Faith in the Desert

In 1944, Dr. Agnes Bartlett left Hanover to serve as a medical officer at the Poston Internment Camp in southwestern Arizona, one of the largest concentration camps for Japanese-Americans that was run by the United States during World War II. Bartlett was the granddaughter of Samuel Colcord Bartlett, eighth president of Dartmouth, and the daughter of missionaries to Japan. Her parents, Samuel Colcord Bartlett Jr. and Fanny G. Bartlett, were living there when Agnes was born in Kyoto on March 18, 1911. We have a small collection of papers that belonged to Dr. Bartlett, including manuscript stories, personal correspondence, and publications related to Poston as well as Manzanar, another of the internment camps where Bartlett volunteered to serve as a physician.

While preparing for a class on Asian American history earlier this year, one document in particular caught our eye: a bulletin from the Poston-1 Christian Church. The Poston Internment Camp was so large that it was subdivided into three separate camps, Poston-1, Poston-2, and Poston-3, which were known by the inhabitants as "Roastin'", "Toastin'" and "Dustin'." The bulletin for the first camp's church is for the Sunday night service on February 25th, 1945; its simple and matter-of-fact contents provide a vivid picture of a community of faith that is committed to its members and to its beliefs despite the suffering that it is currently experiencing. The last page contains a poem written by Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa titled, "The Burden". Kagawa was a Japanese Christian and pacifist was incarcerated in Japan at the time for his opposition to Japanese militarism.

Interestingly enough, on the same page, there is an excerpt from a letter written to the Poston community from a Private Minoru Ito who says that "Life really isn't as bad as I expected here at Ft. Douglas." Fort Douglas, Utah, was a critical processing center for Nisei soldiers, or second-generation Japanese Americans who were born in the US and had enlisted or were drafted to serve in the army.

To explore the rest of the many pamphlets, correspondence, and publications related to the War Relocation Authority, request Box 1 of the Agnes Bartlett papers (ML-43) online and then come to Rauner.

"But he is now free"

We just had one of those "discovery" moments. We put that in quotes because the only reason we could make the discovery was because an archivist long ago did a great job of cataloging a letter. She or he probably "discovered" it, we used their work to rediscover it. Anyway, none of us knew about it. It's quite a story. In the Fall of 1839, a person fleeing bondage from a plantation in Alabama found his way to Hanover on the way to Canada. He caused a sensation on campus, and the local abolitionist group persuaded him to come to the chapel to talk about his experiences.

Luckily for us, Lemuel Chandler Spofford, Class of 1839, wrote about it in a letter to his brother from October 10th, 1839. His sympathies are clearly with the abolitionist movement, and the rhetoric he uses to describe the runaway slave is indicative of the Northern sensibility--filled with pity for the enslaved person and an abhorrence to the cruelties of the institution of slavery. He writes:

There was a pitiful object passed through this place a fortnightly since. A poor runaway Slave who had thrown off his shackels of Slavery and was makeing his way through a land of freedom to a land of freedom. At the request of the good Abolitionists he went into the Chapel and told his pitiful tale in the presence of 400 or abouts that. He carried the marks of Slavery which were arguments that could not be decried one was a very crooked leg which had been broken by his mistress while she was in a rage at him. His master he said was good he never whipped but once he said with 110 lashes because he forgot to tie the horses. "A good Master" I should think. He was carried from here to Canada by the friends of the poor Slave but come near being taken he went into a tavern where he saw two men whom he saw in Alabama but he is now free.

He has no name in this letter. His identity is that of a runaway slave.

To see the letter, ask for MS 839568.