" This is the story of a child born into a strange culture and a family life of which he knew too
little. Most of his childhood memories are of boarding school and the years of the Second
World War interned by the Japanese. These were not unhappy experiences, but sometimes
lonely ones. They obviously had an effect on his relationship with his family. This story
outlines some of his family difficulties, but it should in no way reflect on the integrity of his
parents or the esteem in which they were held by their missionary organization and the respect
they received from their fellow workers.
" The children in this story experienced things no child is meant to experience — shipwreck, hunger, death of loved ones and even of playmates, prolonged separation from parents, violence, fear. Today we would readily acknowledge that many received psychological wounds in the process. But these boys and girls returned from their Japanese internment camps with little advice on how to cope in their new lives beyond 'don't talk about it', the ...catch-all motto of that stiff upper lip era. As a result many of the people who
Introduction
I could walk down our barrack past women and children with broken teeth and bleeding gums, hair growing in tufts and faces and stomachs bloated with hunger oedema and beriberi, boils as big as ping pong balls and oozing tropical ulcers and not let myself see them: pain was pain.
Ernest Hillen, Dutch child internee Kampong Makassar Camp, 1944-45
... " Tsukada subsequently regaled me with tales of his continuing worldwide search for school chums last seen half a century earlier in Tientsin, the north-China city now called Tianjin. He also spoke of a school reunion, scheduled for September 1996 in Tianjin. There had been other reunions; in Australia, Japan, the Americas and Europe, but this was the first ever in China. Naturally, I had to be there.
My three days of interviews and discussions with old China hands, many of whom were meeting each other for the first time in some fifty years, opened doors to a time and place that is accessible through no other channel. Tianjin has an official local history, of course, but ...
600pix.jpg "[click here]")
... " Dorothy, John and their children did not arrive there until a fine October morning in 1943. Their arrival coincided with the departure of 450 Roman Catholic Clergy and Nuns to Peking (Beijing) and the repatriation of 250 Americans and Canadians to New York. At the same time, there was an influx of some 400 teachers and children from the China Inland Mission. They had arrived at the tail end of the monsoon and the ground was one mass of mud. They had however, missed the heavy rains, when some walls collapsed, roofs leaked so that water poured into kitchens, dining rooms and many of the dormitories. To add to the misery, Dorothy could not help noticing that the accommodation consisted of row upon row of dismal-looking huts. ...
... " When the tragedy occurred, involving Prentice, I believe Pamela Werner was living in Peking with her father, and staying in Tientsin with friends while attending TGS. Dr Werner was an anthropologist involved in the famous Peking-Man digs and was away from home a lot of the time. Pamela’s mother, a beautiful Russian woman, was brutally murdered several years earlier, and everyone was convinced that her father had killed her in a jealous rage. He was much older that she was, and every man who looked her way drove him into a fit of jealousy. The murder was horribly brutal: she was stabbed umpteen times, and filthy names were cut into her torso. That murder has never been solved. ...
... " The brutal murder of Pamela Werner sent shockwaves through the streets of pre-communist Peking in 1937. Outraging the population inside the walled capital, the killing baffled the local police, becoming one of the most mysterious unsolved crimes in the history of modern China. But while investigations have returned to the cold case over the years in an attempt to provide new insight into the perplexing killing, none have come close to joining the pieces of the infamous crime, until now.
With renewed interest in ...
... " A near moribund lady prisoner, unidentified, known as ‘the Yank’, held Hannon’s interest. His efforts to identify her were remarkably successful with indisputable confirmation by Nationalist Governor General Wi Li, Nationalist Army General Kumtwing, Communist Army General Chan Tze, Chinese interpreter Johnny Wung and several camp prisoners, he determined her identity was the American lady flyer, Amelia Earhart.
Altogether, Weifang Prison Camp offered diverse social and spiritual groups, predominately British and American, packed ...
... " Le consul général et le vice-consul du Japon
nous font comprendre qu'ils savent que leur pays
perdra la guerre, ce qui ne les empêche pas de
déporter les résidents alliés dans un camp d'internement à Wehsien, dans les environs de Pékin.
Nous assistons, tristes et impuissants, au départ
de nos amis, les Belges, les ...
This book is a monument of history, remarkably well written, fascinating, and reads like a novel. This opium war initiated by the English was a human disaster but also a heritage disaster in China. This fire in the Summer Palace is a real shame for Westerners. This sad event has passed into history for our modern world, and it was fair and useful to describe all of its causes and consequences. Congratulations Mr. Brisay for this extraordinary return to the history of China.
Par BRUNO BIROLLI
Le Nouvel Observateur
JUIN 2006
"Au musée du sanctuaire de Yasukuni à Tokyo,
temple du nationalisme japonais, c'est une version
ouvertement révisionniste, voire négationniste, de
l'histoire nationale qui est exposée aux visiteurs.
Ce qui ne choque pas le Premier ministre
Junichiro Koizumi :
il s'y est déjà rendu cinq fois ! ...
... " Basiz pointed across the valley and said, "Maidonek — death camp — more than a million people went up that stack and floated down everywhere — black snowflakes contaminated the air, the streets, public places, school yards, church yards, markets, our homes, our clothes, our minds — one day, translate this book into English."
... " I was there, February 1945, overwhelmed by the ghastly slaughter house just as the German's left it in the month of August 1944 described in detail in FIVE MARKS
James Jess Hannon.
... " Massacres en masse de prisonniers de guerre, notamment à Nankin ; asservissement de millions d'Asiatiques et d'Occidentaux, entre camps de la faim et chantiers de la mort ; atmosphère de terreur à l'échelle d'un quasi-continent ; débauche de crimes sexuels et prostitution forcée ; utilisation de cobayes humains ; pillage généralisé ; intoxication par la drogue de populations entières. Cela dura huit ans et toucha 400 millions d'hommes. Ce terrifiant volet de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Asie n'avait ...
... " In 1945, US Intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These would be combined with treasure recovered inside Japan during the US occupation, and with Nazi loot recovered in Europe, to create a ...
... " À partir de la fin des années 30, alors que l’armée impériale japonaise pille le Sud-Est asiatique, l’empereur Hirohito lance « l’Opération Lys d’or » dont l’objectif est la récupération, puis la dissimulation, de son butin de guerre. À la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les services du général MacArthur s’emparent du trésor et créent divers fonds destinés à financer la lutte contre le communisme. ...
... " Les pratiques meurtrières de l'armée de l'Empereur du Japon sont minutieusement décrites, afin d'en comprendre les mécanismes. Comment en arriva-t-on là, dans un pays qui était apparu comme un modèle de modernité ? Les explications, trop simples, par la culture ou le contexte ne tiennent pas. C'est la conquête d'une armée par l'ultranationalisme, puis la conquête d'un pays par le militarisme qui sont en cause. Au-delà, c'est l'ère du fascisme, des totalitarismes, du triomphe de la brutalité qui trouva au Japon un formidable point d'appui. Ces horreurs des années 1937-1945 restent aujourd'hui au coeur des mémoires et ...
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. ...
`Nothing illustrates wartime suffering and sacrifices more poignantly than a child's voice. Clara Kelly has done a wonderful job capturing the depravity of the Java prison camps and the courage of interned mothers trying to keep their young children alive and humane. The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family's survival' Elizabeth Norman
... " Cet ouvrage, fruit de 13 années d'enseignement au Collège Saint-Ignace de Zikawei, a pour but d'aider nos étudiants chinois ainsi que les lecteurs français dans l'étude et la connaissance de la Chine.
Pour l'utilité immédiate de tous de nos élèves qui se destinent au commerce, nous avons ajouté pour tous les noms propres, après la romanisation en français, ...
Introduction
'... a malarial ridden pestilential hollow in the hills would probably have been journey's end for most of us but providence, or the atomic bomb which we did not know about, intervened. You may choose according to your own persuasion but my money is on technology.'
Major Archie Black British POW, Saigon 1945
Bombs exploded with enormous, earth-shattering detonations that lit up the sky, and ...
... " Life in a World War II Japanese internment camp as seen through the eyes of a child. The setting is Santo Tomas in Manila,a notorious camp under the administration of General Yamashita who was later convicted for atrocities in the Philippines and sentenced to death.The author was sent there with his mother and sister.He tells the story as he saw it as a child filled with the novelty ...
... " But as I dug deeper, I discovered something profound – I began understanding my father. What happened that day Mr. Mulligan was killed may have been the cause of a lot of my father’s rage. The first platoon, with my father as squad leader, was going past a tomb east of the city of Naha on 30 May 1945 when Mr. Mulligan threw a grenade into the opening. The crypt was full of Japanese munitions ...
... " Many years later, when I was writing the story of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, whom I had seen several times in Tientsin, that scarecrow figure with the iron mask kept returning to me, as if insisting that it was the real emperor.
Other things I had learned in the market-place came back, like the tones of a language, long lost but once well known and loved. Without meaning to, I found myself reliving parts of Pu Yi's story and arranging it in scenes as if I had witnessed them myself. It seemed to me ...
The Ford of Heaven, an ancient river port in north-eastern China, gave travellers access to the Celestial City of Peking eighty miles to the west, where the Emperor ruled by the mandate of Heaven. Tientsin, as British settlers called it, became a treaty port in 1860 in the wake of the Opium Wars. In the 1920s and 1930s it was occupied by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America and other foreign powers. (...)
Preface The red-bearded Caucasian in Chinese mandarin garb looking down from the frame above my parents' mantle was my dad's grandfather, Paul Splingaerd. He was a Belgian who went to China and married the Chinese lady in the matching frame a few feet away. He was the reason I was born in China, and that was all I knew about him for most of my life.
Through the years, when I asked relatives about Paul, they would tell ...
Harbin in north China was once the heart of a vibrant Russian community. But by the mid-1930s, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria drove many Russians to seek refuge elsewhere. For the thousands who returned to their motherland in the Soviet Union, it was a bitter home coming. At the height of Stalin's purges, they were arrested as Japanese spies. Some were shot, others sent to labour camps, few survived. (...)
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Les souvenirs d'une enfant qui échappe aux nazis pour aboutir dans les camps japonais.
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Qui est criminel de guerre ?
Celui qui tue ?
Celui qui donne l'ordre de tuer ?
Celui au nom de qui on tue ?
Lequel est criminel de guerre ?
« La Chine en folie » est un reportage d’Albert Londres publié en 1922. C’est son second reportage sur l’Asie après «Visions orientales», il complète son tour d’Asie et précéde « Au bagne » d’un an. Albert Londres y décrit un pays surréaliste, gigantesque, imprévisible.
In the early morning hours on 16 August 1945 the day after Japan surrendered Eagle team, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Willis Bird climbed aboard a C-47 in Xian, China, on a one way trip for Keijo. Bird was a 36-year old graduate of the Wharton School of Finance. [...]
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In the 30 years from 1888 to 1920, Tyler has witnessed Dadonggou naval battle, Weihaiwei siege in China, and has contacted with the various figures from important officials to the civilians and pirates.
(...)
It had been my original intention to name this book "MILESTONES IN A SAILOR'S LIFE", but when it was pointed out to me that milestones played no part in a sailor's life, I substituted "Knots" for "Milestones".
T.J.Eldridge.
From 1870 to 1914, Belgium – at that time one of the leading financial and industrial powers – financed, built and operated hundreds of kilometres of tram lines across the five continents. King Leopold II was the driving force behind these enterprises. For example, a railway line between Beijing and Hankou and a tram network in Tianjin were built in China.