Herbert Clyde James was born Dec. 8, 1884, in Nebraska. His early schooling was taken locally. He later attended Canadian Junior College where he helped build the first barn at that school while taking pre-medical subjects.

Later he went to the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda, California. It was there he met Ethel Maude Jones, who had graduated from the nurses course at Union College, Nebraska. They were both graduated from CME in 1917. Very soon after their marriage they received a call from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to go to China as missionaries.

The first year was spent in studying at the Chinese Language School in Nanking. Their son, Milton, was born in 1918 in the Adventist hospital in Shanghai. They started working at the Yenchung Hospital and continued until their first furlough in 1924.

After returning to China they were invited to go to South China to open a new hospital in Wai Chow. It was there that they delivered Robert Wearner, son of Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Wearner. Also it was there that Elder J. P. Anderson and Sherman Nagel were co-workers in the Hakka Mission. It was my (Florence Nagel) privilege to have their help in my nurses training by correspondence.

Due to the hardships of the war years, progress on a hospital was slow. They started in a small way in an old school building on the mission compound. Later a new hospital was built—a two-story building, considered very modern for that area, with running water from a good well and a sewer system, which were unheard of in interior China in those days.

As this was the only hospital within a 100-mile radius, the doctors had to take care of patients, perform major surgery, remove cataracts, take care of major burns and all other emergencies. Many times they would have to walk long distances to care for home patients. A young couple, Victor and Letha Butka Hansen, joined them.

After their second furlough, they again returned to Wai Chow. After a few years, Dr. Ethel had a heart attack and was taken to Shanghai where Dr. Harry Miller cared for her, but she never practiced medicine again although she later taught anatomy in nursing schools. Dr. Herbert stayed in Wai Chow to take care of the work there. He cared for a patient who had typhus fever. The doctor contracted the disease and went to our hospital in Canton where Dr. Floyd Bates was the physician. Dr. Herbert was very ill for a long time but upon recovery he returned to Wai Chow. Ethel became strong enough to join him as he did part-time work in the hospital.

Dr. Harry Miller was also President of the China Division. In 1937 he asked the James to take over the Beiling Sanitarium in Mukden, Manchuria. They then ran both the Sanitarium and Nursing School for the Chinese and White Russians who were refugees from Communist Russia. Two years later they returned to the United States to take post-graduate training in Jersey City, New Jersey. Dr. Ethel’s health became so debilitated that she could no longer work. 

Dr. Herbert established a practice in Covelo, Calioria, and later in Ferndale, California. In 1945 he was asked to join the medical staff at Paradise Valley Sanitarium in National City, California, until his retirement in 1958 when they moved to Angwin, California, to spend their remaining years. Dr. Ethel passed away in 1972 and Dr. Herbert in 1979. They await the call of their Redeemer in th