Ten years ago, The Haddonfield Sun’s first cover story featured Mary Previte. In 1940, Previte was just 8 years old when the Japanese came into her school, located in now Weifang, China, and made it the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center, a Japanese concentration camp in China. Previte and her siblings were separated from her parents for five years, until Aug. 17, 1945, when six Americans parachuted from a B-24 Liberator and liberated the internees of the concentration camp peacefully.
Next year, it will be 70 years since the end of World War II and the liberation of the camp.
Now, Previte, a Haddonfield resident, is telling her story again, but this time as a featured person in a Chinese documentary on the Weihsien Concentration Camp.
“I was surprised that they wanted to film me. I was very surprised. It’s not every day I am filmed as a movie star,” Previte said.
Gou Yige from China Intercontinental Communication Center decided to do the documentary in honor of the victory of WWII and of the camp’s liberation. However, instead of making a normal documentary, he created a movie with the added twist of seeing how the concentration camp affected internees’ lives today.
“I thought it was unique. Following around someone to ask, ‘what is your life like today?’ I think that is remarkable. I don’t know of any other group who is planning something like this,” Previte said.
Yige and a group from the company started their search on the Internet and found Previte’s book “A Song of Salvation at Weihsien Prison Camp,” a story about her time at the camp through a child’s eyes.
“We think, from a child’s eyes, the story is a different perspective from all other documentaries about a concentration camp of this size,” Yige said through translator Yu Xiaochuan.
They got in contact with Previte, who was very excited about the opportunity, and at her suggestion, they interviewed other internees of the camp as well. From the list Previte provided, they interviewed three others, two who were in their teenage years and one who was an adult, now 97, during their time at the concentration camp.
“We covered different age groups so we could have different perspectives,” Yige said.
For the documentary, Yige interviewed Previte on the first day, but he didn’t stop there. The second day, Yige followed Previte through her everyday life, filming her getting wood for her fire, reading by the fire, sewing quilts with her quilting bee and following her to a church choir concert.
“We chose some shots from everyday life that can be connected to her life in the concentration camp. For example, when we took shots of her spending time with her friends, doing the quilting, she told the story of the clothing situation back in the concentration camp when she did the quilting work,” Yige said.
The children did not get new clothes while they were in the camp. They had to learn to sew to make and fix their own clothing or get clothing from an older student who couldn’t wear theirs anymore.
“I thought it was brilliant that instead of just filming all of the Weihsien concentration camp stories of my childhood sitting here just talking, we spent hours with our quilting group. We’re all sitting at the table with our sewing machines, sewing and cutting, and one of the girls would ask a question and that would give me a chance to tell a story. So instead of me just sitting in the chair and telling a story, I got to tell a story about how the boys got trousers for the last winter of the war while sewing. It was very, very natural and a wonderfully artistic way of telling the story,” Previte said.
“We went to the church to take some pictures and videos as well because we think the faith is connected to her life and spirit in the past. And we also got her reading next to the fire, so that we could give the audience a close and warm feeling of the character. Just everyday life,” Yige said.
Previte and Yige both hope viewers get good feelings out of the documentary, but in different ways.
Previte, being a child at the concentration camp, had a different perspective than one would think. Previte remembers going to school, continuing Scouts and playing games; she had mostly wonderful memories. One of those was of a competition she and her friend Margery dominated during their time at Weihsien, about being the best at starting a fire in the potbellied stoves to get warm, and she was proud of it.
“Isn’t that beautiful? The big memories of a concentration camp saying ‘I was the best with Margery at making the potbellied stove turn red hot,’” Previte said.
Previte credited her good time to the grownups at the camp. They added structure and routine to the children’s lives so they wouldn’t be scared and could live as normal a life as possible. Previte believes that is something she learned from those grownups and that she utilized during her time with the Camden County Youth Center, providing structure and routine for the youths so they wouldn’t be afraid.
“I am so grateful for the grownups who dedicated themselves to preserving our childhood no matter what came. That is a powerful message from my story — that I can tell you these stories without crying and without feeling hatred. It is because of grownups who said we will make this as normal as we possibly can and we were allowed to be children,” Previte said.
Yige wants viewers to see that, even in dark times, there are still bright sides to the story. He also wanted to show that the way you see the world can reflect who you are. That is why he chose not only to interview the people he did, but also to follow them through their daily lives.
“There are both weak points and bright sides in humanity, and even in dark times, you can still see the bright things sparkle in people, in humanity. For example, the Japanese soldiers were very kind to the children in the camp. They played with them or showed their own child’s photo to them. They didn’t want the war, too. So you can still see people’s bright side, kindness in the dark times,” Yige said. “And another thing is that the way you see the world can reflect who you are. While we interviewed others, we have this strong feeling that sometimes they didn’t feel like you were in the concentration camp. They didn’t have many dark memories. On the contrary, they had many wonderful memories in the concentration camp. We can feel the power of their spirit. That is the way they see the world.”
Yige hopes to get the documentary completed for China’s Spring Festival in America called Chinese New Years. In 2015, that will be Feb. 19. Once completed, the documentary will be broadcast across China.
Years ago, the city of Weifang stopped tearing down the buildings inside the Weihsien concentration camp, feeling it is an important part of the city’s history. Today, it has made them into tourist attractions with a park and a museum. There is also a monument with the names of all of the internees in English and Chinese located near the site. The dormitory Previte was in is still preserved and can be visited today.
