Harry Willis Miller was born on July 1, 1879 at Ludlow Falls, Ohio, to John Oliver and Amanda Miller. Boyhood days were spent on a farm. At the age of 15 his parents became Seventh-day Adventists and young Harry was soon baptized. In the autumn of 1895 he entered school at Mt.Vernon Academy and graduated three years later. That fall Harry was admitted to the American Medical Missionary College, which was ran in connection with the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. It was headed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, whose active life and accomplishments was an inspiration to Harry.
Four years later found him graduating as a Doctor of Medicine in June, 1902 at the age of 21 and the youngest in the class except Maude A. Thompson, a classmate, who became his wife on his birthday July 1, 1902. The next year both of the doctors worked in the Chicago end of the American Medical Missionary College. Harry practiced with Dr. David Paulson while Maude was house physician. During this intern year Dr. harry completed a course in eye, ear, nose, and throat.
At the end of this year spent in Chicago, Harry and Maude volunteered to go as missionaries to China. They were joined by two classmates, also physicians, Drs. Arthur Selmon and Bertha Loveland Selmon and two nurses, Carrie Erickson and Charlotte Simpson. The General Conference had no money to send them, so the doctors gathered enough funds for the boat fare and all expenses while in China the first year. They sailed October 3, 1903 on the “Empress of India”. After that they received small wages from the Mission Board.
Upon reaching China they immediately went to the interior where they began their medical missionary service with no orientation or direction of any significance. It was a great help that Mr. Eric Pilquist, the man who formerly worked with the British and Foreign Bible Society and knew the people, was now our only Seventh-day Adventists worker in that part of China to guide them. This made the total count of 13 missionaries in all of China in 1903.
It was in Hsintsae, in Honan province that they began working. They adopted Chinese dress, and Harry Miller cut off his hair and wore a Chinese queue. The group remained here for one year and diligently studied the Mandarin language and then the families separated. The Dr. Millers went to Shang Tsai Hsien. Here they started the first printing and publication in 1905. No sooner were they getting settled in this new mission station due to privation, and work that Maude took very ill and passed away on March 4, 1905. Dr. Miller with a Chinese friend went alone outside the city gate after dark.
They followed behind the coolies, whom they had hired to carry the Chinese coffin in which lay the young missionary only 25 years of age. They went after nightfall in order that the suspicious crowds might not see the foreigner bury his dead. They plodded their sad way along the foot of the city wall to a wheat field not far away, which had been purchased and there they laid the precious burden. There was no one to sneak a comforting word. The mourner returned to his lonely home. How little the world knew of those agonizing hours! She was the second Seventh-day Adventists worker to give their life for China. Abram La Rue had died on April 26, 1903.
Harry Miller worked alone for two years, becoming “Chinese” in thought, in language, and appearance. How happy he was when Arthur and Eva Allum joined him. Dr. Miller, besides running a medical clinic, started a monthly paper, which later was called “The Signs of the Times.” He also printed their first Chinese hymnal, and translated Sabbath School lessons and small tracts.
In 1907, being broken in health, he returned to America. He first made a tour with a former president of the General conference, G. A. Irwin, to the camp meetings telling of the work and needs of China. He also spent some time at the Foreign Missionary College and Washington Sanitarium. It was a happy day when he was married in Portland, Maine to Marie Iverson, a nurse. The ceremony was conducted by his father, Elder J. O. Miller, then president of the Maritime conference in Canada.
After a year’s furlough he with his new bride and Marie’s aunt, Mrs. Botilde Miller and her son, Percy, sailed for Shanghai. Harry was to be stationed there holding two jobs. His printing plant had been moved in crates and boxes from Central China to Shanghai and was set up in rented quarters.
Starting the publications was a real task. As J. N. Anderson, who had been the president of the China field had gone on furlough, Dr. Miller assumed this too, with H. H. Winslow as treasurer. The work in Shanghai was less vigorous than working on the frontier alone and it became more important for the developing mission. Harry became acquainted with Charlie Soong, the father of the well-known Madam Sun-Yat –Sen, Mada, H. H. Kung, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. This working relationship with Soong stood Miller and the church in good stead all the remaining years in nationalist China.
In 1911 he again went up to the Honan Province, and with the help of O. A. Hall and Miss Pauline Schilliberg, started the China Training Institute. They had only the school well-organized with about 50 students of all ages when doctor’s health began to fail. Elder I. H. Evans, the president of the China Field suggested his return to the States.
Arriving in San Francisco, he had to be assisted to get to St. Helena Sanitarium where he lingered for a few months. Getting restless to return to work he went to Columbus to see Dr. George Harding, Sr. and obtained a medical license to practice in Ohio. His uncle Benjamin Honeyman was very ill so Harry went to care for him and his thousand-acre ranch. When his uncle passed away, Dr. Miller’s health had improved so much he was asked by the General Conference in 1913 to be the Medical Secretary, and Medical Superintendent of the Washington Sanitarium. These two positions lasted over a period of 12 years. He also, for a time added the task of Editor of the “Life and Health” magazine. He attended John Hopkins University and developed his skills in thyroidectomy.
Here a change came. He attended an Annual Council at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1925 where Elder I. H. Evans made a strong appeal for doctors for China. This touched his heart so much he again volunteered to return to China. He joined Dr. Roger Paul, who was running a clinic in Shanghai and with Mr. E. C. Wood started the building of our first overseas medical institution, which was built on donated land. After the Shanghai Adventist Hospital and Sanitarium was completed, another six-story clinic was built in downtown Shanghai. The Sanitarium was opened January 1, 1928 with Elder Spicer presiding at the opening. For the next 10 years with his friendship and help from Marshal Chang Hsueh-liong, hosipitals multiplied, such as at Wukan, Chungking, Shenyang, Lanchow, Kalgan, Kwangtung and Chiaotoutseng.
The Sino-Japanese war interrupted the medical work in China. During the siege of Hangkow, Miller directed the mission hospital which during the course of the war, sheltered more than 20,000 Chinese.
Once again it became necessary in the summer of 1949 to return to his homeland where Marie, his second wife, died on October, 1950. Following her death, he sold his protein analogs to Worthington Foods, and in 1951 sold the plant and rights for soybean foods to Loma Linda Foods and joined them as Director of Research for the next four years.
On July 13, 1954 he married Mary Elizabeth Greer of Cincinnati, Ohio and at once responded to a call from Elder Branson, president of the General Conference, to go to Taiwan to start a sanitarium with Elder Ezra Longway’s help in soliciting funds. They built the Taiwan Sanitarium and Hospital in1955 and Dr. Miller was the first medical director for the next two years. Other members of the original staff included Drs. E. A. Brooks, T. C. Lin and Jonathan Cheng, Elizabeth Redelstein, a veteran missionary nurse in China, organized the nursing service and Muriel Howe took charge of the nursing school.
The hospital formally opened is doors on March 28, 1955 with Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the United States ambassador, Karl Rankin, taking part in the initiatory ceremony. General Chiang Kai-shek bestowed upon Dr. Miller the Blue Star Medal for services extended to China over more than a half century.
Returning to the U.S.A., he almost immediately received a call which he responded to, to go to Port of Spain Hospital, Trinidad. Directly after his return his brother, Clarence Miller, suddenly died and a few months following this Mrs. Miller’s father also suddenly departed this life. Almost the following day, word came from the General Conference calling him to leave for Benghazi, Libya, as it was to meet an emergency, he responded. Dr. Cornell, the medical director, came down completely paralyzed with polio from head to feet, total inability to move, even having a temporary pump to force respiration until placed in an iron lung. Dr. Miller stayed three months, until a relief doctor could be found.
It was 1959 that the Far Eastern Division called him again to join Elder Ezra L. Longway to start medical work in Hong Kong and Kowloon. He and Mary stayed in Hong Kong until August, 1973. Two hospitals and a nurse’s Dormitory resulted, and later two staff quarters were added, as well as a nursing school. The nurse dormitory was called Harry Miller Memorial Hall.
During his years in the Orient, being medical secretary of Far Eastern division from 1925-1940, he fostered the medical work in Japan and the Philippines. In 1929, the Manila Sanitarium and Hospital was opened.
Later from the earnings he received from doing thyroidectomies in private practice, a hospital was built in Cebu City called the Miller Sanitarium and Hospital. In 1952 he took the examination for a license to practice in the Philippines. Also in Japan he joined forces with Pastor V. T. Armstrong in 1928, while taking the examination there for a license to practice and start the Adventist Hospital in Tokyo, Japan.
Altogether there were 19 hospitals or medical clinics that Doctor Miller was instrumental in starting all over the Far East and China. Besides medical institutions, all the present food factories that are denominationally owned in the Far Eastern Division as well as the Southern Asia Division, were promoted and put into operation by Dr. Harry Miller.
The six years from 1930-1936, while he was president of the China Division, were the big years of expansion of our mission work and growth of the several departments, as also the increase in membership. The organization of the Northwest Union completed the inclusion of all China, including Mongolia, and Tibet as one mission.
When he left the Far East for the last time in1973 he returned to his home in Riverside, California and carried on his research in the Loma Linda Food factory in La Sierra, a suburb of Riverside, until the day of his passing. On Sabbath morning, January 1, 1977, Dr. Miller went out for his regular walk. But he came back extra tired. Minutes after he had a massive hemorrhage and the great man had gone to his rest at the age of 98 years.
The Los Angeles times, California, wrote of this well-known physician and surgeon on June, 1974: “Dr. Harry Willis Miller, who is spiritually 22, physically 65, and chronologically, 94,….doesn’t exhibit any sign of arrogance, which is often found in people with his accomplishments.”
His whole-hearted dedication to the Great Physician in propagating love and salvation motivated his service which elicited numerous accolades and honors. Truly he can be called “The China Doctor.”