Born in Ningpo, China, Jingxiong (or Ching-hsiung) Wu attended law schools in the United States and Europe in the late 1920's becoming a friend of the young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., later to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He had westernized his name, going by John. He became a wealthy lawyer and judge in Shanghai, but had a spiritual crisis in the late 1930's. During this time, he read St. Thèrése of Lisieux's «Story of a Soul». This had a profound effect on Wu. Some sources give this time as his conversion to Christianity and baptism, others say his baptism was earlier but that this was still a crucial time in his faith life. In the late 1940's, he lived in Rome with his wife Teresa and his 13 children while serving as Chinese delegate to the Vatican. As an official of President Chiang Kai-shek, he was not able to return to China after the Communist revolution. A scholar of jurisprudence, philosophy, literature, religious studies, and cultural studies, he served as dean of the College of Chinese Culture in Taiwan and a research professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. (Sources: [1]The Hidden Ground of Love, p. 611. Augustine, John. [2] "John C. H. Wu." Website of Christ the Eternal Tao. Accessed at Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY, 26 Sep. 2006. ‹http://www.geocities.com/johnaugus/taowu.html›. [3] Elkins, James R. "John C. H. Wu." Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry. Website of College of Law, West Virginia University. 2 Sep. 2001. Accessed at Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY, 26 Sep. 2006. ‹http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/lp-2001/wu.html›)
Odette Yagon writes from Bordeaux, France.
Fr. Callistus Yaguchi was a Trappist monk of Our Lady of the Lighthouse monastery in Kamiiso near Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.
Jeannette Yakel writes from Green Island, New York.
In the bulk of the correspondence, Lunsford Yandell writes from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, or Scottsdale, Arizona.
Maurice Yenn was a member of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, a worldwide organization dedicated to spreading the message to the world of the Marian apparition of 1917 at Fatima, Portugal.
Fr. Janko Zagar was a Dominican priest, Prior of St. Albert's College in Oakland, California, and Editor of «Season», a "quarterly on contemporary human problems".
Gordon C. Zahn was a sociologist and pacifist who has written books and articles about peace studies, dissent from war cultures, Catholic dissenters in the Second World War in Germany, and other topics. From 1956-1957, he spent a year under a Fulbright grant at Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg, Germany, to study Catholic dissenters under Hitler. During this time, he discovered the Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian whose refusal to fight under Nazi rule led him to martyrdom. He writes to Merton from Chicago, where he was a professor at Loyola University. In 1964, he published his book on Jägerstätter entitled, In Solitary Witness. After a professorship at University of Massachusetts in Boston from 1967-1980, he became National Director of Pax Christi USA, part of Pax Christi International, a Catholic peace organization. (Source: «The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 648.)
At the time of writing to Merton, Robert Zmuda was an 18 year old student from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He sent some poems, one of which Merton published in «Monks Pond». After graduation from high school, he planned to go into Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).