Ellen J. Peterson taught at Wayland Academy by the time the Japanese occupied Hangzhou in 1937. After a furlough, she returned to Hangzhou in 1940 to assist Dr. and Mrs. E.H. Clayton at a relief center on the Wayland campus.
She fed 1,600 people at the relief center, where they distributed food, essential clothing, and blankets to the refugees. The relief work was closed in June, 1942, and the missionaries were forced out of Hangzhou by the Japanese. Miss Peterson never ceased her efforts in foreign services and her dedication to forging bonds of world peace based on interracial understanding and respect.
Sources from American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA.
A letter, written by Miss Peterson in July 1938, was published in Colby Alumnus Vol. 28, No. 1: October 1938. Titled Chaos in China, the letter gives firsthand information on war-torn China from a first-person perspective and a vivid impression of the type of service performed by missionaries.
In 1969, she wrote by herself a short “history” of her experience during wartime China before 1942. She noticed in the manuscript that they were sent home by the Japanese “in exchange for Japanese from America” in 1942.
Ellen J. Peterson’s manuscript in 1969. Sources from Pat Berg Currier’s family collection.