Through her long life, Darlene Deibler Rose was a witness for Christ to people in the furthest parts of the world. Yet through her unforgettable memoir, Evidence Not Seen, of her brutal imprisonment by the Japanese during the Second World War, she has become a witness to many more people across the world.
Darlene was born in Boone, Iowa, on 10th May 1917. She received Christ at the age of nine and, a year later, committed herself to serving God as a missionary. In her late teens she began studying to be a missionary and, aged twenty, while still in training, married Russell Deibler, a man who was already a missionary in what was then the Dutch East Indies and is now modern Indonesia.
In 1938 Darlene and Russell set out together with the intention of evangelising the remote interior of New Guinea. Lying north of Australia this island is intensely mountainous and covered in dense rain forest. It is inhabited by hundreds of tribal groups, each with their own language and who, even as late as the 1930s, were in a Stone Age culture in which tribal feuds and cannibalism were still widespread. The interior of New Guinea had been considered uninhabited but in 1938 plane flights showed it was populated with thousands of people and it became a missionary objective.
At first, Darlene worked at a mission station while Russell undertook ever further journeys in order to set up a mission base in the interior Baliem Valley. Then in 1940 Darlene took the arduous trek over a dozen mountain ridges to join him. Crossing the last summit, she got her first glimpse of the Baliem Valley and recounts how she ran down the mountainside to them shouting, ‘I’m home! I’m home!’
Darlene, the first woman from outside to reach the valley, and her husband began learning the language and teaching about Jesus and grew to deeply love the local people. Yet with Holland now occupied by the German armies, they were called back from New Guinea into central Indonesia where they faced the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Imperial Japanese forces.
When the Japanese forces arrived, the couple were sent to separate internment camps. In their hasty parting Russell’s last words were, ‘Remember one thing, dear: God said that he would never leave us nor forsake us.’ And, as Darlene wrote in her autobiography, ‘I never saw him again.’
Darlene now had to endure her own internment camp. For four years she suffered appalling conditions of near-starvation, forced labour, beatings, illnesses, interrogation and the constant threat of execution. Her plight was made worse by the fact that she and those with her had, in effect, vanished from the face of the earth. They received no Red Cross parcels or letters – only silence.
Darlene was determined to be a good soldier for the cause of Christ. Although still only in her twenties, she acted as a leader and spokesperson for the women and children, holding daily Bible reading, and praying, helping and encouraging where she could. She suffered many sorrows, the harshest of which was the news of her husband’s death. She herself came within minutes of being executed but, in it all, was able to share Christ with the brutal camp commandant.
In late summer 1945, after the defeat of the Japanese, Darlene and her fellow prisoners were finally liberated and evacuated to the States. She struggled with her situation; after eight years in Indonesia, she was now leaving as a widow, traumatised, emaciated, ill and lacking a single material possession of her own. Yet, sustained by grace, Darlene overcame her sorrow.
After a long, slow recovery in the States, Darlene began making preparations to return. Unexpectedly, she met a new missionary, Jerry Rose, who shared her vision for the peoples of New Guinea. They were married and together ministered on the island for another thirty years, raising two sons there. With the Indonesian takeover in 1978, the couple refused to retire but instead relocated to the Australian outback to work amongst the Aboriginal peoples. Finally, they returned to the United States in 1993 where they became advocates for mission. They died in 2004.
Few missionaries have written as powerful a story as Darlene did in Evidence Not Seen, an account that is by turns horrifying and uplifting. With its unflinching honesty, it is a remarkable testimony to a Christian faith being tested to the limits. In its pages, and in Darlene’s seventy-plus productive years in mission, I find much that is challenging. Consider:
Darlene was rooted in God’s grace. The fact that she had memorised vast amounts of scripture and had a deep knowledge of God prepared her for her wartime ordeal and for the decades of missionary service afterwards.
Darlene was reliant on God’s grace. Darlene admitted how, during these terrible four years, she was frequently pushed to the point where she felt she could endure no more. Yet time and time again she found that God was adequate for her pains, griefs and fear.
Darlene rejoiced in God’s grace. Writing of her solitary confinement on what was ‘death row’ she said, ‘The days were spent in contemplation of the goodness and presence of my God.’ Darlene could even put a positive light on her sufferings. Quoting Charles Spurgeon she wrote, ‘I can thank my God for every storm that has wrecked me on the Rock, Jesus Christ.’
Darlene revealed God’s grace. Darlene was typically modest about claiming any sort of spiritual achievements, although there is evidence that the brutal camp commandant she witnessed to ultimately did come to faith. But by her words and deeds and her care for others in the horror and the darkness, she shone with a powerful light for Christ.
May we all be spared any such ordeals but may we also all live in such a way that we show Christ to those around us.
J.John
Reverend Canon
