Internees Revolt Against Empire Of Sun

"The result of my letter prevented JGB from receiving the Booker Prize of the Year"

In my research on Lunghua Camp, where JG Ballard, his family and 2,000 other internees spent the war eight miles from Shanghai, I came across this excellent drawing by the then 18-year-old internee Irene Duguid. I wrote her to ask permission to post the map on my site, but she didn't quite grasp the concept of a web page, and she assumed I wanted to put it in a book about the camp or JGB.

Her reply was fascinating: not only are internees like Irene still fighting mad over the Lunghua camp as portrayed in the fictional/autobiographical novel Empire of The Sun, but Irene feels her work against the novel -- a letter campaign in The Times -- was responsible for JGB being denied the Booker Prize for Literature in 1984. Heavy stuff.

This was all revealed in her recent letter:

29th April 2007

Dear Rick

JGB Empire of The Sun - Lunghua Camp

I am sorry to have taken so long in answering your letter, but I had just moved house after the death of my husband and mail does take a good deal longer to reach me at my new address.

I don't know whether you recall or ever read of the uproar that Ballard caused when he presented his book "Empire of the Sun" for the Booker Prize. "The Times" wrote a long two page article on Ballard's description of how the internees behaved in camp which was outrageously inaccurate. The internees were depicted as useless, depraved and incompetent in running the camp. Lunghua Camp was one of the most efficient, hygienic and best run of all the camps even though it was the largest, 1500 internees. It was extremely well organized by a number of elected committee members who very efficiently and - most important - fairly organized the billets, distribution of food, schooling, games and entertaining.

I was so incensed by the denigration of our camp by JCB that I wrote to The Times -- I enclose a copy of my letter. This set off another furore and the Imperial War Museum's archivist contacted me as he said they had no information on the running of any of the China internment camps and would like to have my writings and paintings of Lunghua for their archives which I gave to them.

My letter to The Times was amazing. Ex internees from Lunghua wrote to The Times and of course to me thanking me for putting the information straight on the running of the camp.

The result of my letter prevented JGB from receiving the Booker Prize of the Year. If he had not used the name of the camp or the name of one of our Doctors in the camp and just let it be all fictional (which is what the book is) no one would have bothered, but to denigrate the internees was quite unacceptable. So I must tell you that I do not want you to use my painting in your book.

Jimmy Ballard was a young boy in Lunghua camp and his best friend Bill Weight was the brother of my friend Jean so I saw quite a lot of him. He must have been about 12 years old at the end of the war and I was 18. He lived in G Block with his parents and sister. He did seem to live in a dream world making up tales about talking to the Jap pilots of the planes in the nearby aerodrome which was impossible. He is now a good writer and has the imagination for it, but the truth about war time experiences is absolutely essential when people were living in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions and suffering from lack of news and contact with their relations fighting in Europe and the Far East for our freedom.

Yours sincerely

Irene (Duguid) Kilpatrick

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"The result of my letter prevented JGB from receiving the Booker Prize of the Year" In my research on Lunghua Camp, where JG Ballard, his family and 2,000 other internees spent the war eight miles from Shanghai, I came across this excellent drawing by the then 18-year-old internee Irene Duguid. I wrote her to ask permission to post the map on my site, but she didn't quite grasp the concept of a web page, and she assumed I wanted to put it in a book about the camp or JGB. Her reply was fascinating: not only are internees like Irene still fighting mad over the Lunghua camp as portrayed in the fictional/autobiographical novel Empire of The Sun, but Irene feels her work against the novel -- a letter campaign in The Times -- was responsible for JGB being denied the Booker Prize for Literature in 1984. Heavy stuff. This was all revealed in her recent letter: 29th April 2007 Dear Rick JGB Empire of The Sun - Lunghua Camp I am sorry to have taken so long in answering your letter, but I had just moved house after the death of my husband and mail does take a good deal longer to reach me at my new address. I don't know whether you recall or ever read of the uproar that Ballard caused when he presented his book "Empire of the Sun" for the Booker Prize. "The Times" wrote a long two page article on Ballard's description of how the internees behaved in camp which was outrageously inaccurate. The internees were depicted as useless, depraved and incompetent in running the camp. Lunghua Camp was one of the most efficient, hygienic and best run of all the camps even though it was the largest, 1500 internees. It was extremely well organized by a number of elected committee members who very efficiently and - most important - fairly organized the billets, distribution of food, schooling, games and entertaining. I was so incensed by the denigration of our camp by JCB that I wrote to The Times -- I enclose a copy of my letter. This set off another furore and the Imperial War Museum's archivist contacted me as he said they had no information on the running of any of the China internment camps and would like to have my writings and paintings of Lunghua for their archives which I gave to them. My letter to The Times was amazing. Ex internees from Lunghua wrote to The Times and of course to me thanking me for putting the information straight on the running of the camp. The result of my letter prevented JGB from receiving the Booker Prize of the Year. If he had not used the name of the camp or the name of one of our Doctors in the camp and just let it be all fictional (which is what the book is) no one would have bothered, but to denigrate the internees was quite unacceptable. So I must tell you that I do not want you to use my painting in your book. Jimmy Ballard was a young boy in Lunghua camp and his best friend Bill Weight was the brother of my friend Jean so I saw quite a lot of him. He must have been about 12 years old at the end of the war and I was 18. He lived in G Block with his parents and sister. He did seem to live in a dream world making up tales about talking to the Jap pilots of the planes in the nearby aerodrome which was impossible. He is now a good writer and has the imagination for it, but the truth about war time experiences is absolutely essential when people were living in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions and suffering from lack of news and contact with their relations fighting in Europe and the Far East for our freedom. Yours sincerely Irene (Duguid) Kilpatrick		Her letter to The Times: The Times, Saturday, September 1, 1984 Lunghua Camp From Mrs Irene Duguid Kilpatrick Sir, J. G. Ballard's Empire Of The Sun as fiction is interesting reading, (extracts, August 27, 28, 29) but, as he has used the name of the camp he was interned in, I feel, as an ex-internee of Lunghua Camp, that in that instance the facts should have been fairly portrayed. Lunghua Civil Assembly Centre, seven miles outside Shanghai, was opened in March, 1943, and started with about 2,000 internees, British, American, a handful of Dutch and Belgian families. The Americans were evacuated six months later on September 20 to Lourenco Marques, except for the two Jesuit priests, who nobly declined to abandon the boys they were caring for -- 30 or so American seamen joined the camp later. The Japanese just provided food, water and guards; the only contact was between their commandant and our camp representative and organizing commitee set up to run the camp. It was very well run -- like a small town, with a school, hospital, churches, clubs for entertainment, study, sport and games and we turned the rough ground into productive and beautiful gardens. The Protestant clergy were in charge of drains, the Jesuits taught and organized games for the young and the Belgian Consul was a splendid cobbler. The majority worked hard with little food, doing menial and dirty jobs through the boiling hot summers and bitter cold wet winters -- there were grumblers, but the British always grumble; it is their safety valve and keeps people calm. Right up to the day we walked free standards of cleanliness and fair rationing of food were upheld, despite hardships imposed after a number of successful escapes. The atom bomb that fell on Hiroshima wiped out the family of the Japanese commandant -- we really pitied him. I wonder how many Japs ever pitied us under their thrall in South-east Asia? Yours faithfully, I. D. KILPATRICK, The Meadows, Surrey August 29 David Pringle's Reaction: I never saw her original letter to The Times on 1st September 1984, but it pretty much resembles the later letters by other old Lunghua hands in The Observer and The Listener. So it was Mrs Kilpatrick who got the ball rolling: "My letter to The Times was amazing. Ex internees from Lunghua wrote to The Times and of course to me thanking me for putting the information straight on the running of the camp. The result of my letter prevented JGB from receiving the Booker Prize of the Year..." That last seems a bit of an outrageous claim, but there may be a grain of truth in it. The chairman of the Booker judges that year, Professor Richard Cobb, was a rather conservative historian -- not a literary man -- and it's just possible that he and some of the other judges were swayed by letters they had read in the press (the Booker Prize wasn't announced until mid-October 1984, so there had been a month-and-a-half of this stuff in the papers by the time the winner was chosen). For a large PDF file of the map, click here.