Trapped in Paradise: Catholic Nuns in the South Pacific 1940-1943

About this book

In Trapped in Paradise during World War II four Catholic nuns from California were caught behind enemy lines in the South Pacific. Two of these Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange were teachers and two were nurses. Having arrived In the Solomon Islands in December 1940 they were new to missionary life new to a culture not their own new to the languages spoken on their island and new to navigating in the geography that surrounded them. On December 7 1941 a year and a day after the nuns arrived in the Solomons Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. After that devastating air-strike the Japanese quickly and strategically occupied many of the islands of the South Pacific. What the nuns didnt know was that the Japanese wanted to occupy their island Buka and they wanted it fast! Buka a small island just north of the large island of Bougainville offered the Japanese a strategic site for an airfield to support their invasion of the rest of the South Pacific including Australia. When the nuns had left Wilmington California in 1940 one of them Sister Hedda Jaeger a nurse was tasked with keeping a journal that was sent back periodically to their religious community in Orange California. In good times and bad Sister Hedda was faithful to recording their story. This first person account documents their journeyfrom their eager anticipation about their new mission to adapting to the realities of native culture to sheer terror as they run from the invading Japanese. Once in hiding on the larger island of Bougainville they learn that other missionaries in the Solomons had been tortured and executed. Throughout their adventures and later ordeals they are protected by the Marist priests experienced missionaries who knew the lay of the land and feared for the sisters fate should they be captured. After many months of hiding in the jungle and with no communication with the larger world the sisters were ultimately rescued by United States submarine Nautilus in a high risk mission on New Years Day 1943. The book tells the story of these four courageous and devoted women the natives they taught and nursed the priests who hid and protected them and the incredible physical emotional and spiritual challenges they faced. After the end of the war the Sisters of St. Joseph returned again to serve the people of the Solomon Islands. An epilogue describes the fate of the principal missionaries both those who survived and those who died at the hands of the Japanese. The sisters journal related writings maps and original photographs form the basis for this book.