at this emergency facility. The Sisters also staffed a contagion ward set up at the college at Vincennes. At the end of the war the hospital was returned to the city and the Sisters opened St John's Infirmary for those soldiers with no place to go, but not yet strong enough to travel. Mission in Asia The Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods were the first congregation of American women religious to establish a mission in China. Ministry in Kaifeng In the summer of 1919, Bishop Joseph Tacconi of Kaifeng, China, met with Sisters of Providence general superior Mother Mary Cleophas Foley to request sisters for a school for young women in Kaifeng. Sister Marie Gratia Luking led this group of sisters to Kaifeng to open an elementary school and a junior middle school for girls. Luking and her companions arrived in Kaifeng on November 24, 1920. Soon after arriving, the sisters opened a medical dispensary and the Hua Mei School for Girls. The sisters ministered here until 1927 when the Communist army of Mao Zedong reached Kaifeng. The sisters were forced to leave, taking refuge with the Maryknoll Sisters in Korea. In 1929 they returned to Kaifeng and opened an orphanage as well as a novitiate for women wanting to enter religious life. This native congregation, the Providence Sister-Catechists, received papal approval in 1932. Ching I Middle School was opened September 12, 1932. World War II Japan began threatening China by 1935, and air raids, bombings, and attacks by soldiers became commonplace. Kaifeng was bombed March 25, 1938. Soon the school and novitiate became a place of refuge for people seeking safe haven. Though Kaifeng fell to the Japanese June 6, 1938, and life became more difficult for the sisters, they remained in their compound. On December 8, 1941, the sisters' compound in Kaifeng was attacked by Japanese soldiers. The sisters from the United States were forced to relocate to a Baptist mission compound and then a Benedictine Sisters' compound in Kaifeng. On March 22, 1943, the Sisters of Providence and all other U.S. missionaries were interned at the Weihsien Compound, a concentration camp in Shandong. Five months later U.S. internees were again relocated, this time to Peking where they were placed under house arrest with the Spanish Daughters of Jesus. In September 1945 after the war had ended, the sisters returned to Kaifeng and repaired their compound, I