Letters Home: An American in China: 1939-1944

Immediately after graduating from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota in June of 1939, John Hlavacek sailed to China to teach English at the Carleton-in-China Middle School in Fenchow, Shansi Province. As John describes it, his Uncle Frank, was not impressed, as many Midwesterners then had little knowledge of China, other than that it was ravaged by famine, disease, and war. Other friends, however, thought it was quite an honor. After five weeks of training in Chinese at a language school in Peking, John and a fellow teacher traveled to the mission compound in what was then Japanese-occupied China. John spent two years teaching English in Shansi and Szechwan. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, John joined the American Military Attaché's office in China's wartime capital of Chungking, and in 1944 he joined United Press as a war correspondent. John s re-telling of his time in China was written from the collection of letters he sent home to his family detailing his life over-seas. He details everything, as only John can, from his L-O-N-G journey to China, to how he eventually became a foreign war correspondent for United Press.