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Holmberg, Hilda Christina.

[A Gathering of Letters Written from Singapore and Java, 1913–1918.]

Mostly Buitenzorg, Java; also at sea, Japan, and Singapore, 2 December 1913–6 September 1918. 39 autograph letters, signed, most dated and/or with original envelopes but including 7 undated letters without envelopes, 136 pp., manuscript in ink and 5 typed pp. One letter apparently incomplete, all others hand signed or signed in type. CONDITION: Very good, scotch tape repair to 5.5” tear to one leaf in letter dated 29 March 1916; two letters on paper-thin wood, with hand-colored photo-mechanical letterhead illustrations, separated along old folds.

A sheaf of letters by a young missionary from South Dakota, primarily written from Java to her family over the course of five years, describing the scene there as well as her teaching, language-learning, and health (including surgery and a bout with typhoid), and containing regular references to World War I and its effects on life in Java, despite Holland’s neutrality.

Hilda Holmberg was born in Centerville, South Dakota, and studied at Northwestern University before departing for work as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in November of 1913. She sailed from Seattle to Singapore, where she spent several months teaching before taking up her station in Buitenzorg, in the Dutch East Indies (now Bogor, Indonesia), in the summer of 1914. During her first months in Singapore, Holmberg describes going to prayer meetings in Malay (“I was so delighted to find that I really understood two or three whole sentences”), teaching English songs to her students (“The children in school love to sing a song in their books about the snow flakes. Isn’t it strange? And not one of them have ever seen snow”), getting used to the noise outside her bedroom window (“But I claimed the promise of God, ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee’ and sleep came and now I sleep as well as can be for I trust in Him”), witnessing parts of a Chinese funeral (“They have…been having doings each night ever since he died…”), and becoming acquainted with Chinese culture in Singapore (“They are very ambitious and the Chinese here are most of them very well to do. They are not obliged to live as they do in China—that is, so crowded. Neither are they at all the same as the Chinese which we see in the U.S. They are a very proud people. And in some ways they have a right to be, for they are certainly a great people”).

Holmberg arrives in Java in early July of 1914, is vaccinated against small pox (“there is quite a good deal of it among the native people. But as they become vaccinated more and more it will gradually die out”), and reports her first experience with soaring prices on the heels of “a rumor of war in Europe” (“Condensed milk is selling for one guilder a tin—that is 40 cents in U.S. gold”). She soon begins making calls with a native “Bible woman,” quickly learns Malay (“Languages are easy for me, and I pitched right in”), and sends rich descriptions of local landscapes and populations. In one 1915 letter, dated from Tjiseroewa (i.e., Ciserua), where she is convalescing after having her appendix removed, she dwells on her physical and social surroundings in considerable detail:

Just outside of the house are all colors of roses, in full bloom. In the distance are the mountains the largest peak is an extinct volcano and on clear days the crater is visible. Just now, however, the tops of the mountains are hidden from view by fleecy white clouds. On their sides are large forests of trees and thick undergrowth. In the gentle slope of the foot of the mts are the green rice fields cut in terraces so that the water can run down from one to the other and irrigate the rice. At a distance they look just like stair steps rising one after the other. And scattered around in the gulleys are cocoanut palms tree ferns and various other trees of which I have not yet learned the names. But altogether it is a beautiful scene.…

The Dutch, who own this island, look a great deal like the Germans. They are light complexioned as a rule. There are many Chinese in the cities and they are the ones who have the money. Many of them live on large cocoanut plantations also and have beautiful homes. But the Chinese are not the ignorant people that we Americans assume when we never have seen them. No, indeed! Besides they are a very progressive people. There are not many Javanese in this part of the island, they live mostly in the east end. The people here are most Malays and Soundanese. Most of them are very ignorant. The natives are all Mohammedans, except of course those who are Christians and that is a very small number compared to the population which is now 33 millions. There are a large number of the natives who are employed by Europeans and Chinese as servants and laborers on the tea and cocoanut and rice plantations. Some of them have little patches of ground of their own. The people of Java are said to be the best farmers in the world, not because they have all the latest improved farm implements, for they use wooden plows with a steel point drawn by water buffaloes. They do not use horses for farming. The horses that are used here on the road are all very small and are very tough. There are some large horses used by some of the ‘high muckymucks’ but guess they do not stand the climate very well. It seems as tho every inch of ground is utilized…They live in villages mostly and do not live on farms like the people at home. They have their patches of ground that they work outside of the village. This is not true in all cases. This is the natives of course and not the Chinese. As I said before, the Chinese are the moneyed class and live in grand style…The common day laborers get about 14 cents U.S. money a day, but as their food does not have to be bought and their clothes consist only of two garments, a sort of a coat and a long piece of a good [sic]  sewed together for a nether garment, it does not cost them much.

In 1915 Holmberg finds a house, in which she opens a school and hosts a weekly morning of play, song, and religious story-time for younger children. She also runs weekly “woman’s meeting[s],” and by 1916 reports: “Several new women came and I felt that we had a good meeting. I told them the story of the conversion of Saul and they all seemed very much interested and were very attentive. Oh yes, I can speak just as rapidly in Malay now as in English. In fact, part of the time when I speak English I cannot think of the right word in English & have to put in some Malay words.”

Over the course of these letters, Holmberg describes an earthquake (“My bed shook so it almost made me sea-sick”); the Chinese New Year (“This is so exciting there is such a conglomeration of sound that it can hardly be called harmony for it verges on the ragged edge of what we call noise”); an intercepted love note between two missionary school students; the ceremonial arrival of “the new Governor General” (“at either side of the street at regular intervals, about 20 ft, were soldiers standing at attention. And then back of them was an innumerable multitude of men women and children of all sizes and shapes and colors, from the lightest haired Dutch thru all the various mixtures and shades to the swarthiest native”); advising a fellow missionary on what kind of car to request from a wealthy donor (“I have been giving advice all day to the Dr. about autos. ha! ha! nothing like making the other fellow think you know something anyhow”); losing her hair to typhoid; being known among her fellow Java missionaries by the nickname “Happy” (“I like the name, but I wonder if it’s always true. I’m glad it looks like it to them”); and the upsetting experience of trying to help a sick baby, who, from her description, may have had neonatal conjunctivitis caused by a mother with Chlamydia:

And thus the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. The Dr. looked at his eyes & said that it was too late. He could do nothing. Yesterday one of the eyes bursted and the Dr. said the other would soon do the same. It just makes a person heart sick to see all this and not be able to do anything. Guess the only way is to try & educate the younger generation so that they will live clean lives and then there'll be no more such awful suffering. But that will take a long while.

Holmberg returned home on furlough in 1920, and resigned from missionary work in 1922.

REFERENCES: “Lennox,” Sioux Valley News, October 31, 1913, p. 3; Year Book : Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church…Annual Report…1922 (Boston, Mass.), p. 130; “Correspondence: Centerville,” Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), September 28, 1910, p. 6.

Item #9094

On Hold

Price: $3,500.00

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