School's Out

At school we practised getting into slit trenches for air-raids and had to kneel on the rough coco-nut matting, very painful. At home my father kept a rifle in the dining room and wore a pistol at his waist. I remember the frequent earnest discussions, and the packing of bags including tins of food.

Roger Eagle, British child Singapore, 1942

A long line of Westerners stood huddled in warm winter clothing outside a nondescript office block in downtown Shanghai. A chill wind blew between the tall buildings behind the Bund, coming straight down from frozen Manchuria in the north. Japanese soldiers stood impassively around the queueing Westerners, their dun-coloured uniforms, puttees and forage caps incongruous in the city. Their rifles were topped with razor-sharp bayonets. Many smoked and laughed among themselves to see the whites, who thought themselves so superior to the Japanese, lining up like coolies in the street, waiting to have their details recorded by the Kempeitai military police. Their faces wore a hunted, uncertain look – gone was the once-proud jut of the chin, or the ramrod-straight back that shouldered the white man's burden. The Westerners were shell-shocked – their world had collapsed in a few short days. The Japanese had big plans for them all: they were to be reduced from masters to white coolies; men, women and children. If any of the Westerners had glanced aloft at the tall buildings that bracketed the street they would have seen the Rising Sun flag snapping out in the breeze, where the Union Jack had held dominion for a century.

The outbreak of war in the Pacific on 8 December 1941 had come as a surprise to many Allied civilians, but the warning signs had been in place for weeks and Britain, Holland and the United States had largely ignored them until it was too late. In Shanghai, the Japanese already had the two foreign enclaves in the city, the International Settlement and the French Concession, surrounded since capturing the Chinese areas of the city in 1937. Life had continued relatively unchanged for the Allied civilians living in the 'Settlement' and the 'Concession', though there were restrictions on travelling outside the enclaves into occupied China. The fall of France in June 1940 had meant some Japanese interference in the French Concession, which adopted a Vichy government that collaborated closely with the Germans and the Japanese. Many British and American civilians lived in the French Concession but worked in the International Settlement, which was subdivided into several national concessions, including British and Japanese areas.

The British and the Americans had realized that Shanghai was indefensible should the Japanese move to occupy the enclaves, and the British had pulled out their small garrison of two infantry battalions to Hong Kong in 1940, urging Britons to leave for Australia, the Netherlands East Indies, Singapore or Britain. The United States still had some forces in Beijing and Shanghai, a regiment from the United States Marine Corps whose job was to protect US-owned buildings and diplomatic properties. Many Allied civilians left Shanghai, but many more stayed put – they were used to the comfortable life 'out East', where even whites in relatively minor positions could enjoy servants and private schooling for their children and a vigorous social life in a metropolis variously nicknamed 'Sin City' and 'The Whore of the Orient'.

One family who did not leave after 1940 was the Boseburys, typical British lower-middle-class workers of the Empire. Daughter Rachel Bosebury Beck, who now lives in the United States, recalled that her parents met in Shanghai. Her mother worked for the Shanghai Telephone Company, and her father had been discharged from the British Army after he had met his wife, while he was stationed in Shanghai. He then took a job locally, working as an overseer of Chinese labour. 'We lived in Avenue Hall ... and my daddy worked at the Water Works, and it was just great.' Rachel Bosebury was seven years old when the Japanese took over the foreign sections of the city in 1941. 'I had an amah [Chinese female servant] and ... I remember playing a lot and then we took home leave. That means every four years my Dad had his way paid to go back home to England.'With somewhat questionable common sense, the Boseburys returned from a long leave in Britain and continued with their comfortable, but not wealthy, existence until the Japanese assault – even though the warning signs of Japanese aggression were plainly evident. But Mr Bosebury was not unusual in having complete faith in the strength of the British Empire to defend its citizens; after all, many reasoned, only a very foolish country indeed would attack the world's greatest super power – little realizing that the much-vaunted imperial strength of Britain was slowly dwindling in the Far East, as forces were transferred to Europe and not replaced. Britain was fighting a war for survival right on her doorstep and that was where the main military effort was concentrated.

The colonial lifestyles of the children of empire did not prepare them for the coming storm of war, or for the long period of internment that most of them had to look forward to. Neil Begley, a young boy in Shanghai in 1941, recalled his Chinese nanny, or 'amah', who cared for him. In common with many of the children who were later interned, Begley had a closer relationship with local Chinese people than with his parents:

My amah smelled like a Chinese, they all smelled the same, not like we 'Foreigners' and, colour apart, I thought that smell was what made them different from us. Taking a nipple in my lips I would suck her warm milk while she ran her fingers through my hair crooning haunting Chinese lullabies. She spoke only Chinese so I was more comfortable with Mandarin that I was with English and quite at home in the servants quarters ... My mother would have been horrified if she'd seen me.

Many Western children developed such bonds with native servants, often because their own parents were too busy withcareers or the social whirl of colonial life, to pay much attention to them. 'We children loved to spend time with our cook in the kitchen, squatting next to her on the floor, watching her crush and grind the "bumbu" of chillies, coriander, cumin and other spices,' recalled Jan Ruff, a young Dutch girl in Java in 1941. 'She let us take turns at turning the handle of the mincer and fanning the open charcoal stove. In Imah's domain we licked saucepans and scooped our fingers into her delicious dishes ...' Ernest Hillen, a young Dutch boy in the Netherlands East Indies, recalled Manang, the family gardener, who 'smelled of different kinds of smoke. He never hurried and I liked being near him: it was restful ... His large flat feet had spaces between the toes because he didn't have to wear shoes. I felt the bottom of those feet and they were hard and covered with deep, dry, criss-crossed cuts, which he said didn't hurt. I wanted feet like that, his shiny brown skin, and I tried to walk bowlegged like him.'

Soon after arriving back in Shanghai from leave in England, Rachel Bosebury's parents realized that the situation was turning bad for foreigners in the city. This was during the last few weeks before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. 'I remember them saying that the Japanese were bloodthirsty people,' recalled Rachel...