(Ehic^o QWlmne

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1967

Missionary and Family Defy Ouster by Burma

[Continued from first page]
200 MILEi

meager rice crops with the meat of monkeys bunted with

INDIA
CmKA

MISSIONARY

crossbows. The Morses taught the natives how to increase the size of their crops, imported tractors and other equipment to cultivate pineapples, oranges,

HIDES, DEHES
BURMA ORDER
Leads Tribesmen to Better Lives
(Chlcaga Trtbutti Preii Servitt]

and grapefruit, and introduced

electricity and running water.
Success Is Achieved "The tribesmen almost wor
BAY

MANDALAY Jlaos
BURMA

THAILAND

shipped them," a visitor to the

mission station recalled. "They

RflfjSiDO
Rev. Morse is extraordinarily

created a small Utopia. Their

fruit was the tastiest in Burma.
^ it

In 1964 one of the sons, R. talented, but he is 69 years old, LaVerne, resigned as a mis and his wife, Gertrude, is 70.

MANDALAY, Burma, Sept.

Somewhere in the remote,
jungle-covered hills near In dia's eastern "border, an Amer

ican missionary family is defy ing government efforts to expel

it from Burma.

Using its knowledge of tropicaJ agriculture and aided by tribesmen, the family has for
nearly two years subsisted in hiding, but its situation now is said to be deteriorating.

Burma Refuge

sionary and returned to the Twelve of their grandchildren United States.'He now is on the are with them along with the faculty of Cincinnati Bible sons and their wives. And almost nothing has been heard seminary. Two years later the revolu from the family in the last two tionary government of Burma years. As time passes relatives are ordered all foreign missionaries to leave the country. Instead of becoming even more concerned obeying, the family retreated about the family's welfare. The into the Mishmi hills, a region retreat to the hills was "a not under government control, misguided action," a person 350 miles north of Mandalay. who knows the Morses well Hundreds of tribesmen, known said, and the outcome of it as Lisu, from the "small could be disasterous. Utopia" went with them, abandining their newly achieved paradise and taking only what they could carry.
Cite Stand on Commonism

The family, named Morse, worked for many years as

Protestant missionaries near Kunming in China. In 1949

A Burmese government newspaper claimed last year

that 300 of the tribesmen had returned to their former home

Chinese Communists swept into

the Kunming area, and all of the Morses except fee Rev. J. Russell Morse, head of the
famUy, fled to Burma. The Rev. Mr. Morse was arrested by the Communists in 1951 and imprisoned for 15

months. After his release, he

returned to the United States

for awhile and then, in 1953, he

joined his wife and sons.
Work in Rice Basin

"realizing the missionaries had misled them." The paper said the Morses had for years preached agamst communism and had frightened the tribes men into following them. "They tried to exist on herbs and 'Wild fruits and roots," the paper said. "They tried to settle down but found it very
hard among rocky hills and valleys." A native of Tulsa, Oka., with 44 years of missionary service behind him, the Rev. Mr. Morse had become highly re sourceful. Knowing his background, missionary experts

The sons, Eugene, Robert, and R. LaVerne, their wives, and their mother had already
begun work in a rice basin near

Putao not far from Fort Hertz, a post on the Burma road, the famous supply route of World
War II.

discounted the paper's implica tion that be and his family

were in dire trouble.

The tribesmen of the basin

were prunitive, augmenting [Continued on page 3, col. 2]

This spring an American government official in Rangoon

said the family is in "a remote and uncivilized area. One day they 'Will have to leave. But they are a resourceful family, and we do not believe they are in any danger." However, relatives in the
United States are anxious about

Ithe family's well-being. The