Miracles of Life by J. G. Ballard

flourish drewon the wall what he said would be his stage name once hereturned to England: Laurence Templeton. A name wonderfullyof its time, and far grander than Peter Wyngarde. Imet him in the early fifties in the Mitre pub in Holland ParkAvenue in London, and he was in a poor way, with bad teethand tired eyes. But ten years later he achieved huge success,not on stage but on television, as Jason King. I saw him in St James’s Park, camel-hair coat stylishly slung over an elegantsuit, a tilted homburg and dazzling teeth. I started to speakto him but he cut me dead.

     

American Air Raids (1944)
     
    My parents’ memories of Lunghua were always muchharsher than my own. I was often hungry, but I revelled incamp life, roaming everywhere, at the centre of a pack ofboys my own age, playing chess with bored internees in themen’s huts and quizzing them between moves about theworld. At the same time I knew nothing about the progressof the war, and our likely fate at the hands of the Japanese.
    Occasional Red Cross supplies kept us going, but theadults must have been weak and demoralised, with no end insight to the war. Many years later, my mother told me that in1944 there were strong rumours relayed from the Swissneutrals in Shanghai that the Japanese high commandplanned to close the camp and march us all up-country,where they would dispose of us. The Japanese armies inChina, millions strong, were falling back to the coast, andintended to make their last stand near the mouth of theYangtze against the expected American landings. This must have deeply alarmed my parents and other adults in theknow, however uncertain the rumours.
    Unaware of all this, I went on wheedling tattered copies of Life and Popular Mechanics from the American sailors in EBlock, setting pheasant traps (we never caught a bird) andflirting with the skinny but attractive teenage girls in G Blockwho had grown into puberty with me. Fortunately theHiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs brought the war to anabrupt end. Like my parents, and everyone else who livedthrough Lunghua, I have long supported the Americandropping of the bombs. Prompted by Emperor Hirohito’ssurrender broadcast, the still-intact Japanese war machineground to a complete halt within days, so saving millions ofChinese lives, as well as our own. For a hint of what mightotherwise have happened, we can look at the vicious battlefor Manila, the only large city in the Pacific War fought forby the Americans, where some 100,000 Philippine civiliansdied.
    By the summer of 1944 the conditions in Lunghua Camphad changed markedly for the worse. Japanese forces in thePacific were falling back under fierce attacks by American airand naval power, and US submarines were taking a heavy tollof Japanese shipping to and from the home islands. Japanesecities were one by one being devastated by Americanbombers. The Tokyo high command could barely feed itsown soldiers, let alone the groups of civilian interneesscattered throughout the Far East.
    The behaviour of the Japanese guards in Lunghua becamemore brutal as Japan faced defeat. Far from wanting toingratiate themselves, the guards would lash out at the maleinternees during the roll-calls. The Japanese soldiers makingup the original force of guards were replaced by olderrecruits, and then by Korean conscripts who had themselvesbeen brutalised by the Japanese NCOs, and were particularlyvicious.
    After the war we learned that throughout our internmentthere had been three clandestine radios in the camp, and thatan inner group of internees were closely following theprogress of the war. Sensibly, they kept their news to themselves,for fear that the few collaborators in the camp wouldtip off the guards. A married Englishwoman in G Blockspoke fluent Japanese and worked in the commandant’soffice, and she was widely suspected of passing on informationto the Japanese, knowingly or otherwise, perhaps inreturn for medicines for her sick son.
    I assume that she knew nothing about