Missionary Home

Lucy Perkins Bonney, Wakefield, Mass., is safely home from Burma! Miss Bonney, who has spent twenty-five years in missionary and educational work in Burma [and] India arrived from Calcutta on the 18th of December [1945], and is at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Josiah S. Bonney. This is her third furlough back to the land of her birth.

1938-42 she spent in educational and village church work in the Myitkyina District of the Kachin Hills of Burma, living at Sumprabum, a town one hundred and thirty miles north of Myitkyina. In April, 1942, she was in charge of feeding the refugees who were being evacuated by air from Myitkyina. The mission school compound was used as a camp and several thousand refugees were cared for there.

When it became necessary to abandon the camp because the Japanese were rapidly approaching, a succession of hazardous treks were made before the oncoming Japanese invasion until her final destination, Fort Hertz, farthest outpost of the British in Burma, a place that the Japanese never succeeded in reaching, although they once got within forty five miles of it.

The next two years were spent assisting in looking after a mission station in upper Assam, where she had a group of refugee Kachin women and children to teach and care for. In December 1944 she went to Calcutta, where she was "loaned" to the YMCA War Service and assisted in charge of a large Hostel for service women in Calcutta for six months. When Rangoon was retaken, Miss Bonney was privileged to leave on the first convoy from Calcutta by sea for Rangoon. There she assisted in setting up a "Drop-In-Club" for service women.

After six months service in the YMCA. in Rangoon, Miss Bonney was flown back to Calcutta to await the ship which would bring her back home.

[Miss Bonney was superintendent of the Sumprabum Baptist School, and was involved in much else eg Kachin Baptist Church of Burma. She returned to Burma in 1949.]

Annals of the Wing Family of America, Vols 46-53.