He was born in
Fenzhou,
Shanxi,
China, to Christian missionaries
Arthur W. Hummel Sr. (1884–1975) and Ruth Bookwalter Hummel. His family moved to
Beijing when he was 4. In 1927, when he was 7, the disruption and anti-foreign violence of the
Northern Expedition forced his family to relocate to
Massachusetts. When he was 8, his parents moved to
Washington, D.C., where his father worked as Chief of the Orientalia Division at the
Library of Congress. His parents sent him to
Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school outside Philadelphia, for high school, where he graduated in 1938. He then attended
Antioch College in
Yellow Springs,
Ohio, earning a B.A in 1940. In the same year, he then returned to Beijing to study at the California College of Chinese Studies and to study Chinese, since he had forgotten what he had learned as a child. He also taught English at the
Catholic University of Peking. Peaceful study in the ancient capital did not last long, however. After
the attack on Pearl Harbor Hummel was taken by the Japanese and interned at the
Weihsien Internment Camp in
Shandong Province. Though food was not adequate, life at the camp was relatively relaxed, since it was far from the battle-front. Hummel was put in charge of the hospital laboratory, taking advantage of his college training. One of his fellow internees was
Langdon Gilkey, who later became a well-known theologian. In 1944 he and Laurance Tipton, a British prisoner, escaped and joined a unit of the
Nationalist guerrillas who fought against the Japanese. After
World War II ended, he worked with the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, an organization which helped rebuild China along with other countries needing aid after the war. Hummel then attended the
University of Chicago, graduating with a master's degree in
International Studies in 1949. ==Career==