~~~~~~~~~~~?"'i~~i"7;::""';0~=th:~;;:---:into your mind? Mao? C you are a Adventist, you may have come up with the name of a famous missionary to Chinl'l. Few people on the roster of missionaries to China have had as varied and as exciting adventures as has Wolfe Ismond. Born into a Jewish family in Great Britain and raised in Shanghai, Wolfe developed a strong restlessness which led him to leave a good-paying job with the ' Shanghai branch of Eastman Kodak for an uncertain farming career in Canada. Wolfe assumed all along that it was his own idea-and perhaps it was, but God took over, and through a series of remarkable events Wolfe accepted Christ as his Saviour and joined the Seventhday Adventist Church. Little more than a failure at farming in Canada, Wolfe and his family returned to the familiar sights and sounds and smells of Shanghai with a revolutionary idea for Chinese agriculture. Local Chinese farmers soon envied Wolfe's booming business and crashed his market by stealing his methods and underselling to his buyers. ' Unemployed, Wolfe soon joined forces with a missionaryturned-horse-trader. As business manager for a new enterprise between China and Inner Mongolia, Wolfe traveled the barren steppes of central Asia, where he almost died from poisoning after drinking water supplied by a Mongol priest-prince who doubled as a dope smuggler. After fleeing to Canada from the Japanese forces as they spread over China, Wolfe headed once again to China, this time to Chungking, under denominational appointment. En route his ship changed course and docked at Manila. The next day at departure time the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Stranded in the Philippines, Wolfe eventually found himself a POW for three years. After World War II and a General Conference session, Wolfe and his family found themselves back in China, where soon the Red Chinese army confronted them. Shanghai Wolfe stayed as long as he could, barely squeezing under the falling ' "bamboo curtain."