Scrapbook. On cover: Day By Day; Beginning December 8, 1941 to end of NCC Fiscal Year September 1, 1942. Includes daily journal entries; newspaper clippings, 1941-1942
Scope and Contents note
Lois Anna Ely was born in Missouri on December 29, 1888. She completed her Master of Arts from the College Missions in June 1919, writing the thesis Kwan-Yin Bodhisattva. She was a teacher and church worker for the United Christian Missionary Society in Nanking. In the early 1940s Ms. Ely moved to Shanghai where she did editorial work. While living in Shanghai was taken to the Great China University grounds to captivity and was in a Japanese Prison camp for 8 months. 1050 prisoners from Great Britain, United States, and Holland were held in the internment camp, a plot of 12 acres known as the Chapei Civil Assembly Center. Ms. Ely lost 25 pounds while in captivity at the camp. The ordeal finally concluded in 1943, when the hostages were taken home on the SS Gripsholm, a Swedish prisoner exchange. Ms. Ely died in 1972 at 83 years old.
The bulk of the Lois Ely collection contains scrapbooks that document her time in the Japanese internment camp. Included are numerous letters from loved ones, newspaper clippings, and ephemeral materials, such as menus from the ship while she was headed home, postcards of sites visited, cloth samples, and identification cards. One of the scrapbooks features a detailed hand colored ink sketch of the compound where she was imprisoned.
Dates
- Creation: 1941-1942
Creator
- From the Collection: Cross, Rowland McLean (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Ely, Lois Anna (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Gillespie, Miln (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Horn, Josie E. (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Houston, Lyda S. (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Ikenberry, Ernest Leroy (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Jones, Francis Price (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Kellogg, Claude R. (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Lingle, Jean (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Luce, Henry (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: McCallum, James H. (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Potts, Anna Hortense (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Rowley, Grace (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Shepherd, Clara Sargent (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Simkin, Robert (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Topping, William Hill (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Tootell, George T. (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Steurt, Marjorie Rankin (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Smythe, Lewis S. C. (Lewis Strong Casey) (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Winans, Pearl B. Fosnot (Creator, Person)
- From the Collection: Ady, Merrill S. (Creator, Person)
Access
Collection open for research.
Extent
From the Collection: 20.5 Linear Feet (35 boxes)
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Repository Details
Part of the 01 - Special Collections & Archives, The Claremont Colleges Library Repository
800 North Dartmouth Ave
Claremont CA 91711 United States
Email: specialcollections@claremont.edu