WW2 75.5 Barbara’s story: Memories of Shanghai, 1942-45

Like Yettington resident Hanneke Coates, whose story I wrote about recently, Barbara Tilbury (née Hutton) and her family were living in the Far East prior to Japan’s entry into the Second World War and suffered the misery of internment when invading forces took over their homes.  Barbara is not a local resident, but her husband David was brought up in Budleigh and his family is well known in our area. That’s just one reason why I thought Barbara’s story was worth telling. 

As a child, Barbara Hutton grew up in a city known in the 1920s and 30s for its glamour and prosperity as ‘The Paris of the East, the New York of the West’.  Many of Shanghai’s grand buildings were of Art Deco design and date from that pre-war period. Top left clockwise: The former Grosvenor House, now one of the two main buildings of Jinjiang Hotel; the Peace Hotel and the Bank of China Building; Eddingburg House; Park Hotel, formerly the Shanghai Joint Savings Society Building.  Image credit: Wikipedia

Shanghai as seen in the 1920s
Image credit: Wikimedia


Barbara was born on 7 October 1936 in Shanghai. She summarises here some of the wartime events which made for a traumatic childhood, the effects of which she feels she has suffered in later life.  Her text is in blue. Captions for the illustrations are mine.

J.G. Ballard’s book Empire of the Sun, published in 1984

Barbara and her family were forced by the Japanese authorities to live in Shanghai’s Lungwha Camp, the same wartime internment camp that inspired the author J.G. Ballard to write his semi-autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun', later made into a successful film.  

Recently Barbara watched the film 'The Railway Man'.  ‘It brought back some vivid memories of my time in camp but compared what those men suffered building that railway, ours was a mere holiday camp,’ she tells me.    

A wartime photo portrait of Emperor Hirohito, the 124^th emperor of Japan. The issue of his war responsibility is, it seems, a controversial matter.

A.   Pre-internment 

1. Having to wear red armbands which were numbered and labelled me British.

2. Having Japanese come into our home and put stickers on all our furniture and possessions, declaring them now the possession of his Imperial Highness Hirohito of Japan.
Much was confiscated, our cars, our houseboat, my father’s horses, his cameras to name just a few of the things.

Barbara’s pre-war home: Hanray Mansions, completed around 1940. The building was apparently known as ‘Shanghai's swankiest apartment house’.  
Image credit: Katya Knyazeva

Members of the Kenpeitai, the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. Their brutality was notorious, many of their abuses being documented in Japanese war crimes trials  Image credit: Wikipedia

3. My father dying in 1942, following extensive questioning by the Japanese police.

4. My mother preparing for our internment.

5. Having to say goodbye to Boris our Russian chauffeur, my Amah [nanny], her daughter my friend Mary, and my beloved dachshund Winnie, named after Winston Churchill, whom Boris had agreed to look after for the duration of the war.

Map of Lungwha Camp by internee Irene Duguid

Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

B. Our Internment in Lungwha Camp 1942-1945 

1. Having to report to the Assembly Reception Centre with my mother and sister, together with all other British nationals.   I cannot even begin to imagine how my mother must have felt, newly widowed at 36 years of age, left now with the sole responsibility for  two young children, especially as she had never had to lift a finger for herself  in her whole life, never had to  worry about money,  or indeed,  what tomorrow  might bring.

2.  Being driven to the camp in lorries.

The soccer pitch at Lungwha Camp   
Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

3.  My first impression of Lungwha was grey and dismal, of barbed wire and look out towers.                           

4.  The small room (10ft x 12ft, I am told) on the second floor of  D Block which we had been allocated and which was to be our home for the next two and a half years.

5.  Having to sleep with my mother in a single bed as there was no room to put up a bed for me as we had another woman and child billeted in with us.  I understand she was the Nanny for the family who had the room opposite us and the child was her charge.     At some point the family et al were moved to another camp and the Nanny and child went too.    We then had one of the daughters from the family next door to ‘sleep’ with us. (This actually did not make any difference to our sleeping arrangements, however, as there was still insufficient room to put up a bed for me.)

Above: Internee Deirdre Fee's illustration of ‘The Waterloo’

Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

6.  The lack of water with which to wash, cook, clean, flush toilets etc. (The loos were not the nicest of places.  We used our torn-up school exercise books for lavatory paper and it was fun to sit and ponder on someone’s scholastic efforts. Paper for the school was very limited, and anything and everything was used, and subsequently ‘re-used’.)   As I was the youngest in our family, I was washed last in the dirty water that remained from previous use.

7. Having to collect our daily ration of water from ‘Waterloo’ the water tower. Standing in the long line with our water carrier, waiting our turn.

The West Kitchen, Lungwha Camp

Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

8. The shortage of food. For some reason I don’t remember the rations, but I have since been told it was a bowl of congee [a type of rice porridge] for breakfast complete with maggots with  pink heads which were considered to be extra protein, a bowl of rice and stew (this is another whole story) for lunch, and again congee for supper.

9. The excitement of receiving Swiss Red Cross food parcels, which usually included peanut butter, lard and marmite!  

10. Being made to line up and made to drink soya milk, which was not at all the same as the very tasty soya milk now available in the local supermarkets.   Whole soya beans had to be squashed or pressed by the women in the kitchen to extract any juice and all children of a certain age had to line up and drink it. It was absolutely ghastly. It was difficult to swallow and even more difficult to keep down. I don’t remember it happening for long, so perhaps the soya bean supplies dried up.  

Internee Deirdre Fee's illustration of the Lunghwa Dining Room queue

Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

11. Supplies came in from various sources. Mother said that the rice was the sweeping from the warehouse floors, and the meat was just pressed, that meant quite literally, skin, innards and all, hence the need for the kitchen staff to ‘clean’ the food.   I also do remember once when the water wagon didn’t come in, and we had to use the water from the ‘pond’ in front of the Japanese Assembly block, which of course was where they emptied their spittoons. This caused much consternation amongst the inmates, but then, we needed water.

12.  Camp school was well organised, the adults organised our schooling, which was of a very high standard, as most of our teachers were University staff,  but I remember quite clearly being slapped over the knuckles by the French teacher for talking in class!  School had been ‘negotiated’ to be held in a disused building in what was called the New Territories.   We had to line up outside barbed wire which had a gate, and then be frogmarched into the building.   However, if there had been any inappropriate behaviour by anyone at all in the camp, the Japanese would punish us by not allowing us into the New Territory and by reducing our food rations.

A map of Lungwha Camp

Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

13.  Being ill in the Camp hospital. (I had ‘adopted’ a baby bird, a butcher bird, whose real name was a shrike.   This bird had to be fed on meat, so I was sent to the kitchens to beg discarded meat and from this ‘bad’ meat I contracted a skin condition which was diagnosed as pemphigus.  However a UK skin specialist commented that it couldn’t have been so, or else I would have died!   However, I was put in the camp hospital in a room with three adults, and my treatment was to have the postules pricked, removed as far as possible and then to have the wounds painted with either machurichone (sp?), gentian violet or iodine.  This happened twice a day, it was excruciatingly painful.)

14. My mother’s illness was dreadful to watch.  She pricked her finger sewing something for my sister. The ‘wound’ went sceptic.  She had drains put into her finger to try and get rid of the pus, she would sit with the tears running down her cheeks through the pain, trying to dip her finger into a jug of boiling salt water.  She was very sick but lived; however she lost the top of her finger.

15. I also remember my mother trying to make and mend clothes, especially a bra for my sister.

16.  Each family seemed to have ‘acquired’ a home made chattie [stove] on which to boil water, (highly illegal of course) and I was sent, as were  other children to search on the large slag heap  for remnants of charcoal, coke,  or joy of joy, coal!   How clever we felt when we found something.

17. I also remember playing in the ruins of another building which had been bombed during the Sino-Japanese War, we played war games, and felt very daring.

18. I remember clearly the ‘rains’, when we all dashed out in  whatever we could loosely call bathing costumes to play and splash in this wonderful water.

19. There was another incident of which I am not very proud. The snow was everywhere, rooms were cold, most people had chilblains.  We children went out to play and I threw a snowball at some man. (I was seven years old).   He complained bitterly to my Mother, and to my shame I lied. I said it wasn’t me, but of course it was.   I was very severely punished by my Mother, and then sent to apologise to this man, firstly for throwing the snowball, and secondly for lying. It was truly awful, but this incident has influenced quite considerably my attitude to lying in general and to people who lie.

Whilst on the subject of confessions, I also remember another incident.   We all went to friends who lived in the room which was nearly opposite to ours, to watch the dogfights between the Americans and the Japanese aeroplanes.  I knelt on their camphor wood chest, not knowing that there was a hole in the top as it had been covered by a beautifully embroidered cloth. However, on this trunk there was a ‘vase’ of flowers, and I knocked it over.  I didn’t say a word.  Several days later the lady of the household knocked on our door and spoke to my Mother.  The trunk had been filled with linen and IF only I had owned up at the time to the accident, then the damage to the linen would have been considerably less. I still feel guilty about this 60 years later.

20. The home-made toys for Birthdays and Christmases were magic, I still have a chattie and a thermos made from this and that, which I treasured then and always will.

21. The camp concerts were fun as was Sunday School. I still remember learning the words for and singing ‘There’ll always be an England’ and the pride I felt.

Internee Deirdre Fee's illustration of washing at ‘The Trough’ at Lunghwa.  Image credit: https://www.jgballard.ca

22. I also remember quite clearly my Mother laughingly telling me how the old ladies kept dropping their false teeth down the lavatories, and how the sewer monitors (usually the clergy)  had to trawl through the yuk to try to find them.

23. Another memory was having to bow low (kowtow) when we met a Japanese guard; this was in essence to show respect to His Imperial Highness Hirohito.   We children thought it greatly daring  to laugh and just run away.   Looking back, I now realise how very dangerous this practice was.  My Mother has told me about the extra cruelty of the North Korean guards. (I had been told that the Japanese actually ‘loved’ children! But  never saw any real signs of this.)  Apparently, the guards changed every three months, and these North Korean Guards were by far the worst;

24. The twice a day roll calls were fairly routine, but then there were the extra ad hoc ones when and if the guards felt like it. There were searches, mostly for radios (or any newspapers, and of course any tools, weapons, and the like.)  

25. I do remember these searches and having to run with the other children to hide any knives etc or other prohibited items before the guards reached our room.

26. There was a really scary typhoon which blew off the roof of the dining room hut, and after that, food was brought to us in our own block.  It was brought in dustbins, on pull-along trolleys. The distribution of food was carried out mainly by the clergy, who were presumed to be beyond suspicion of theft or black market dealing. Oh the joy of the cry of ‘second floor seconds’ whenever there was food left over!

Aerial view of the nearby airport, 1931. 
Image credit: Wikipedia

27. The air raids were exciting for us children.  Watching the American ‘planes dive down low past our window, so low that we could actually see the pilot! (Our camp was by a military airfield, so air raids were fairly heavy and regular.)

28.  Rushing out to collect the empty bullet shells and shrapnel to add to my collection.

29.  There was always a long line of wounded Chinese coming into our camp for treatment.after these raids.   I remember watching them.

30.  The  beating-up by the Japanese guards of one of the internees in the front compound will always stay with me. There was an uprising of the women of the camp,  (although I am sure the men were involved, but I don’t remember their involvement at all!!) I was terrified when my mother grabbed a knife from our room and joined the screaming ‘lynch’ mob. The noise of this baying mob was primeaval. The Japanese retreated into their own block until the arrival of the lorries with the Japanese  reinforcements who were all armed up to the hilt. It was very scary and I remember it as if it was yesterday.

31. The American plane coming over and writing VG in the sky, and all the adults puzzling over what it meant, and the subsequent coming of another plane with the good

news - VJ . . .!

32. The arrival by beautiful silk parachutes of parcels of goodies from the Americans and people ‘fighting’ for bits of the material to make new clothes.

Hanray Mansions, showing the Art Deco design of the interior  Image credit: Katya Knyazeva

C. Liberation by the Americans 

1. My family’s journey back to our home in Hanray Mansions, Avenue Joffre, the reunion with my Amah, the Boy, the Cook and especially Boris who brought with him my Winnie 

2. Our home had been used by visiting Japanese Generals, so had been left more or less as my mother had left it. Any looting that had taken place was thought to have been done by the Chinese. 

3.  My fear of sleeping alone, of the dark. (All these years later, and I still don’t like the dark!)

4.  My mother being upset by the confiscation of some of the family’s belongings, the cars, the houseboat, the horses and the cameras to name just a few.  Her determination to leave China at the first possible opportunity. Her worries trying to obtain money when all the banks were closed and her relief at the generosity of some very good Jewish friends who agreed to lend her money until she returned to England and was able to repay it; her concern that all my father’s money invested in China was lost and gone for ever.

The SS Arawa, a postcard image

 D. Our trip home on the SS Arawa

1. The trip home took six weeks. The Captain kept radioing that the ship , which was a troop ship, was not suitable for women and children, but  he was told to proceed - first to Hongkong, then to Port Said, and then obviously, he brought us all the way home, despite the appalling conditions. The loos were all built for men, so you can imagine the problems. The crew put up canvas curtains between the actual lavatories, but this was not successful, as there was no light, we couldn’t see what we were doing, it was hopeless.  There was no privacy, .and it must have been truly dreadful for the adults.

2.  I remember well the minesweepers leading our convey, endeavouring to protect us on our journey home. At  times, it was worrying, and yet exciting for us children.

3. Yet again I had to sleep with my mother on a narrow wooden hammock rack in the hold of the ship; there were no portholes, we were below the water line.  It was pretty rough, and there were people in hammocks above us being sick, whilst we tried to eat our meals sitting at the tables beneath them.

4. Lessons were once more organised by the ‘grown ups’ but fortunately for me, I didn’t have to go to school, as I was not yet ten!  But I do remember looking in through the glass and making faces at our poor friends who had been ‘selected’ for education.

5. Stopping at Hongkong, with the dreadful sight of sunken ships in the harbour. 

6. Stopping again at Port Said, where we were driven in lorries to a big Red Cross warehouse and issued with clothes and given a meal.

7. The kindness of the crew on board the Arrawa. Nothing was too much trouble for them.

Southampton Docks in 1947. Image credit: https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk

E. Arrival in England

1. I remember quite clearly indeed, just as yesterday, our arrival at Southampton early in the morning on a wet, cold, bleak day and  the feeling of strangeness and not belonging.  

2. My concerns as to what would happen to us all in this ‘strange’ country!.

3. We took a taxi to Bideford to stay with my Grandfather, and that is just another long unhappy story.

4. Later on, the feeling of utter horror when my mother told me that that the Japanese had already built gas chambers to get rid of us all, prior to their retreat. Fortunately they just didn’t have the time. 

5. The ongoing problems that my elder sister had, endeavouring to adjust to life following our experiences, will always stay with me. It was decided that she would return to Switzerland to continue with her schooling, but she found it difficult to adjust and to fit in with the other girls. Sadly the experience of internment, with the loss of our Father together with the changes to our lifestyle, affected her whole life. She was 13 when she  was first interned and sixteen when we were liberated, and she never recovered.   She died of a heart attack at the age of 59.  I was younger and therefore luckier although it has still left me with problems. However, they are different and easier to deal with.

You can access other posts on this blog by going to the Blog Archive (under the ‘About Me’ section), and clicking on the appropriate heading.