Interned in Shanghai

I moved onto campus at SHSID yesterday, into a new “dormitory” apartment, and was met at the door by the Chinese building super, “George,” who smiled and watched as I trundled everything up to the third floor in the sweltering Shanghai heat, supervised by my lovely wife and assisted by our three year old, Dario. The school, founded in 1865, is as large as a university campus, and wears its fame proudly, counting 80 government leaders (including the just retired PRC Vice President) and 20 generals among its graduates. I discovered yesterday that this is the site of the 1943-45 Allied civilian internment camp where the Japanese held those foreigners who did not leave in time. It is where “Shanghai Jim,” the noted English science fiction writer J.G.Ballard watched American fighter bombers raid the nearby airfields and later drop precioujs food canisters, as recounted in his autobiography Empire of the Sun, and made flesh by the Hollywood film of the same name. He returned to the camp yesterday by way but of his signature, inscribed in my personal copy of Terminal Beach.

Alone, I slept with the Olympics on TV all night, half-expected to encounter ghosts of long-expired internees, but none came. Ghosts are usually spirits of people who die swiftly and unexpectingly, without realizing it, and who then try to contact the living because they do not know they are dead. Those inmates who expired before liberation slowly wasted away from scanty rations doled out by the Korean guards in Japanese uniform and from the disease caused by such malnutrition, so it was no surprise for them. Happily, most survived and left Shanghai before the second wave, this time Mao and his Red Army, swept in and took the city for good. Perhaps their grandchildren may have returned to the present day city to enjoy the shower of champagne and riches. Today I’ll check in at the office and inquire which buildings, if there are any left, pre-date the war and were witness to the shuffling queues and glinting bayonets.