Shanghai Baby: The Adventures of an American Girl from the Far East to the Midwest

By Elizabeth Zillah Janes Novak

An Extraordinary Legacy: Born in Shanghai, China, in an era between the World Wars, Zillah Janes inherited a natural spirit of adventure. Her father, an American businessman in the Far East, met and married in Tokyo her mother, a British governess who had escaped both Poland and Russia in the wake of war and revolution. Their two daughters grew up among Shanghai’s international community, where Zillah became a keen observer of local culture. Her story features remarkable events:
• How she became the youngest American at the time to hold her own passport
• Traveling the world by steamship, including a voyage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Gibraltar
• Her family’s evacuation of Shanghai under falling bombs and shrapnel
• Living as temporary refugees in Manila and Singapore before returning to Japanese-occupied Shanghai
• Summers in Java and Bali after her father’s reassignment to the Dutch East Indies
• Leaving her Shanghai home behind as World War 2 loomed
• Reunion with her father after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor while his ship convoy transited the Pacific
• How she adjusted to American culture: from Berkeley, California, to the suburbs of Chicago and the Midwest, to Hollywood and Southern California
Over 150 vintage photos and three maps illustrate this unique and personal reflection on a fascinating time in world history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JLR Editing
• Release date: Aug 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005043094

Elizabeth Zillah Janes Novak

Writing has been part of my DNA, as my mother was a great letter writer and documented her travels through Europe, Russia, and on to the Far East. I have kept journals of my own travels, written poetry, and penned devotional reflections throughout my life. As an active Docent at a museum, I have found that history and biographies are my favorite kind of reading, and I love helping children discover different cultures and interesting artifacts. My own creative projects range from art, handcrafts, and do-it-yourself home maintenance. Since my childhood during the 1930s and 1940s was unusual, my family urged me to write an autobiography.

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Shanghai Baby:

The Adventures of an American Girl

from the Far East to the Midwest

Copyright ©2020 Elizabeth Zillah Janes Novak

Design by Peter Gloege | LOOK Design Studio

These memoirs are dedicated to my beloved children, Joseph, Jane, and Linda, who have been a blessing to me far more than words can describe. Their encouragement and love have been inspiring. I especially acknowledge and appreciate Jane’s suggestions and dedication of time in editing the manuscript and selecting photographs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TIMELINE

PRELUDE

CHAPTER 1: Beginnings

CHAPTER 2: The City of Shanghai

CHAPTER 3: Our Home, Household, and Neighborhood

CHAPTER 4: Political Climate of the 1930s

CHAPTER 5: Friends

CHAPTER 6: Family Life and Activities

CHAPTER 7: School and Extracurricular Pursuits

CHAPTER 8: Medical History

CHAPTER 9: Baby with a Passport

CHAPTER 10: Ship Life, and a Year Away from Home

CHAPTER 11: Assignment to the Indies

CHAPTER 12: Java and the Indies

CHAPTER 13: War Clouds Gather

CHAPTER 14: Repatriated Americans

CHAPTER 15: Becoming Americanized

CHAPTER 16: College Years

POSTLUDE

TIMELINE

22 August 1879 Harry Janes born in Hampton, Iowa, third of five children born to his mother Sarah, seventh born to his previously widowed father Hubert. He later takes Socrates as his middle name.

27 September 1891 Lizzie Edith Scott born in London, England, second of eleven children born to Amy and William Isaac Gibson Scott (Wigs).

25 December 1902 Daughter Marie born to Harry Janes and his first wife, Mary Grace. (They divorce later that decade.)

c. 1911 or 1912 Automatic Electric Telephone Company sends Harry to Australia; Harry briefly married to an Australian woman.

August 1915 Edith Scott, working as a governess in Poland when World War 1 breaks out, escapes Warsaw in a boxcar and arrives in Moscow.

September 1915 Edith takes another governess position with the Randrup family in Omsk, Siberia.

c. 1917 Automatic Electric moves Harry to the East Asia market (Shanghai, then Tokyo).

early 1918 During Russian revolution, Edith evacuates Omsk with the Randrup family, traveling to Vladivostok and the Far East on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

early 1922 After three more years with the Randrup family in Yokohama, Japan, Edith returns to her own family in London, almost eight years after she left home.

c. 1925 Edith returns to Japan, taking another governess position.

early 1926 Chiang Kai-shek emerges as leader of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party).

24 December 1927 Harry Janes and Edith Scott marry in Tokyo, Japan.

early 1928 Harry and Edith purchase a home in Shanghai where Harry sets up his phone company’s Far East headquarters.

summer 1928 Newlyweds travel to England via Suez Canal to meet Edith’s family.

11 September 1929 Elizabeth Zillah Janes born at Country Hospital in Shanghai.

29 October 1929 Stock market crash; Great Depression starts.

June 1931 Automatic Electric Telephone Company summons Harry to the head office in Chicago; Edith and Zillah travel with him by ship via Japan and Hawaii.

August–September 1931 Side trip from Chicago to England to visit relatives; Zillah turns 2 in London.

December 1931 Family returns to Shanghai via Hawaii and Japan.

16 January 1932 Patricia Fae Janes born in Shanghai.

28 January–3 March 1932 January 28 incident aka Shanghai incident (armed conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan); Shanghai bombed.

summers 1933, ’34, ’35 Family vacations at coastal resort of Tsingtao, north of Shanghai on the Yellow Sea.

spring 1936 Automatic Electric recalls Harry to Chicago to discuss opening an office in the Dutch East Indies. Meanwhile, Edith and girls embark on the SS Scharnhorst for a visit with family in England, sailing via Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, India, the Suez Canal, and Gibraltar.

summer & fall 1936 With relatives in London; Zillah’s 7th birthday; Zillah attends school there.

11 November 1936 Edith and girls depart Southampton on the RMS Queen Mary for New York, where Harry meets them; family goes on to Chicago.

winter 1937 Edith homeschools Zillah and Patsy in Chicago. Family pays visits to relatives in Iowa and California.

25 March 1937 Family boards SS President Coolidge in San Francisco to return to Shanghai.

late April 1937 Harry takes a company reassignment to the Dutch East Indies (Bandoeng, Java); family remains in Shanghai.

July 1937 With the Marco Polo Bridge incident, war breaks out between China and Japan; conflict later becomes the Chinese theater of World War 2.

13 August– 26 November 1937 Battle of Shanghai. Many Europeans, especially women and children, evacuate; city falls to Japanese.

19 August–20 September 1937 Edith and girls leave Shanghai for Manila via Hong Kong; Zillah’s 8th birthday in the Philippines.

23 September 1937 From Manila, Edith and girls arrive in Singapore and live at the Goodwood Park Hotel.

fall 1937 Harry visits the family periodically from Java; Zillah and Patsy attend British school in Singapore.

January 1938 Edith and girls return to their home in Japanese-controlled Shanghai.

summers 1938, ’39, ’40 Edith and girls vacation with Harry in the Dutch East Indies (Java, Bali).

1 September 1939 Germany invades Poland, launching World War 2.

7 September 1940 German Air Force begins Blitz, bombing London for 57 days straight.

27 September 1940 Japan signs the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, joining the Axis powers.

January 1941 After packing and shipping their household goods, Edith, Zillah, and Pat leave their Shanghai home, sailing for the United States.

winter–spring 1941 Edith and girls settle into an apartment in Berkeley, California; Zillah and Pat enter school.

summer 1941 Edith and girls visit Yosemite National Park, staying in a tent-cabin at Tuolomne Meadows.

~October 1941 Harry closes the Automatic Electric office in Java; he sails to Manila and the company’s office there to await passage to the U.S.

27 November 1941 Harry departs Manila on the SS President Coolidge in a convoy with an army transport vessel, escorted by a naval cruiser.

7 December 1941 While Harry’s ship is at sea, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters World War 2. SS President Coolidge takes a circuitous route through the Pacific to avoid becoming a target; ship-to-shore communications restricted.

25 December 1941 Harry arrives in San Francisco and reunites with family.

winter–spring 1942 Harry reports to Automatic Electric headquarters in Chicago, renting an apartment in Evanston; Zillah and Pat finish school year in Berkeley.

summer 1942 Edith, Zillah, and Pat take a cross-country tour on their way to join Harry in Illinois. Harry and Edith find and purchase a home in Elmhurst.

September 1942 Zillah and Pat start school: Zillah in 9th grade at York Community High School in Elmhurst at age 13.

2 September 1945 Japan signs surrender documents, ending World War 2 and its occupation of China.

June 1946 Zillah graduates from high school.

September 1946 Zillah enters DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, at age 17; pledges Alpha Omicron Pi sorority.

summer 1948 Edith, Zillah, and Pat spend six weeks in England; they visit relatives, attend opening ceremony of 1948 Olympics at Wembley Stadium.

9 April 1950 Zillah marries John Louis Novak in Elmhurst, Illinois, during spring break of her senior year.

June 1950 Zillah graduates from DePauw, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree with a sociology major and psychology minor.

July 1950 Zillah and John purchase home in Villa Park, Illinois.

February 1954 Zillah and John purchase home in Elmhurst, Illinois.

30 November 1955 Son Joseph Alan Novak born to Zillah and John.

24 April 1957 Daughter Jane Louise Novak born to Zillah and John.

18 August 1959 Daughter Linda Fae Novak born to Zillah and John.

June 1960 John’s company transfers him to Hollywood; family moves to California.

July 1960 Zillah and John purchase home on Vallejo Drive in Glendale, California.

June 1961 Family begins attending Glendale Presbyterian Church.

May 1964 After state claims Vallejo Drive property for a new freeway route, the Novaks move across Glendale and purchase home on Virginia Avenue.

PRELUDE

—

Many years ago, a radio soap opera called Our Gal Sunday would open each episode with the question: Can this girl from a little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman? The story of my parents’ marriage might answer a similar question: Can a London-born girl who associated with wealthy and cultured Europeans find happiness as the wife of a farm boy from Iowa?

What circumstances brought together the lives of Lizzie Edith Scott and Harry Janes in the late 1920s in Japan, where they were married? Both came from large families, and both were infused with a spirit of adventure, a willingness to dare to move into unfamiliar surroundings, to open their lives to the unexpected. They shared happy times, but also had difficulties in their ability to communicate feelings. Some personality traits made my father hard to live with at times. He could be both generous and suspicious, outgoing yet jealous, with a host of ethnic and religious prejudices stemming from a provincial, struggling Midwestern farm family. When my sister and I were small, he loved to romp with us and make us laugh. My mother’s English family teased each other constantly, but she learned to be careful with that type of humor around my dad, as he didn’t accept it well.

* * * * *

My mother as a young woman

Lizzie Edith Scott, born in 1891, was the second-oldest in a family of eleven children, all but one living to adulthood. My grandmother, Amy Boreham Scott, was a small British woman with a spirited temper. She bore five girls before a boy came on the scene. The oldest daughters were relied on as helpers for the babies as they came along—which may have influenced my aunts Mabel and Zillah not to marry and my mother to delay that commitment until she had lived on her own for a while.

"Wigs" and Amy Scott

My grandfather, William Isaac Gibson Scott (nicknamed Wigs), was a cabinetmaker, and one of Mother’s sisters acquired the exquisite doll’s house with its tiny staircase and carved banister that Grandfather Scott hand made for his girls. His red hair passed on in various shades to most of his offspring. My mother remembers getting teased by friends who pretended to warm their hands over her flame-red locks. She also had very fair complexion with pale blue eyes.

I don’t remember Grandpa Scott, who died in 1932 after my parents and I visited London the previous year when I turned two. At that time, the family lived in a three-story narrow townhouse in a middle-class neighborhood in southwest London. For reasons obscure to me, having to do with land title, my dad bought the freehold on the property in my mother’s name so her parents would always have a home, and she then willed it to her two unmarried sisters, Mabel and Zillah.

Mother completed a basic education, and with her experience caring for younger siblings, a sharp mind, and a broad knowledge through her love of reading, she qualified for a position as a governess. This was a desirable career in the early 1900s for young women with poise, patience, and perceptiveness. Young children of privileged birth were often educated at home for several years before entering a private prep school. Besides providing foundational education, a governess had responsibility for instilling the type of behavior a socially prominent family expected of its heirs. The governess used a variety of opportunities for instruction, since she often accompanied the family on outings to concerts, parks, and museums, as well as on extended trips. Observing and learning herself, a bright young woman even from a modest family could enrich her own culture and enhance her career and marriage opportunities.

After working as a governess in England, Mother wanted to see more of the world. So during the summer just before she turned 22, she found a position as a governess with a wealthy family in Poland. She had a marvelous experience, as my mother’s Polish family introduced her to continental European customs and society. She mentioned meeting the famous pianist Arthur Rubinstein at a private party.

When her first summer with the Polish family came to an end, Mother returned to London for another year of school, then rejoined them for the summer of 1914. Little did she realize what adventures lay ahead. The outbreak of World War 1 made a Channel return to England dangerous, as the North Sea filled with mines and U-boats. As a consequence, Mother’s summer turned into more than a year with her Polish family. Happily, Mother picked up foreign languages with relative ease. (Later, on her longest stint as a governess, she learned to read as well as speak Russian.)

By early August 1915, German troops began closing in on Warsaw, and all remaining foreigners tried desperately to find transport out of the city. My mother and three other intrepid young British women, all stranded in Poland by the war, managed to commandeer an empty box car on a train going they knew not where. Five and a half days later, they arrived in Moscow.

Mother, age 24 in November 1915, as a governess in Siberia with Liza and Misha Randrup

The war refugees, still unable to return home, began looking for work in Moscow. Mother soon found another position as a governess for the Randrup family. They had a daughter, Liza (formally Ylizaveta, aka Elizabeth), about four years old; a two-year-old son, Misha (formally Mikhail, aka Michael); and a baby girl, Sasha (formally Alexandria), only a few weeks old. The father was Danish, but his business and residences were in his wife’s homeland of Russia. My mother enjoyed wonderful years with these people, absorbing the art and music of Russia. She worshiped with them in their ornate cathedrals where the deep male voices of the a cappella choirs filled the sanctuary. The Russian Orthodox church observed stringent Lenten restrictions, yet celebrated a joyous feasting for the glory of Easter.

The Randrups resided primarily in the city of Omsk, about 1,500 miles east of Moscow in southwestern Siberia. Mother accompanied the family on trips and to their summer country home at the edge of a forest on the outskirts of Moscow. Automobiles were so rare that the Randrups had to arrange a supply of gasoline before setting off on a long drive.

During one of these summer vacations, Mother suffered a serious accident, which took its toll on her right leg for the rest of her life. While walking up a trail, Mother slipped and fell down a steep hill into a marshy area. Although a doctor attended her, apparently no X-rays were taken. Consequently, after staying in bed for a couple of weeks until the pain subsided, she started walking again without realizing the top of her femur had fractured. The bone healed badly, eventually shortening her leg an inch, and damaged the hip socket. As years went by, Mother’s limp became more pronounced, and the deteriorating top of her femur caused pain in the pelvic area. Not until I was in college back in the States did my dad take Mother to the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for evaluation and surgery. By then it was too late to rectify the shortened bone, but after a second corrective operation, the pain greatly eased and deterioration halted.

World War 1 had set in motion the beginnings of drastic change for rich and poor alike in Russia. Mother remembered the pitiful condition of soldiers as