Sister Antonio's Story

Since 1926 Sister Antonia (Mary Ru-hall) of Effingham, Ill., has been a Catholic missionary in New Guinea. She is sweet-faced, smiling, with remarkably clear blue eyes, a low-pitched, warm voice. Last week in the U.S. military hospital in

Australia, Sister Antonia gave an exclusive radio interview to the Blue Network's Clete Roberts, who was using the new portable wire recorder (TIME, May 17, 1943).

She described the U.S. landing at Hollandia: "A little native boy came running into our camp on that glorious morning and told us that a great grey ship with many airplanes was off the shore. We didn't dare hope, but we thought it might be the Americans. The Japs told us the ship was probably theirs, bringing in new planes and reinforcements. But we could see the Japs were worried. Later we heard that 50,000 Americans and many ships had arrived. We could see the Japs were panicky.

"They immediately ordered us to get ready to march back into the swamps.

Many of us were too ill, too weak, to move.

The Japs told us to leave the sick behind.

I refused to leave. I told them I would stay with my superior who lay ill. Finally the Japs told us they could no longer protect us -- that we could stay behind if we wished, or we could volunteer to go with them. No one volunteered. Then we faced the difficult problem of establishing contact with the American soldiers. We had to go down through the jungle and try to reach them without getting shot. Father Hagen selected three missionaries who accompanied him through the jungle toward the beach, where they saw the first Americans advancing with machine guns.

"Father Hagen and the others tied white rags on long poles and waved them over their heads, shouting 'Americans, Americans here!' The soldiers kept coming forward as though they hadn't heard.

Father Hagen stood up and walked for ward toward the Americans, toward their guns, shouting. Suddenly, the Americans heard him. They dropped their guns, ran forward and the missionaries and soldiers embraced each other. It was wonderful." Sick, Exhausted, Starving. Sister Antonia was one of 123 U.S., German, Polish, Czech, Australian and Swiss missionaries liberated at Hollandia by surprised U.S. soldiers (TIME, May 22). The missionaries were completely exhausted.

All suffered from malaria, dysentery or beriberi.

For a year or more they had been rounded up by Japs from mission posts scattered along New Guinea's lonely northern coast. They were moved from base to base as the Allies forced the Japs back.

Men & women alike were fed one-twentieth of a Japanese soldier's ration, deprived of medical supplies, forced to do back-breaking work all day, slapped, kicked, often beaten. All wept for joy when liberated, ravenously gobbled up the Army's K ration -- the best food they had tasted in more than a year.

Strafed Children. When a Jap warship moved most of the missionaries from Wewak to Hollandia, U.S. planes strafed the ship. Said Sister Antonia: "We told the Japs we didn't want to travel on the ship because we felt sure that American bombers would attack while we were at sea. But a Jap officer told us that their planes would be over us all the way to protect us from bombing. . . . We never saw a single Jap plane. As we approached our new place of confinement on the northern New Guinea coast ... we saw a flight of American planes coming at us. I went to the Jap captain and asked if several of us sisters might stand up on the deck and signal to the American pilots to show them there were women and children aboard. He refused the request and ordered all to lie flat on the deck alongside the Jap crew and soldiers. . . . Two American planes flew directly over the ship with out attacking -- then the third, fourth and fifth planes came over firing their machine guns. It was horrible. The children were panicked, jumped to their feet and began to run around the deck. It was then the American pilots saw them and immediately stopped the attack. We didn't blame the American flyers, it was the Japs' fault.

Seventy missionaries and children were killed because the Japs refused to let us signal that women and children were aboard." People Without Feeling. Father Mey, a German missionary, suffered a leg wound during the attack. When Father Mey's leg became gangrenous, a medical missionary, Dr. Theodore Braun of Hosmer, S. Dak., sawed through the bone with a blunt carpenter's saw after the Japs refused him proper instruments. The only anesthetic was a quarter grain of novocain, administered locally.

Said Sister Antonia: "The eternal rain water ran under the house and dirt dropped from the Japs' floors over our heads. We developed rheumatism and other ailments from the dampness. The Japs showed no feeling towards us, no interest in our welfare at any time. They are people without feeling for their fellow man."

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