chapter 1

My name is Joyce Dorothy Bradbury. I was born Joyce Dorothy Cooke in Tsingtao (now called Quingdao), North China, on June 13, 1928. I lived there until November 1946 when my mother, brother and I left China for Sydney, Australia.

We travelled first by cargo ship to Hong Kong and then by the SS Nellore, a cargo-passenger ship, from Hong Kong via Rabaul in Papua New Guinea and disembarked in Sydney. It was supposed to be a holiday trip but I was seasick the whole voyage except when we entered port. Even then, my stomach turned in Rabaul where I saw huge sharks in the harbour enjoying feeding frenzies whenever garbage was thrown over the ship's side.

I have been asked by family and friends to set down details of my experiences in China, particularly as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II. This, I have done. To make my story more complete I explain how my family came to be in China and why we were interned by the Japanese as British subjects. Had we been Chinese citizens we would not have been interned.

I also deal with our return to our home in China after the war and then having to leave that home to settle in Australia before the Communists took over government in mainland China.

Immediately after the US Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii was bombed by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 — and the subsequent declaration of war on Japan by the World War II Allies — my family quickly went from a comfortable life of good food, servants and a wonderful social life to a Japanese-controlled nightmare. First, we faced restricted home confinement, then a Japanese regime of imprisonment in a hotel and finally imprisonment in a Japanese-run, vermin-infested internment compound where we were forced to undergo hardship, starvation, threats and intimidations for three-and-a-half years until liberated by US forces after the end of the war.

Mine is not the usual story of wholesale slaughter, cruelty on a large scale or other severe violations against humanity at the hands of the Japanese. My internment story is about their deliberate mistreatment of civilians. Although I was 13 at the time of our imprisonment and 17 at the time of liberation I have retained an excellent recollection of many events in the internment compound and will carry those recollections to my grave. I relate them as they happened based on my observations and knowledge.

Upon our release after the war we were returned to our home in Tsingtao where we picked up the pieces and started again. Throughout 1946, Chinese Communist military forces began taking over control of the Chinese Government in the area where we lived. Anticipating their success and realising there was no future for us in China, my father in late 1946 sent my mother, brother and me to Australia ‘for a holiday'. Shortly after our arrival in Sydney he sent us a telegram saying: "Remain in Australia, am joining you soon."

Dad's holiday trip plan was his way of getting us to leave China without the Chinese authorities becoming aware of our intentions and then frustrating my father's plans of getting his assets out of China. His covert asset transfer hopes came to little. He had to abandon real estate and a considerable amount of other property. I know he had shares in the Shanghai water works and also Shanghai's electricity department as well as $US 10,000 dollars in a bank which he later told us he had to leave there.

Dad, or Pop as we called him in the family, was able to bring enough money to buy a house in Sydney's West Ryde and to maintain us for a while but inevitably we all had to find a job to have a normal lifestyle. My younger brother Edmund (Eddie)

[1] Edmund John Clarence (Eddie) born June 9, 1932. Like me, he lives in Sydney, Australia. He is a proud parent and grandparent. During his working life he was a stockbroker.

continued his schooling and gained his senior high school graduation certificate [the leaving certificate] from Marist Brothers' High School, Parramatta, in Sydney.

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