Chapter 2 Testimony of Darlene Rose

Transcription

[intro music]

Debi Pearl:  Papa and I are going to record, so y'all go ahead and shut the door.

[door shutting]

Girl 1:  Let's go catch a lizard.

Girl 2:  Yeah, let's go.

Announcer:  Welcome to our vintage archives collection. For a special treat, we are releasing the inspirational testimony of missionary and former prisoner of war Darlene Rose, in five nice little bite‑sized pieces. Here is this week's offering.

Darlene Rose:  The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth. I went back, I reached to pull the door shut, the doorknob was gone, the lock was gone. They were very clever with their machetes, they had carved out the nicest little porthole you ever saw. By this time, Dr. Jaffrey and the rest of them were wide awake and they wanted to know what had happened. I said we'd had bandits in here, yes they'd been there. They had taken curtains, any kind of material that they could see.

All the books were out on the floor, probably thinking we had hidden money in the books that were in the bookcases. But not one of the bedroom doors had been opened. I thought about that many times, and I thought whoever that was knew the layout of this house. After the war, my second husband took me back up to Bendentingi and I went out to find a young man I thought would have known the layout of that house. He had been a gardener for Dr. Jaffrey.

And when I found him, I said to him "Nomo, during the war, the big fight, were you at the house? Did you come in the house?" He dropped his head. He said, "Yes, Nonia, I was there." He said, "We were having a very hard time, too." I said, "But Nomo, we heard you people coming back night after night, but you never again came in the house." I said, "We had nothing with which to protect ourselves." He said, "Oh, but you had all those people in white standing guard around your house." Beloved, I believe in the angel of the Lord.

Congregation:  Amen.

Darlene:  I know that they encamp around about those that fear him and love him. We were almost a year in the mountain. We had to learn then to eat various kind of grasses. This one dear little woman who was a Buddhist woman, but I had led her to the Lord before the war. One day she came running in and she said, "Nonia, I have something special for you people today." I thought, "Ah‑ha. I know what it is." Because the flying ants were coming out of the holes in the ground by the hundreds. I had seen the children out running over the mountainside catching these flying ants.

She handed a half a coconut shell to me. When I looked in it, here were little things that looked like little cheese tidbits. Of course, you don't eat the head, you don't eat the wings. You just take off the back part of the body and you drop it in coconut oil and they were really quite delicious. I said, "I have never refused anything that my people have ever given me. Nothing. Caterpillars, my present husband says to me, "That must be like swallowing a toothbrush."

I said, "Oh no, you just take a handful." Those big cocoons out of which the men make the headpiece that they have to cover their bald heads, because you could take a man out of the twentieth century, or you can take him out of the Stone Age and they're all the same. When the forehead begins to travel, and that's our word for getting bald. The forehead begins to travel, and it when it gets back here, and it's the past complete tense, serious matter. So [unintelligible 04:15] goes and he gets these big cocoons.

He eats the caterpillars first, then he pulls that down over his head and then he puts pure potter's clay over it and gets the plumes of the cassowary bird and he puts those in. My, don't we think we're smart here in America with our good wigs? Why, they've had wigs out there for centuries. And they're not bad, believe me. It's just that it takes so many of those caterpillars to make a meal. But they gave us many strange and weird and wonderful things and we ate them. There was one special seed that we liked. It looks something like millet.

The more water you added to it, the more it swelled. So we kept cooking and adding water, and then it would swell and swell and swell, and our stomachs were full. They took us from Bendentingi up to where the Dutch people were, and then they pointed across a valley and over on another mountainside and they said, "You go over there." And we finally arrived after dark. Mrs. Presswood and I had sent the others ahead so that they could take their time and walk, and we came with their bags.

One of the officers had said, "Here are some people that will help you," and they were my Buddhist friends. I'm not sure how friendly they were, but I said to Mrs. Presswood, "Whatever you do, make like bold. You're very brave." So I would start from the front and I would go down and I would call out their number and she would start from the back and she would count them. And we arrived with everything, but when they finally set down the little cases, clothes that we were allowed to bring, I wasn't feeling very well and I said, "Quick, I need someplace. I'm sick."

And Mrs. Jaffrey had carried with her a beautiful silver soup tureen, and she handed it to me. I filled it for her. I had to make some beds, I was glad my father had felt that a girl ought to learn to use a hammer and saw and know how to make things. We were there for several months, and I'm going to skip over this. There were many things that I completely blocked out of my mind. The thing I remember most about that time, we had had only two letters up until this time, knowing that our husbands were then down in Micasa.

And we didn't hear anything, and the months went by. So, it was more than a year. Mrs. Presswood and I would stand outside in the rain, the rain beating down on us, and we had an open wood fire. And we would stir that beautiful porridge, and we would sing to the top of our lungs. The song I loved most of all was "He makes the rose the object of his love, He guides the eagle through the pathless air, and surely He remembers me. My heavenly Father watches over me."

Sometimes I wondered when they came, and they would loot and take anything that they saw there, and I wondered how it was that Dr. Jaffrey's flashlight and his father's watch were never taken. And I said to him one day, "What do they do when they come into that little tiny room?" It was just a little tiny cubicle that became his room. And I said, "How is it that they haven't gotten your flashlight?" And he said, "Lassie," because he was Scotch and I was a Macintosh, he said, "Lassie, I always put it under the pillow and I just smooth it out, and I say Lord, I need that flashlight."

And he said, "That watch was my father's, that means much to me." And when they would walk in the room, they would reach down at the foot of the bed, and they would throw the little tiny mat up over that and look underneath and there was nothing there. You know, while I was writing this book, I thought about that. That was two solid years that that flashlight had gone on every time he pushed the button. He never had any batteries to change it with. He said, "No, I asked the Lord to keep it burning as long as I needed it."

One day, they came, they said, "We're going to take you somewhere else. You're living in much too much luxury." It was ridiculous, but they watched us as we went back across the valley and then up onto the other side, and into Melino. They said, "Get in to the church." By this time, everybody was gathering in the church. Everybody with a little bundle of something. I had been just within six months of my furlough. I knew that my clothes would not last very long, so I put on as many dresses as I could get on, and I did not look like a POW. I looked like a nice, fat little lady.

We tried to get a bench in the church for Dr. and Mrs. Jaffrey to lie on, and all the other older people on the benches. Then we slid in underneath on the cement floor. I thought during the night, "Lord, how long?" As the morning light was coming, all I could think of was, "Oft me thinks I hear His footsteps, stealing down the paths of time. The future dark with shadows brightens with the hope sublime." He's going to come back again. I would say, "Oh, Jesus, come quickly." Suddenly I heard the sound of the trucks being revved up. We gathered up our few things, we ran outside.

It was best never to keep them waiting. We got up into this truck with a stake bed on it. Those of us who were young, and I was only 20 when I went to the mission field. I was still in my early 20s. I said to Margaret and Ruth, that some of the younger ones, "Let's get where we can grab a hold of the hood of the truck. Then let's put our arms out so that we can hold these older people in there. Because if we don't, they're going to throw them out of the truck."

They would go around those corners, they were travelling at tremendous speeds, I think trying to throw us off of that stake bed truck. We finally made it down. I thought my arms would never be able to bend again. I had held them so long in that position, trying to keep those older people from falling off the back of the truck. Then we saw that they were pulling up in front of what I knew had been the native Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

We saw that there were great long barracks made, made out of bamboo matte walls with grass roofs, mud floors, double‑decker bamboo racks on which we were to sleep. We found our place and then they immediately said, "No, we want all the foreigners in this one barracks, Barrack Eight." That night, as we came together, all of the foreigners, we began to discuss someone to be the head of our barracks because we were told we had to choose someone.

Why they chose me, I don't know, because I was one of the youngest of the women there. I think it was probably because of my languages. I spoke Dutch fluently, I spoke English, and I also spoke the Indonesian language. The first night, I said, "We are going to need the help of God in these months or years that lie ahead of us." That night, I read in their languages, and I prayed that God would protect and keep us and draw us together. Those that did not know Him might come to know Him as Lord and Savior.

We learned later that many of the women from other barracks, would come over and sit down outside, because they felt such a need and a hunger for God. Out of all of those barracks in that camp, Barrack Eight was the one that held together. It was because of our faith in Jesus Christ. As soon as they would take some of those young boys that had reached the age of 16 to send them up to where the men were, there were Dutch people waiting to come in, because they had a hard hunger after God.

We had to work for the Japanese, we were their work crew. We had to make uniforms for them, the older women who could not do the heavy work outside, we were expected to knit quite socks for the officers. Their needles were busy all the time, all the Omas, all the grandmothers. If you were cooking porridge, you were up at four o'clock in the morning, cooking in a large drum. It had had kerosene in it. There was no way we could wash it out and get that taste out until after many, many cookings of rice or porridge in the morning.

There was, just above the drum in which we cooked the porridge, a ledge. One night, something must've happened. We figured out later. It must've been that there was a bird roosting up there and a rat had come to get the bird. In the struggle, they had fallen into the drum. It was so dark out there, you could not see. So merrily we stirred the porridge and when it was dished up, everybody said, "That's the best porridge we've ever had. It tastes just like chicken."

But when the light of day came and we could look down into that, here were feathers, the tail of a rat, carcasses. Some of them gave their porridge back to Mother Nature, and I decided I'd hang onto it.

[laughter]

Darlene:  I tell you, it wasn't bad.

[laughter]

Darlene:  I can tell you this, that a rat is cleaner than a duck because most of them eat seeds. Anyway, those of us who were young took the work, the heavy work. Some of them raised pigs for the Japanese. He would go out, our camp commander, into the villages, and he would shoot the dogs, bring them in. They had to be skinned, cut up, and cooked with the stems of the banana plants so that those pigs could have three hot meals a day. In would come the garbage, and of course you always gave it the finger test.

If it stuck between your fingers, it was big enough to eat. Also, I could not tell the difference between a dog's liver and calves' liver. Then we had to build roads for them. Out there in the sun, working with those great heavy hoes and building roads for them. We had to work in their kuli gang. We unloaded their trucks for them. I can remember standing on the pier down in Makasa, watching the kulis come to unload the ships. I saw that they always rolled their shoulders over and waited until that hit their shoulders.

They grabbed the ears of those big sacks, and I learned to do that. I wore a brace for several years after the war because of the injury to my spine, but you walked off with those loads or else. We also raised chickens. We had to gather up all the manure from the chickens. We had big pestles and mortars that we used. We put the chicken manure down in there, and then we'd stand with those big six‑foot pestles pounding that. It had to be as fine as sand. Then we had to sieve it so that there would be no little lumps in there, and that was sent down for the rose gardens of the Japanese.

We had to make gardens for them. We worked in the rice fields sometimes almost up to our hips in mud. Mud that was filthy from pigs and from water buffalo. We developed the big tropical ulcers eating into our skin. We didn't have any medicine, so we would save soap suds. We would put our bandages in the soap suds and then put them around our legs. You never threw away a bandage. You always washed it out. So it became a mosaic of blood and pus and dirt.

To pick up the work for those that were sick in bed that could not get out of bed any longer, they made a barracks for them and took them out there. Those that were in the last stages of dysentery, guards were set around those beds to keep the rats off of them because they smelled death. So we had a third of our camp down. We began to pick up more and more jobs for the older ones and those that were sick so that we would fill out the quota of work that was demanded of us.

I remember a day when the priest came down from the men's camp, and with him was a new second in command. He was a little fellow. I don't suppose that boy was much more than 15 or 16 years of age. He had such a sweet face we promptly named him "Sweet 17." That young man asked immediately who I was. He would come over and he would shake hands with me. He would find me two or three times a day. He would come and he would bow to me. Then, because he knew it was our custom, he would shake hands with me. He would greet me. Finally, he scared me.

I didn't know why was coming to me, in particular. I asked the other women, please, to watch. When they saw him coming, just to let me know so that I could get out of the way. Somehow he always seemed to find me. All he did was greet me. The Catholic priest was there and everybody was trying to get a chance to talk to him. He had been brought down to butcher those pigs so that they could be sent down, already slaughtered, to the coast, to Makasa.

I thought many times, "I'm going over and I'm going to ask him about Russell." Then I would see so many other women crowded around him, women that didn't know the Lord, women that were very anxious about their families, anxious, yes. I was concerned about my husband, but the Lord would say, "Not now, not now." I waited and a month went by after he'd been there and still there were always people around him. I would say, "Lord, I'm going over and see him now." He would say, "Not now, my child. Not now."

Then one day about three months after he had arrived in our camp, I saw Mrs. [unintelligible 20:35] , who was the Dutch woman head over the camp under Mr. Yamaji, the Japanese camp commander. She came over to the door of our barracks and she said "Hello Darlene, I would like to speak to you." And so we walked out onto a grassy plot there, in front of the little place where we had our meals. And we began to talk about the work. And I said "I know, I understand, but I have several other young women."

And I said "I am young, and we can pick up more jobs, I'm sure we can. For other people, even of other barracks." And suddenly she stopped and she said "But I didn't come to talk to you about the work." She said "I came over to tell you that your husband up in Paripari has been very ill." And then I saw tears in her eyes, and I reached out and I grabbed her shoulders. I said "Mrs. Jostra, you don't mean he's gone?" She said "Yes, some three months ago he died in the camp Paripari."

I was like every young person. I loved him. I was waiting for the day when the war would be over and we could go back to our people in New Guinea. This was like all my hopes were shattered and gone. I just turned from her, and I started to walk away. And I said, "God," and immediately he answered me. He said, "My child, did I not say to you that when thou passes through the waters, I would be with you, and through the floods, they would not overflow you?" He said "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

I said, "Lord, there's so much sorrow in this camp. I'm just asking one thing of you. Help me not to make my sorrow other people's sorrow." I said, "Just help me to dry my tears." Oh, the nights when I lay on that rack up there, the tears would fall. I learned that there is a peace that cometh after sorrow of hopes that are surrendered, not of hopes fulfilled. A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow, but only on a tempest that is stilled. A peace not now enjoys accepted. Nor in that happy life of love secure. It's a peace that comes from conflicts won while learning to endure.

Beloved, it's not the peace that over Eden brooded, that untried peace, but it's that that triumphed and [unintelligible 23:55] . When my Lord said, "Not my will, but thy be done." God never allows anything in your life, but what is for your good and His glory. Just remember that, won't you? I can remember the days when if you just mentioned the shock troops, it sent terrible fear into your heart. But then there came a time when we learned to fear another group much more than the shock troops.

They were called the Kempeitai, the secret police of the Japanese. Some of our women were taken away. Some of them never returned, but those that did return never talked about what happened to them.

Announcer:  We hope you are encouraged and inspired by this portion of the testimony of Darlene Rose. As always, don't forget to check out our great weekly specials.