Jim first takes shelter first in his home and then a series of abandoned British expatriate homes around his neighborhood in the International Concession. Shortly thereafter, Jim and his father are separated at a hospital where his father is recuperating from wounds. When the war does come on December 8, 1941, Jim and his father are initially separated from the mother. This was just before I left America to live in Japan for two years, and I knew then that I wanted to see Shanghai.īallard’s descriptions of growing up in pre-war Shanghai as the son of a wealthy British textile manager sound like a fairy tale with country clubs, elaborate expatriate costume parties, and as Jim the young boy says, “there was opulence.” Meanwhile, the Japanese have the city surrounded and a siege mentality has taken hold of its Chinese and Western residents alike. I first learned of Ballard’s story through Steven Spielberg’s wonderful film of the same name, which I watched when it came out in 1989. Ballard tells us how he survived his adolescent years alone in an internment camp under the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during World War II. In his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun J.G.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |