war in 1945, mostly at the Weihsien Compound in Shandong and the Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong. The entire staff and student body of the Chefoo School for missionary children, grades one to twelve, numbering 239 children and adults, were among those interned at Weihsien. Eric Liddell, the 1924 Olympic gold medalist and afterwards a missionary, was also interned at Weihsien and died of a cerebral hemorrhage during the war. Final exodus 1945–1953 After the victory of the Chinese Communist armies in 1949 and suppression of religion, the members of all missionary societies departed or were expelled from China. Missionaries Arthur Matthews (an American) and Dr. Rupert Clark (British) were placed under house arrest but were finally allowed to leave in 1953. Their wives, Wilda Matthews and Jeannette Clark, had been forced to leave with other missionaries before this. The China Inland Mission was the last Protestant missionary society to leave China. In 1900 there were an estimated 100,000 Protestants in China. By 1950 the number had increased to 700,000, but still far less than one percent of the total Chinese population. Helped by strong leaders such as John Sung, Wang Ming-Dao, and Andrew Gih, the Chinese Protestant Christian churches became an indigenous movement. Impact on the United States American missionaries had an audience at home who listen closely to their first-hand accounts. Around 1900 there were on average about 300 China missionaries on furlough back home, and they presented their case to church groups perhaps 30,000 times a year, reaching several million churchgoers. They were suffused with optimism that sooner or later China would be converted to Christianity. Novelist Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was raised in a bilingual environment in China by her missionary parents. China was the setting for many of her best-selling novels and stories, which explored the hardships, and the depth of humanity of the people she loved, and considered fully equal. After college in the United States, she returned to China as a Presbyterian missionary 1914 to 1932. She taught English at the college level. The Good Earth (1931) was her best-selling novel, and a popular movie. Along with numerous other books and articles she reached a large middle-class American audience with a highly sympathetic view of China. The Nobel Prize committee for literature hailed her, "for the notable works which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries