The Curious Guest of Loganita Lodge
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On December 21 a certain Ronald Russell left a curious entry—written in Japanese—in the Log of Loganita 1940, the guestbook of Loganita Lodge. How that register survived to be preserved in the Lummi Island archives by Paul Davis is another story. This is the story of international romance and adventure, always just one step ahead of an all consuming war.
It was the shortest day of 1940 and a massive sou’western was shoving past Lummi Island, the worst storm of its kind until Columbus Day 1962 blew all the records away. Just days away from Christmas the temperature was in the mid-60s Farenheit. The warm wind was coming via Philippines, Guam, and Midway.
On a slow boat to China
On June 12, 1939 The Empress of Japan set sail from Vancouver, BC. The next day as the activities director was organizing shipboard games and activities, two singles were introduced to each other and paired to compete together as a couples team.
The Empress of Japan docked at Vancouver. From the collection of Matthews, James Skitt, Major.
Thus, on June 13, 1939 aboard a ‘slow boat to China’ the adventure began for Ronald Russell and Ellen Ash.
Ronald Russell and Ellen Ash in 1939. Ellen is onboard the Empress.
During the passage the young couple began to dominate all the sports events they entered. Both were very athletic and Ellen was extremely competitive. They soon became good friends and spent most of their time together on the voyage.
Trading places
Born in Scotland in 1917, Ronald was already a globe-trotter at the age of three. World travel was common fare for the Russells. Russell’s grandfather Maurice sailed to Yokohama in 1873 at age 16, fresh on the wake of an event that reshaped Japan forever.
1854 Japanese print of Commodore Perry’s “black ships”
A few years before, United States Navy Commodore Matthew Perry had steamed into Edo Bay (now Tokyo). His mission was to open Japan to American trade by any means. Japan was a sakoku, a closed country, that for more than 200 years had shunned western influence. When his blunt diplomacy was rejected, Perry unleashed his cutting-edge Paixhans guns from ironclad steam-powered ships, exploding shells into buildings around the harbor. It was obvious that modern technology had surpassed the shogun and samurai. Five ports, including Yokohama, were opened to foreign trade.
It was this new Meiji era that Maurice Russell settled into for the rest of his life. He married Moyo Sato and they had nine children together, all born in Yokohama.
Moyo (Sato) Russell
Maurice and Moyo would have watched Japan pivot around their respective cultures. The Japanese military quickly adopted western style uniforms and technology. Japanese youth began calling themselves moga and mobo (“modern girl” and “modern boy”). American and European achievements were being folded into the Japanese ideal to make an even stronger sword.
Moyo and Maurice Russell
Maurice died in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The 7.9 magnitude jolt lasted 14 seconds and the sandy soil continued to move for minutes—long enough to bring down nearly every building on Yokohama’s watery, unstable ground. This happened just before noon, when many were cooking on charcoal hibachis which immediately caused widespread fires.
Japan’s tectonic shift—now, that would shake the world. The government was retooling into one of the largest empires of all time. By 1943 the Japanese Empire held sway over 20% of the world’s population.
An occupation that may sound absurd
Japanese postage stamp,
Mt Fuji and Deer (1930-37)
Ronald was returning from a trip to England where he was employed briefly as an office clerk. The prospect of the looming war between Great Britain and Germany hastened his decision to return to Japan, via New York and then Vancouver.
Ronald had a unique way of funding his travel. Japan produced beautiful postage stamps—an exotic prize to philatelists in the US and UK. But stamp collecting was not a thing in Japan at the time. So Ronald would collect Japanese stamps and then sell them in London and New York. “I am a wholesale dealer in stamps, an occupation that may sound absurd to you but never-the-less is a trade indulged in by many people and has for many years been a successful trade,” Ronald would later write to Ellen.
Ellen and the Grangers
Ellen Ash was born to Charles and Gertrude Ash and raised in Big Lake, Washington. There Warren and Ruth Granger were her teachers at Big Lake School. Ellen became a lifelong friend with the Grangers’s daughter, Marilyn. After graduating from high school, Ellen attended Bellingham Normal (now Western Washington University).
It is likely that Warren and Ruth Granger introduced Ellen to Lummi Island. The Grangers were the first family to establish tourism here, when Melzior Granger opened the Grange in 1900 to attract people who wanted to hunt and fish. In the 1920s his son Chan and daughter-in-law Eva opened Loganita Lodge, a large all-inclusive resort to rival the nearby Willows Inn. There were eight rooms in the Lodge, 28 cabins, a 12 car garage, recreation hall, tea room, tennis courts, miniature golf course, a gas station, and the best sandy beach on the island.
Warren was Chan and Eva’s son, born in 1903, and would have grown up during Lummi Island’s boom years of fish traps, canneries, and resorts that seem unfathomable even today.
The Granger Family at the Grange in 1907.
Ellen regularly worked at Loganita Lodge during the summers, “waiting tables, and washing dishes, and washing dishes, and washing dishes—you should see my hands.” It was not uncommon for the seasonal waitresses to take on the Granger name, as the family continued to produce a plentiful supply of strapping young men. However for Ellen, there was something important to do before she would consider settling down.
She would go to a Christian mission deep in China where doctors were researching treatment for leprosy.
Just 10 days
Ronald & Ellen in Waikiki
The Japanese Empress stopped over in Honolulu which gave Ronald and Ellen the opportunity to visit and swim at Waikiki in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Then on they sailed to Yokohama where Ronald departed with sad goodbyes after only knowing each other for just 10 days.
For Ellen, the trip to China was very exciting for a girl raised on a country farm. Most of the travel was without many English speaking people. First to Hong Kong by ship from Yokohama and then onto a French ship to Haiphong, Indochina (now Vietnam). From there it was by train to Hanoi. From Hanoi it was a train again to Kunming, China.
While Ellen was making her way to Kunming from the south, the Imperial Japanese Army was also reaching for the Yunnan province from the west. Chiang Kai-shek had moved the capital of China to Chongqing, the last major city of China. Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai had already fallen under the Rising Sun.
In Kunming she finally arrived at a Hui Tien Mission Hospital. She was there to assist and lived with a doctor and his wife, caring for their newborn baby as well. She was paid a small allowance, enough to buy personal items, go to a movie, and buy an old bicycle.
“Kunming has a very pleasant climate, and is over 6,000 feet above sea level. We are having our rainy season now but the sun shines between showers and being from Seattle I don’t notice the rain,” Ellen wrote to Ronald in July 1939.
Ronald was settling his affairs so that he could leave Japan. Foreigners in Yokohama were afraid that Japan’s military was preparing for war against other countries in Southeast Asia. “Are you still planning to return to England within a year?” Ellen was forming a plan to meet again, “I probably will not have time to stop off in both Japan and Honolulu and will have to make up my mind, which do you prefer?”
Direct mail between Japan and China was not possible because of the war. Ronald and Ellen’s letters had to go through a neutral embassy. Delivery was often delayed a month or more.
Oceans of love with a kiss on each wave
By April, 1940 the mission hospital was preparing to evacuate. Ellen was finally writing back to Ronald after a long winter. “The railway was bombed the day we left and we had to change trains 4 times and pack our luggage across the slide caused by the bombs. I just hate war and its effects, will you have to go in the Army or are the British taking their citizens in foreign countries?”
“I have been waiting to answer your letter until I heard from the American Express in Hong Kong to get definite word about sailing.” She would book a ship to Kobe, Japan and then a second ship to Yokohama without knowing if Ronald would receive the letter by the time she arrived in August.
To the northwest, Chongqing was suffering the brunt of Japan’s terror bombing. The German Luftwaffe would soon inflict a similar attack on Britain during the London Blitz, when Japan joined the Axis powers in September, 1940. The world was taking sides.
Kunming itself was saved from destruction when President Roosevelt initiated a covert operation—before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Almost 100 pilots would resign from U.S. Armed Forces and volunteer to defend China against Japan as the “Flying Tigers”. Two of the three squadrons were based at Kunming, the planes sporting nose art by the Walt Disney Company.
Fighter Ace Robert “R.T.” Smith stands next to his P-40 at Kunming, China.
From the top of Mount Fuji
Ronald did get the letter, and he was there to meet Ellen at the ship. In the short layover period they climbed the summit of Mount Fuji—12,395 feet—and descended the volcano on the same day. Too soon, Ellen departed Yokohama for Seattle.
“It’s been five long days since you left Yokohama. And how I miss you!” Ronald was proposing to Ellen by letter, typewritten in distinctive green ink. Even though Ellen was still crossing the Pacific Ocean, he couldn’t wait.
“I want you to forgive me for this letter, for the things I might say, and for the incoherent way I may put together different sentences…. If I were to wait till I get them down in perfect style I guess I would never be able to get this letter off by tomorrow’s mail.
“To cut things short, I LOVE YOU. Perhaps you would be shocked at these three words thrust at you like that — maybe I should have said it in some other way using all kinds of romantic phrases but somehow that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to me. I would just like to stress the point that when I say I LOVE YOU I mean LOVE in the fullest sense of the word — a love that’s faithful, a love that would never let you down.
“Now Ellen you said that you loved me and would like to have me as a husband. I felt the same way about you but didn't have the courage to tell you as I wasn’t in a position to do so…. I liked to come home and see you after work. I loved to have you at the dinner table, and enjoyed going places with you — that’s real love without all the frills to it, love simply based on the love-dovey stuff is dangerous and it always wears off. Well, now you know I LOVE YOU, sorry if I bore you.”
Things are so unsettled
Roger Granger at 2 years old,
“as contrary as they make them”
“Well I’m going on and on and haven’t even answered your questions and don’t know exactly how to say what I want to say.” Ellen had filled two pages with newsy updates in her reply. “I am playing my old role, ‘nurse maid’. I have the kids in bed, my niece who is just past one year old and Mrs. Granger’s (Ruth’s) nephew who is about 2 and is as contrary as they make them.” Thankfully, little Roger Granger would grow out of that phase.
One can just imagine Ellen’s suitor speed reading through to page three.
“I don’t want to become engaged until you come, cause I don’t like long engagements, especially when you are not here, and things are so unsettled.” Ellen was willing to move to England but prefered that Ronald come her way. “Would you still be interested in becoming an American citizen if it were possible? It is much easier if you are married to an American.”
Ronald quickly settled his affairs, and sold or gave away everything he didn’t need. “Ever so many of my friends are leaving now, it’s really awful. Everybody else who isn’t leaving is talking so pessimistically (phew!) that it’s quite unpleasant around here at present.”
He went to the American Consulate and waited in line for three days seeking a visa to the United States. Finally he found out that the U.S. allowed a quota of 64,000 British citizens into the country. “That means to say I am free to stay as long as I like and do what I like in America.”
I could lead you on a merry chase around the island
A few weeks later Ellen was writing on Loganita Lodge stationery from Lummi Island. Coyly writing in green ink that matched Ronald’s typewriter, she circled the Loganita’s invitation as a “year round vacation spot for families and tired business people.”
“Think I’ll go in for entertaining and making speeches, everyone seems to want to hear all about China and Japan.” Ellen was working at Loganita as a waitress again, but now more traveled than any of the guests.
She had even made the Seattle papers. “I’ve had my first contact with the freedom of the press, and I’m not very enthusiastic. On landing in Seattle, I was met by a couple of reporters who wanted to know what I was doing and knew about the leprosy research work that was done in China. I told them nothing so they made up the biggest pack of lies I’ve ever read. ‘BELLINGHAM GIRL RETURNS AFTER 2 YEARS OF RESEARCH ON LEPROSY IN INTERIOR OF WAR-TORN CHINA.’ They didn’t even mention that I had been with missionaries.”
Ellen would tease Ronald with the summer fun of Lummi Island. “I wish you could come and go horseback riding with me, I could lead you on a merry chase around the island. Also go for a swim but the water is ice cold.”
She also got to experience reefnet fishing in Legoe Bay. “I went out on a fishing boat yesterday and the weather was very rough. I climbed up on the stand (where someone stands to watch for fish) and had to hold on with both hands for fear of being blown off.”
Reef net boats in 1950. From Washington Rural Heritage, Lummi Island by Jack Carver
Leaving today Empress
“LEAVING TODAY EMPRESS.” Ronald telegrammed Ellen November 8, proving the Greatest Generation could text as well as any Millennial.
Ronald casually tossed a little bale of postage stamps, one-inch thick, into his luggage. Japan’s customs authority were intent on keeping foreigners’ wealth from leaving the country. When the customs officer discovered Ronald’s stamps, it was disregarded as unimportant. Those stamps would help finance a new start in America. Ronald arrived 10 days later in Seattle and proposed to Ellen in Volunteer Park on November 22.
And thusly we have unraveled the mystery of the curious entry. Ronald Russell signed his name in Japanese followed by his name in English, with an arrival of December 21, 1940. Ronald was finally here, getting ready to be married. His jaunty remark translates, “Greetings! and good-bye.”
Apparently Ronald stayed with the Grangers while Ellen and her family were in Bellingham. “Loganita Lodge was a little empty in the winter, however all the family stayed in the main lodge in the off-season,” Roger Granger relates, “My grandparents Chan and Eva Granger, my mom and dad Joe and Irene Granger, plus my older sister Nancy—4 at the time, me—almost 3, my uncle Tubby and his wife Nyleptha (Granger) Ford and their two children Gordon and Doris. Also added to that company would be a large group of loggers that came to Lummi Island to log the mountain of the old growth fir. Ronald Russell would have had lots of company at Loganita. I was there but too small to remember any of it.”
A Christmas day wedding
It was Christmas morning 1940 and the family was setting out from Bellingham to Big Lake. But there were too many people to fit in the car. Always adventurous, the bride and groom hitchhiked to Big Lake on their wedding day while the family drove on ahead.
Ronald and Ellen were wedded at the home of Warren and Ruth Granger that evening. Warren was the best man and Warren’s father-in-law, Rev. W. Gill from Spokane, performed the ceremony.
From left: Ronald & Ellen Russell, Charles and Lois Ash (father and sister of the bride), Warren Granger, Mildred Ritchie, and Rev. W. Gill.
The honeymoon trip was by train to Los Angeles and New Orleans where they boarded the S.S. Dixie to New York. The Russells landed in Las Vegas where their first child Keith was born, and who we have to thank for all these photos and details. Then the family moved back to Seattle where Dennis and Kathleen were born.
By their first anniversary the United States had joined the war. Ronald tried to enlist in the Army knowing that his Japanese language skills would be needed, but they turned him down because he was a British citizen and he had spent too much “undocumented time“ in Japan.
Ronald and Ellen Russell
With the pluck and gumption of true adventurers, Ronald and Ellen had managed to meet, fall in love, and begin their lives while World War II whirled around them like the eye of a storm. They were married 63 years.
Written by Isaac Colgan with a substantial contribution of family stories, photos, and documents from Keith Russell. Special thanks to Roger Granger for Loganita Lodge and Granger family history, and to Mayumi Smith for translating Ronald Russell’s guestbook entry.
Enjoy more about Loganita Lodge and Lummi Island history at the Washington Rural Heritage archive of Lummi Island.
