Foreign News: The Return of Patsy Li

When Mrs. Ruth Li of Singapore had her first baby, a girl, she named the infant Patsy Li (from Pai-ti Li, which is Chinese for “White Plum Blossom”). Patsy was six and had a younger sister, Lottie, when the Japanese attacked Malaya. Mrs. Li escaped from Singapore with her two children aboard a ship. At sea, the ship was torpedoed and sunk by the Japs.

In the water, Mrs. Li put Patsy on a mass of floating wreckage. She lost Lottie and was herself picked up by the Japs. She believed that both children were dead.

Later, on Guadalcanal, 4.000 miles away natives found a dazed little Chinese girl who had been bruised and slashed by Jap soldiers. They turned her over to a U.S. Marine outfit, who handed her to their chaplain, Father Gehring. Although Father Gehring spoke eight Chinese dialects, he could not get the child to talk. He decided to name her “White Plum Blossom” and so called her Patsy Li.

Little Lost Child. New York Times Reporter Foster Hailey saw Patsy at orphanages on Espiritu Santo and Efate and wrote two stories about her. These were read by Mrs. Li’s sister, Katherine, who was doing medical research in Manhattan. Although the name was spelled “Patsy Lee” in the stories, she was so struck by the coincidence that she sent the clippings to her sister in Singapore.

Mrs. Li decided that Patsy Lee might be her lost daughter. She wrote to Hailey and Father Gehring, and finally, fighting her way through jungles of official indifference and red tape, set out on the long voyage to Efate. Last week she got there and claimed Father Gehring’s Patsy Lee as her lost child.

How had the child got from Malayan waters to Guadalcanal? The most reasonable explanation was that she had been rescued from the wreckage by Japanese and taken by their camp women to the distant Solomon Islands. But mothers the world over believe in miracles, and Mrs. Li had no need for reasonable explanations.