The Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

  The repatriation ship was the Kamakura Maru, but my father and others soon called it the Wangle Maru. The stories of bargaining and favoritism were appalling. The embassy and consular list included temporary and part-time employees, which meant that a secretary who worked perhaps fifteen or twenty hours a week was guaranteed a spot. There were rumors of out-and-out bargaining, the most blatant of which concerned a rich and socially well-connected woman who was given passage as the nurse to the children of the British Consul General.

  The list-making went on for weeks. Finally on Friday, August 14, passengers were called and told they would be allowed to sail the following Tuesday.

  That Tuesday was a sweltering summer day, even for Shanghai. At the wharf at Pootung, repatriates were checked through. The process took five hours. As officials stood under corrugated iron roofs, passengers lined up, handing over their papers to be checked and rechecked, carrying their baggage, saying good-bye to friends. My father said yet another good-bye. Will Marsh was on the list.

  Within a few weeks of the Kamakura Maru’s departure, all talk of repatriation stopped. Soon there was another proclamation: Allied civilians were required to wear armbands. Once again my father stood in line, this time at the Japanese Consulate, where he was given a red armband with an A for American and the number 27. He was required to wear it on his left arm at all times, so that he could be distinguished from non-enemy nationals—the Germans and Italians and Vichy French. The penalty for not wearing the armband was significant: a stay at Ward Road Jail, a possibility more ominous than ever since the repatriation of embassy and consular officials. It was common knowledge that questioning now included torture.

  Enemy nationals were next denied entrance to all forms of amusement—the cinemas, the theaters and clubs, the public rooms in hotels—but no one had much money anyway. Then British and American films were banned. The Chinese went to what had been the British theaters in large numbers, where they saw old German and French films as well as Chinese and Japanese productions, after which they watched footage of Pearl Harbor and other Japanese fronts in Asia and elsewhere, and were encouraged to applaud Japan’s victories.

  In late October of 1942, my father found the completely unexpected in his postbox: an uncensored letter from California with a draft for fifty American dollars. It was from my mother and somehow, for no reason my father could explain, had found its way to him. Letters and Red Cross forms came through only rarely, although he occasionally heard news of us through friends. The fifty U.S. dollars were worth ten times as much as they would have been a few months earlier. My mother had sent it on impulse, reasoning that it couldn’t hurt. My father paced in his room for almost an hour, trying to decide where to hide it, and finally settled on the place behind the loose brick near the door of his room.

  He was at a low point. He was thin and worn down, his nerves were shot, he startled easily. Stealing was the latest problem, and by then many of his belongings, practical and otherwise, had disappeared: his overcoat hanging on a peg near the front door, a sack of walnuts he’d bought from a street vendor, his aluminum pots and pans from the kitchen shelf, except for one small pot that had been filled with hot soup on the stove. Thieves took the brass pendulum from a small clock near his bed, which they apparently realized was not solid brass, but hollow, for my father found it later in the mud by the side of the road. He periodically found that clothes, boots, socks, even undergarments had been taken. The split bamboo fence he’d put in around the pigeon coop was stolen. He eventually took to sleeping with anything he cared about or couldn’t imagine losing: the drawer holding his knives and forks, his last aluminum pot, all of it stuffed under the bed except for the bicycle, which he padlocked to the headboard with a heavy chain and padlock. But then, finally, the pigeons were stolen.

  Even dogs were stolen, often by the Japanese, who valued trained guard dogs, and my father worried about Jeannie. Though she clearly had arthritis and was getting old—she would be eleven in a few months—she was intelligent and well trained, and the idea of her being taken tormented him, causing him to check on her constantly. She had become far more than a companion. Thieves had taken just about everything else, but they hadn’t touched her, a fact that, at moments, made my father think of himself as a lucky man.

  On November 4, an unusually mild morning, my father was surprised to find Jeannie huddled in the corner when he woke. Her arthritis seemed to flare up far more often in cold weather, but she was whimpering and could not stand, and when my father examined her, he found that her back legs had gone out.

  The vet my father had gone to for years, an Englishman named Dr. Stewart, had been arrested, no one knew why, so my father took Jeannie to Dr. Adler, his German friend, paying a fortune for a rickshaw to carry the dog. On the way, they passed corpses in the street. It was not an unusual sight. No one bothered to pick them up anymore. Chances were they would still be there the next morning and the night afterward.

  At the vet’s office, he had to wait two hours to be seen, and when he was shown in and carried Jeannie to the metal table, he saw that Dr. Adler had aged years in a period of six months. His reddish hair was mussed, his face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot.

  Dr. Adler shook my father’s hand, then motioned to Jeannie. “You want her put down?” he asked. His German accent, still so strong after years in Shanghai, startled my father.

  “No,” he said. “Something’s wrong with her back legs is all. Maybe a nerve, maybe a muscle. Can you give her something?”

  Dr. Adler placed a large freckled hand on Jeannie’s head and gently stroked her ears. “She’s a good dog, Joseph. A beautiful animal. You have to think about her.”

  My father tried to check the impatience in his voice. “Which is why I’ve brought her to you.”

  The vet sighed and rested his hand on Jeannie’s flank, and my father watched her labored breathing. “She should be put down. You don’t want her stolen. I’ll do it for you, but you shouldn’t wait.” He rubbed his eyes then, and he seemed exhausted. “Do you know how many dogs I’ve put down in these last months?” he asked. “Nearly a thousand, I think. Every day I watch dogs die. I can’t do it much longer. I have no . . .” He paused, searching for a word. “Geist,” he said finally, and he looked at my father. “You know it? Geist?” My father shook his head, and Dr. Adler closed his eyes for a moment, then said softly, “Ahh, spirit, that’s what it is. What I am lacking.”

  My father stared at Jeannie for a long moment. Her breathing was quick, too quick, he knew, and her brown eyes were dull. He knew she was in pain. As he watched, a shudder moved through her body, and he saw her wince.

  “If it is her back,” Dr. Adler said, “there isn’t much to do anyway.”

  My father stared at the dog for another long moment. Then he said, “All right.”

  Dr. Adler turned toward the counter and prepared the shot. He looked once again at my father, who nodded, then held Jeannie’s head in his hands as Dr. Adler gave her the injection. It was so simple as to be startling. “That’s a good dog,” my father said softly. He stroked the soft fur of her neck. “My good girl. Good dog, Jeannie, good dog.”

  Jeannie blinked at him, her eyes dark and knowing. Then she closed her eyes. Her paws and eyelids twitched, and her breathing quickened, then stopped.

  Dr. Adler was careful not to look at my father’s face. “She’s gone,” he said. “It’s a good decision, Joseph. You didn’t want to risk her, eh?”

  My father coughed, trying to clear his throat. He nodded and paid the vet, then he turned to leave, wanting only to be away from this office.

  “It’s a terrible place we’ve become here,” Dr. Adler said suddenly. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” my father said. “Exactly. We have become a terrible place.”

  That night he lay awake well into the night. His room still smelled of the dog, and he did not have the heart to air it out. Even without Jeannie near, her scent was comforting. He lay in bed wishing things were
other than they were, listening, wondering, worrying, trying to pinpoint just when he should have left. Six months before Pearl Harbor? A year? Two? He could find no good answer, and his thoughts kept straying to something he’d heard a few weeks earlier, a hard-to-believe story about two Americans who’d made it through the western part of the city and on to Free China, where they had eventually traveled all the way to the Siberian Railway, and then to Russia. What happened to them once they reached Russia was anyone’s guess. Very possibly it was worse than being in Shanghai, but the story had a strong appeal: maybe it was possible to get out. He was trying to work out how to go about it. The fifty dollars from my mother would be a start. For something had happened he’d never expected: the one thing he wanted was to leave the place he’d loved most.

  When he was awakened at five the next morning, he knew immediately what it was. The sounds the gendarmes made had grown familiar from my father’s constant imagining of them: the smooth swoosh of tires on wet pavement, the sudden dull silence of a car’s engine being cut, the sound of car doors being shut, the crunch of boots on gravel. And then the sharp knocking on his door and the carefully worded English: “You will come with us, please.”

  He did not argue or resist or try to flee. It was all as he had expected, almost. Only the hugeness of his fear and the bitterness of his regret surprised him.

  haiphong road

  NAME: Joseph Schoene

  By the request of Japanese Military Authorities you are to be interned from today in the barracks formerly occupied by the Second Battalion of the U.S. Marines Corps on Haiphong Road.

  You are to come at once with the Gendarmes who hand this to you. You are permitted to take along your bedding (blankets, night clothes), toilet articles and some foodstuffs.

  Protection of your life and properties and your family will be assured.

  November 4, 1942

  THE SHANGHAI JAPANESE GENDARMERIE

  The four gendarmes at my father’s door handed him a mimeographed sheet that told him what to do. He filled his grip with the clothes and old shoes he’d set aside for a morning like this, then stuffed blankets and whatever other necessities he could think of into a black canvas duffle bag. When he was ready, the gendarmes led him outside into the darkness, where he was ordered to join some twenty other men in the back of an old army truck.

  It was drizzling. The truck eased down the street, then headed west along Bubbling Well Road toward the Western District of the Settlement. It made several stops, including one at St. Luke’s Hospital, where the gendarmes strode inside and came out a few minutes later with a man who was clearly ill. He was ordered into the back of the truck.

  They crossed Soochow Creek and turned onto Haiphong Road and then into the yard of a sprawling old Chinese structure with a tiled roof and a redbrick exterior. Surrounding the place was a brick wall, ten feet high, two feet thick, topped with barbed wire. The truck parked in what my father guessed had been the Marines’ parade grounds. The men were herded into a long wooden shed, its tile floor covered with a thick layer of mud. The room was already crowded. Although it wasn’t yet eight in the morning, my father guessed there were a hundred men inside, sitting on their bags, leaning against the walls, their bodies slack, their faces tense. My father found a spot along the far wall, where he dropped his duffle bag on the floor and sat down on it, his back against a door that said vd clinic.

  For a while he looked around and tried to gauge the situation in terms of good and bad signs. Were so many men a good sign, or more reason for fear? What about the fact that the Japanese didn’t seem to have the place ready for them? But his arguments only went round and round, and he gave up and just waited for whatever was next.

  He spent most of that day waiting. More men were brought in throughout the morning and afternoon. No one was given food or drink. Finally, at dusk, a Japanese colonel stood on a table in the middle of the room and addressed the internees for the first time. Colonel Odera was a small man with a handlebar mustache who wore an immense greatcoat and sword. He was the descendant of Samurais, he said, and the grandson of a Japanese soldier who had fought the British in 1860. He then talked about the present war. It had been forced on Japan, he said, and now they, these enemy nationals, had been brought here for their own safety. They were under the jurisdiction of the Japanese Gendarmerie, and each of them was here because he had in some way been disrespectful of the Son of Heaven, Emperor Hirohito. If they obeyed the rules and looked after themselves, all would go well. If not, they would be brought up and tried on charges. If they attempted to escape, they would be severely punished.

  The colonel’s words were badly translated by his lieutenant, a man named Honda, who had a youngish face and a wary expression. When the colonel finished, Honda counted the men off into some thirty rooms. As my father followed others to his room, he became certain that the Japanese had made almost no preparations. Whatever had not been taken by the Marines had been looted since their departure. There was no furniture, no food. The place was filthy, but the men couldn’t even clean it; there were no cleaning supplies. Word of mouth was that the whole camp had been set up at the last minute, that the gendarmes had compiled the list of who they wanted only two nights before. It was said that Lieutenant Honda had until quite recently been just another civilian exporting cheap toys and pottery from Japan, and that the colonel had learned that he was to be in charge of the camp only the day before.

  An hour after they were given room assignments, a soldier handed out rice bowls and forks, and at eight o’clock that night, my father and the others stood in line for their first and only meal of the day, a cup of smoky tea and a small bowl of congealed stew that had been brought from Bakerite, a restaurant in town, and was carelessly ladled out from Maxwell House coffee tins. When the internees were called to the main hall one last time that night for roll call, they were told to sleep on the floor, despite the fact that it was wet from the rain.

  The next day the colonel appointed two men to be in charge, a Briton and an American, who would, to a large extent, take charge of his prisoners. The Briton, Hugh Kelley, had been chairman of the British Residents’ Association. He would be in charge of all British internees, which were the vast majority. The American, a tall, lanky man named John Barrows, had been head of the American Association in Shanghai. He would be responsible for everyone else. Kelley and Barrows in turn each chose an assistant. Kelley chose another Briton he knew, and Barrows chose my father. “I happen to know that you can get things done,” Barrows said, and my father winced at his reputation.

  The four of them settled into what was called the office, a largish room on the first floor of the main building, slightly better quarters than the rest of the camp, and they set about trying to organize the 343 men in the camp. My father found an old Royal typewriter in the office, and he began a record of the internment. Barrows instructed them to get a count of who was there by nationality and age, which my father carefully recorded:

  NOV. 6 MEN IN CAMP

  Britons 242

  Americans 63

  Dutch 23

  Greeks 14

  Norwegians 1

  TOTAL: 343

  YOUNGEST MAN: 20

  OLDEST MAN: 72

  AVERAGE AGE: 44.83

  It seemed that most of the men had been taken from their homes, but some had been picked up off the street, and a few had just been yanked out of hospital beds. They were told they were “prominent persons and dangerous criminals,” but no one was certain what that meant, or what they had in common. There were bankers, businessmen, journalists, carpenters, engineers, perhaps forty ex-police, and a few seamen. There were two bishops (one a Methodist and the other an Irish Anglican) and two doctors (an Englishman named Andrew White and an American named Robert Anderson). There were a few known collaborators, presumably there to spy. At roll call and meals and command performances for Colonel Odera, my father kept looking for the connection, staring at the men around him as though they were
a puzzle to be solved, asking himself the same question over and over again: What did we do?

  Barrows was a practical man, and he decided the first thing to do was to ask the colonel if he could telephone the American Association and arrange for food and supplies to be brought in for the camp until they were able to set up a kitchen. The colonel said yes, Barrows made the call, and the next day a lunch of sausage sandwiches was brought in. When the first delivery of supplies came two days later—a truckload of mattresses sent by the British Residents’ Association and on loan from the Shanghai Volunteer Corps—Barrows told Lieutenant Honda that it was both customary and necessary to give the driver a receipt for goods received. When Honda said that would be permitted, Barrows quietly wrote on the back of the receipt a list of what was needed next: blankets, pots and pans, toilet paper, soap. It was the first of many lists.

  Barrows and Kelley then set about organizing the camp. They instructed each room to elect a room captain, who would attend weekly captains’ meetings with Barrows and Kelley, then report back to the men, so that they would be able to communicate quickly and efficiently. My father knew an American who had been a bugler in the Marine band, and he was quickly drafted into signaling meals, wake-up, and lights out. Morning roll call was at seven, followed by breakfast, which, for the first few days, was dry bread with glycine powder and weak tea. Later it was rice or a porridge made from cracked wheat, which Barrows managed to get for the camp through the Red Cross. The porridge had a nutty flavor that somehow wasn’t bad day after day after day, and my father was glad to get it. Lunch was stew or rice, dinner more of the same, or sometimes fish or fried eel, though the fish was often inedible. The only meat was slaughterhouse scraps that had been frozen in cubes and sent to the camp. It soon became apparent that the quality of the meat had an inverse relationship to the amount of garlic used in its preparation: the worse the meat, the heavier the garlic. And there was always weak tea, sometimes steeped from nothing more than garden lettuce.