Free Miracles of Life by J. G. Ballard Page A

opposite of a misfit, and adapted toowell to the camp. One of my chess partners, a likeable architectnamed Cummings with a haemophiliac son whobecame a huge success in Hong Kong after the war, onceremarked: ‘Jamie, you’ll miss Lunghua when you leave…’
    Until I arrived in England I had been lucky to have a happychildhood, and any shocks that shaped my character camenot from my family but from the outside world – the suddenscene-shifting I witnessed in 1937 and 1941. If anything, theyears in Lunghua offered the first stability I had known sinceI had been a small child, a stability that the adult interneesaround me had done little or nothing to create. I felt fairlysceptical about the adult world and the notions of goodsense and decisive thought promoted by my parents andteachers. War, I knew, was an irrational business, and thesensible predictions of architects, doctors and managingdirectors had a marked tendency to be wrong.
    I have given a general picture of Lunghua Camp in my novel Empire of the Sun , which is partly autobiographicaland partly fictional, though many incidents are described asthey occurred. At the same time, I accept that the novel isbased on the memories of a teenage boy, who respondedmore warmly to the good cheer of the American sailors thanto the rather torpid Brits, many of whom had held modestjobs in Shanghai and probably regretted ever leavingEngland.
    In my novel the most important break with real events isthe absence from Lunghua of my parents. I thought hardabout this, but I felt that it was closer to the psychologicaland emotional truth of events to make ‘Jim’ effectively a warorphan. There is no doubt that a gradual estrangement frommy parents, which lasted to the end of their lives, began inLunghua Camp. There was never any friction or antagonism,and they did their best to look after me and my sister.Despite the food shortages in the last year, the bitterly coldwinters (we lived in unheated concrete buildlings) and theuncertainties of the future, I was happier in the camp than Iwas until my marriage and children.
    At the same time I felt slightly apart from my parents bythe time the war ended. One reason for our estrangementwas that their parenting became passive rather than active –they had none of the usual levers to pull, no presents ortreats, no say in what we ate, no power over how we lived orability to shape events. Like all the adults, they were nervousof the highly unpredictable Japanese and Korean guards, they were often unwell, and always short of food andclothing. At one point, when my shoes had fallen to tatters,my father gave me a pair of heavy leather golfing shoes withmetal studs, but the sound of me stamping down the stonecorridors in G Block brought the internees swiftly toattention outside their doors, assuming that the Japanesehad called a sudden inspection. I would find myself desperatelytrying to get to the Ballard room before anyonenoticed who was actually inspecting them. Needless to say, Isoon had to return the shoes to my father, and G Block wasable to relax.
    Thoughts of food filled every hour, as they did for theother teenage boys in Lunghua. I don’t remember myparents ever giving me their own food, and I’m sure that noother parents shared their rations with their children. Allmothers, in prison camps or famine regions, know that theirown health is vital to the survival of their children. A childwho has lost its parent is in desperate danger, and the parentsin Lunghua must have realised that they needed all thestrength they had for the uncertain years ahead. But Iscavenged what I could, stealing tomatoes and cucumbersfrom any unwatched vegetable plot. The camp was, in effect,a huge slum, and in any slum it is the teenage boys who runwild. I have never looked down on the helpless parents insink housing estates unable to control their children. Iremember my own parents in the camp, unable to warn,chide, praise or promise.
    All the same I regret the