Miracles of Life Read Online Free

did. If she was driving us around Shanghaiin the family Packard, and stopped to buy American comicsfor her sons, she always included a comic for me, somethingI noticed that neither my own mother nor any of the otherEnglish mothers ever did. Her kindness and good nature Iremember vividly seventy years later. I was rarely unhappy athome, but I was always happy at the Kendall-Wards, and Ithink that I was aware of the difference at the time.

Japanese Invasion (1937)
     
    In 1937 the street spectacle that so enthralled a small Englishboy was bathed in a far more chilling light. Led by itsmilitary chiefs, and with the silent blessing of the Emperor,Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China. Its armiesseized all the coastal cities, including Shanghai, though theydid not enter the International Settlement. For severalmonths there was bitter fighting in the outlying areas of thecity, especially the Chapei and Nantao suburbs. RelentlessJapanese bombing and naval bombardment from their warshipsin the Whangpoo river levelled large areas of Shanghai.For the first time in the history of warfare a coordinated air,sea and land assault was launched against Chiang Kai-shek’sChinese armies, who greatly outnumbered the Japanese, butwere poorly led by corrupt cronies of Chiang and his wife.
    One bomb, dropped by accident from a Chinese aircraft,struck the Great World Amusement Park near the racecoursein the heart of the International Settlement, which was filledwith refugees from the outlying districts. The bomb killed a thousand people, at the time the largest number of casualtiesever caused by a single bomb. The Chinese pushed theJapanese back towards the river, until they were fightingfrom trenches that filled with water at high tide. But theJapanese prevailed, and Chiang’s armies withdrew into thevast interior of China. The new national capital becameChungking, 900 miles to the west.
    There was desperate fighting in the open countryside onlya mile from our home. At one point artillery shells from therival Chinese and Japanese batteries were passing over ourroof, and my parents closed the house and moved with theservants to the comparative safety of a rented house in theFrench Concession.
    Curiously, the house we moved to had a drained swimmingpool in its garden. It must have been the first drainedpool I had seen, and it struck me as strangely significant in away I have never fully grasped. My parents decided not to fillthe pool, and it lay in the garden like a mysterious emptypresence. I would walk through the unmown grass and staredown at its canted floor. I could hear the bombing and gunfireall around Shanghai, and see the vast pall of smoke thatlay over the city, but the drained pool remained apart. In thecoming years I would see a great many drained and half-drained pools, as British residents left Shanghai for Australiaand Canada, or the assumed ‘safety’ of Hong Kong andSingapore, and they all seemed as mysterious as that firstpool in the French Concession. I was unaware of the obvious symbolism that British power was ebbing away, because noone thought so at the time, and faith in the British Empirewas at its jingoistic height. Right up to, and beyond, PearlHarbor it was taken for granted that the dispatch of a fewRoyal Navy warships would send the Japanese scuttling backto Tokyo Bay. I think now that the drained pool representedthe unknown, a concept that had played no part in my life.Shanghai in the 1930s was full of extravagant fantasies, butthese spectacles were designed to promote a new hotel orairport, a new department store, nightclub or dog-racingtrack. Nothing was unknown.
    Once the Chinese armies had withdrawn, life in Shanghairesumed as if little had changed. The Japanese surroundedthe city, but made no attempt to confront the contingents ofBritish, French and American soldiers, or to interfere withtheir warships in the river facing the Bund. The Japanesecruiser Idzumo , a veteran of the Great War, sat in