Henry S. Houghton was instrumental in the early success of Peking Union Medical College, serving as the Acting Director of PUMC for many years, including the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War. He demonstrated impressive leadership in trying times, enabling PUMC to operate with relative stability and calm until the events of Pearl Harbor. Then declared an “enemy alien,” Houghton was a prisoner of the Japanese army for 4 years. He was forced to live in cramped quarters, with almost no contact with the outside world, until the end of the war. He later described that time period as “an infinity of bleak silence.”