Destination China

In August 1948, missionary nurse Norma Lenschow boarded the steamship General W. H. Gordon in San Francisco for a five week voyage to the Republic of China. By the time she and her party reached Shanghai, the Chinese Civil War, rekindled in the preceding years by the end of Japanese occupation, had escalated into the Liaoshen Campaign as Communist forces consolidated power in the northeast. Given the choice to return to the safety of the U.S. or remain in a China with an uncertain future, Lenschow stayed. Eventually she reached a Lutheran missionary compound in Enshi, Hubei Province. Even as Nationalist forces retreated southward, pursued by the advancing People's Liberation Army, the missionary nurses and their Chinese co-workers continued to provide medical care to the residents of Enshi until the Americans finally evacuated in August 1949. Throughout it all, Lenschow wrote perceptive, sometimes poignant, letters to her family. She carried a camera wherever she went, recording what words did not. Together, these letters and photographs offer a unique, personal perspective on a China ripped apart by poverty and war.