Topic：The Literature of World War II

This year witnesses the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. The eight-year war between the Chinese and Japanese eventually ended on 15th August 1945 when the surrender of the Japanese army was announced. Nevertheless, dismal scenes featuring bereaved souls and devastation could be found everywhere then. We have to read literature about war not as revenge for national enmity and family feuds but to warn people from all walks of life that hatred will only result in more misery and misfortune. 

The history of the Sino-Japanese War that we have previously read is mostly about the confrontation between the Chinese and Japanese. However, in fact, there were assorted people on the Chinese battlefield. The books introduced in the special topic of this issue depict an American missionary in Nanjing, a British family in the Shanghai International Settlement, a British consul, and a refugee in Macao as well as a Eurasian family in Hong Kong during the War.

Regardless of ethnicity and nationality, we all hope for world peace. 

The Japanese invasion of China is a scar on Chinese history; in particular, after the fall of Nanjing in 1937, the Japanese army wantonly raped, pillaged and murdered in the city. The beginning of Nanjing Requiem portrays a pathetic scene of demolished buildings and corpses. Ginling College, founded by the Christian Church, U.S.A. in Nanjing avoided the harm of the Japanese army: it was located in a safe zone provided by a foreign country’s consulate, whose teachers were all foreigners. 

However, Minnie Vautrin, the acting president of Ginling College, was too sympathetic to Chinese victims to remain indifferent. She transformed the school into a temporary refugee camp to shelter over 10,000 weak individuals. At times, when Japanese military forces harassed the facility with various excuses, she had to resist them herself. On top of this, she had to negotiate countermeasures with other foreigners, like German businessman John Rabe, who rescued many Chinese people. 

Chinese-American author Ha Jin is proficient in writing stories of Chinese people in English, and has been awarded numerous international literary awards. He wrote the novel Nanjing Requiem based on primary historical texts and biographies. This Chinese writer immigrated to the United States following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He recorded the brutality of the Japanese army in the book without embroidering upon it with ethnic sentiment, while reconsidering how the struggle between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Communist Party of China aggravated the Chinese nationals’ turmoil. 

//In Macao, John Reeves saved many refugees of various nationalities from Hong Kong during World War II.(Provided by Hong Kong University Press)

In 1941, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese. As Macao, a Portuguese colony, was neutral in the war, the British flag was still able to be raised in the British Consulate in Macao, although no other British flags could be found for thousands of kilometres. In addition, the British Consulate in Macao was close to the Japanese Consulate thus the media described it as ‘The Lone Flag’ – also the title of the memoir of John Reeves, the British Consul in Macao at that time. 

Not only was the Consulate isolated but John Reeves himself was deprived of his family: his wife arrived in Hong Kong but could not return to Macao after the fall of the city. She had to seek asylum in St. Stephen’s College in Hong Kong with other refugees. Despite this, Reeves provided shelter, food and medical support to refugees from Hong Kong in Macao amid the Japanese blockade and high commodity prices. 

In spite of its bewildering chronological order and lack of refined narrative, the memoir clearly records the life of Macao people during the Japanese invasion of China and the woes of refugees in Macao. A number of media reports about Macao accommodating refugees were compiled at the end of the book. When Reeves was sent to Rome after the war he wrote the memoir, the publishing of which was, however, forbidden by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office until last year. 

//Of Japan’s several invasions of China, the Nanjing Massacre is remembered as the most terrible atrocity.(Provided by Huanyi Brothers International Limited)

When We Were Orphans is a detective story set against the background of the Japanese invasion of China. A British private investigator had resided in the Shanghai International Settlement when small – it was in an age when foreign professionals assembled in Shanghai. However, one year his parents vanished and his uncle sends him back to Britain. After growing up, he decides to search for his parents in Shanghai, but it was the time that the Japanese army had marched into China. His childhood friend has become a member of the Japanese military force. He eventually discovers that the disappearance of his parents was related to the fight for interests in opium between the warlords and foreign forces. 

Detective stories usually focus on a suspense plot but author Kazuo Ishiguro is more specialised in character delineation, including the solid friendship between the protagonist and his Japanese acquaintance and the mother’s selfless protection of her child, – even the unfathomable love between he protagonist and his lover is touching. Macao also assumes a role in the book: the female protagonist initially invites the male protagonist to elope from Shanghai to Macao, but it turns out that she can only go by herself in the end, although the lovers miss each other dearly. 

The description of corpses lying on the battlefields as in Nanjing Requiem cannot be found in When We Were Orphans. Please do not suspect that Ishiguro would whitewash the Japanese army: the Shanghai International Settlement survived to Japanese invasion in the war. Ishiguro does not carry any national burden as he moved to the U.K. with his parents when he was five. Ishiguro’s works have won a number of awards; When We Were Orphans was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a prominent British literary award. 

// Not only Chinese and Japanese but also expatriates living in China like John Rabe were affected by the Japanese invasion of China. (Provided by Huanyi Brothers International Limited)

// Family members attend the wedding ceremony of Victoria Ho Tung (Robert Ho Tung’s eldest daughter) and Lo Man Kam, however Ho’s family was incomplete due to the Japanese invasion of China. (Provided by Joint Publishing (Hong Kong))

Strictly speaking, this book is not about WWII but the history of Sir Robert Ho Tung’s family, one of the four most prominent families in Hong Kong. Their experience was particularly bitter during the war: a member had his leg shattered by a bomb, while another was imprisoned; Jean Gittens entered Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese invasion of China and translated for an underground organisation of the British army, while Eva Ho Tung joined the Red Cross to rescue and support the injured on the frontline. 

As the Macanese have far-reaching influence throughout Macao’s history, the Ho Tung family, who are Eurasians, were prestigious in Hong Kong; their impact even extended to Macao: gaming tycoon Stanley Ho is a member of the Ho Tung family, while Lady Ho Tung operated a school in Macao. During the fall of Hong Kong, Robert Ho Tung spent his vacations in Macao after his 80th birthday banquet, hence escaping the catastrophe. Reading the history of the Ho Tung family is equivalent to examining the development milestones of Hong Kong and Macao. 

The Ho Tung Family is a family of generations of scholars. Their family members wrote memoirs in their later years. Victor Zheng and Wong Siu-Lun have studied Hong Kong family-owned businesses over the years; they read many memoirs by family members, original documents and archives to recount the story of the female members of the Ho Tung family for three generations. What is most impressive in the book is the fall of Hong Kong for three years and eight months: wars result in countries ruined and families destroyed; do not let hatred pass down to the next generation.

Even today there are still many doubts about whether Macau remained neutral during the Second World War  particularly during the Sino-Japanese War. This way of saying fuelled high-flown theories of justification, such as the one that assigns a decisive role to Brazil, which allegedly threatened Japan with the expulsion of all Japanese citizens living in Brazilian territory. Nothing short of a strange idea, since most of the citizens from the Empire of the Rising Sun living in the former Portuguese colony already had the Brazilian nationality, and were completely integrated. Another theory points to the possibility that there may have been a secret agreement between Portugal and Japan ensuring that the neutral status of Portugal in the war achieved by Salazar was maintained. That is quite possible, but nothing is known about it. In order to destroy this analysis, historians claim that if such an agreement had been signed, the Japanese would not have invaded Timor. This argument, however, lacks intelligence or basic information, since it is known that Japan only invaded Timor after this territory was taken over by a combined force of three hundred and fifty Dutch and Australian troops. From that moment on, Portuguese sovereignty was lost in the territory, at least symbolically, which gave the Japanese leeway to invade. Of course, the Dutch and Australian authorities declared that the invasion was a precautionary measure to protect both Dutch Timor and the North of Australia, but by also occupying Portuguese Timor, they paved the way for the invasion of the entire island of Timor by Japan.

There is however a very relevant fact which demonstrates the friendly nature of Luso-Japanese relations, which was the establishment of a Japanese consulate in the territory of Macao. This fact seems to confirm the intention of the Japanese not to occupy Macao, which eventually did come to pass. Nevertheless, things got dark, as the Japanese consul in Macao, Yasumitsu Fukui, was soon murdered, surely at the behest of Chinese nationalists. Japan, however, demanded only that the Portuguese authorities issue an apology, which accomplished all but nothing.

As one can imagine, this theme could well be expanded on if not for the size constraints of this text. I would nonetheless like to point out the major consequences of this whole phenomenon which famously inflamed the world, in particular, the entire Southeast Asian region. The first major and perhaps most important and lasting consequence was the population explosion in Macao, where a population of about 100,000 souls grew into approximately 500,000 in an extremely short period of time. This phenomenon went hand-in-hand with the inflow of Chinese refugees mainly from Hong Kong and Guangzhou, which had been invaded and occupied by the Japanese army, but as the Japanese had invaded virtually the entire eastern coast of China from Guangzhou to Tianjin, through Shanghai, citizens from all of these places flowed en masse to Macao, together with Portuguese citizens who had long been undertaking commercial activities in these regions.

The population growth in Macao led to a severe shortage of food which gave rise to a dramatic subsistence crisis. The Macao Government, represented by a Macanese named Pedro José Lobo, nationalized all food products available in local private shops and warehouses. However, that was not enough to solve the problem, and the truth is that a large-scale famine did befall the city. For this reason, the population of Macao declined further due to a reverse flow of Chinese citizens, who returned to their villages after the war. Nevertheless, the population never again receded to the old numbers.

Within the Chinese community and in the government circles of the People's Republic of China, the thesis about the secret pact between the Japanese and the Portuguese gained credibility, so much so that after the war, as early as 1946, governor Gabriel Mauricio Teixeira was discharged, as he was considered largely responsible for this agreement. However, the truth is that it was this putative agreement that kept Macau safe from the bloody conflict that devastated the region.

// In the film John Rabe, fugitives from different countries in the safety zone in Nanjing helped each other, reflecting the noble side of humanity during the atrocities of war.(Provided by Huanyi Brothers International Limited)