Chapter II

Excerpts from the writings of Mme Jacqueline Dubois
- Translated by Gay Talbot-Stratford

I went into labour at the same time as news came that Olive’s father had had a cardiac infarction in Weihsien. The Japanese informed my friend through Ralph Engeström who obtained the authorisation for her to go to his bedside. She left at once and stayed three days. On her return, she told us that the camp was run by the deportees and was more like a holiday camp than a prison. The prisoners had organised the hospital where her father was given very good care, there was a theatre, a library, a school, a children’s playground, basketball courts, a tennis court. Several second-hand exchange shops (White Elephant Exchange) and hair salons for men and for women. It was nothing like the camp in Shanghai where the deportees underwent terrible hardships.

Why was such clemency shown to Weihsien? Why did the Japanese consul general conduct himself in such a gentlemanly fashion towards the Europeans in Tientsin? At first we could not find an explanation for this phenomenon. Eventually we understood that the Japanese had no need to conquer North China since they had been a presence here since the beginning of the century, so they did not send professional soldiers like the ones sent to Shanghai. Instead, they sent reservists who were, generally speaking, less cruel.

When Mussolini broke ranks with Hitler in 1943, the Japanese were infuriated by this act of treason as they saw it, and wanted no more to do with the Italians than with the Allies. They seized the Italian concession and arrested the soldiers of the Italian expeditionary force ,then they put an end to the extraterritorial rights of the French by disarming them, but not arresting them. Things had turned full circle. There were no longer any foreign concessions in China and foreign nationals were no longer protected by the laws of their own countries. Everything became answerable to Chinese law and courts

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