Over 1000 Letters in Digital Repository
The sirens began before they were ready.
Jean, fourteen years old and suffering from what would prove to be appendicitis, was not supposed to move. Yet when the air raid alarm sounded, Alicia had her seated in a chair and carried downstairs by servants. Extra table leaves were laid across the dining room table. Heavy rugs were spread over them and draped down the sides. Chairs were arranged around the perimeter. The family crawled underneath. Bombs were already exploding—some close enough to shake the house—before they were fully settled. Later reports estimated that 105 planes had taken part in the raid, with fatalities ranging from 600 to several thousand. The hospital ran four operating units simultaneously and still could not accommodate all the wounded.
That account comes from a letter dated July 27, 1941.
As of the end of February 2026, our digital repository contains over 1,000 letters like this—letters that bring into sharp focus a turbulent era in Chinese and world history. For the past few months, I’ve been spending an hour or two each evening reading through them. They reveal not only major historical events but the texture of daily life lived within them.
In a letter to her parents dated December 19, 1919, Alicia Morey Graham writes that their departure from Kobe to Shanghai had been delayed because Harriet Jane—almost one year old—had developed bronchial pneumonia after contracting influenza. Ruth, three years old, had already suffered influenza on the Pacific crossing. Strikingly, this is the only reference I have found to the 1918 influenza pandemic, despite the Grahams’ presence in Chicago during its height.
Letters from September 23, 1940, through February 23, 1941, document David Crockett Graham’s return journey to China. Traveling from Hong Kong to Burma (Myanmar), he navigated customs obstacles, negotiated with trucking companies, and worked to transport medical supplies and other missionaries’ belongings up the Burma Road. He describes Japanese bombings along the route and records his observations of Burmese society and religion. The collection includes correspondence with Father Christopher Sullivan, a Catholic missionary who assisted with the transport, and a document from the Chinese Consulate in Rangoon (Yangon) urging cooperation in facilitating Graham’s shipment. A letter dated April 1, 1941, to the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society summarizes these challenges.
Other letters from late 1941 revolve around an unusual request: Graham was asked to capture live pandas to be sent to the United States as gifts from Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The correspondence includes letters from Graham in the mountain districts, from Frank Price (a key adviser to Chiang Kai-shek), from Hollington K. Tong (vice minister of information for the Chinese government), and from John Tee-Van of the Bronx Zoo.
In an October 6, 1942, letter, Alicia reports that Wendell Willkie had been a breakfast guest in their home, along with several college presidents and others. She even lists the menu: persimmons and pears, wheat cereal, muffins, toast, scrambled eggs, kumquat marmalade, doughnuts, and coffee. Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential candidate, had embarked on a world tour as an informal envoy after losing to Franklin Roosevelt. China—its government relocated to Chongqing in Sichuan Province under Japanese assault—was one of his stops. He would have arrived by military transport over the Himalayas from India, landing outside Chengdu.
The shadow of censorship appears in a November 10, 1942, letter in which Alicia remarks that there would be more news “if it weren’t wiser not to write about some things at this stage of affairs in the world.” Letters were routinely opened and sometimes redacted. Yet a June 21, 1942, letter passed through with pointed comments defending the British RAF, which had been criticized after the fall of Burma. Alicia wrote that she had spoken with RAF soldiers, American aviators, Baptist missionaries, and Chinese refugees, all of whom affirmed that the RAF had fought alongside Chinese forces while retreating before overwhelming Japanese pressure.
These letters are available in our digital repository, accessible to anyone who wishes to read them. Many are handwritten and can be challenging to decipher, but there are also numerous typewritten letters and a growing number of transcriptions. A handful are in Chinese, and transcripts and translations of those are included as well.
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