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"This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jean Sharman, Scotland CSV on behalf of Moira Barbour (nee Chisholm)and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

Moira says:-
I am now 72 years of age. I was brought up in the Far East in Shanghai. My father was a prison officer. I was 1943 when I was 9 years old when we were rounded up and put into a camp along with all the British and Dutch. The Japanese came and collected us in trucks and took us to a football pitch to sort everyone out in alphabetical order. The camp we were first taken to was in an old school. There were about 1500 people there. We got a family room for my Mum and Dad and sister, who was four at the time.

There was a lack of food and every morning and every night we were counted. Adults were beaten up all the time and we got quite blaze about seeing this and it ceased to mean anything. But at least we had toilets and showers at this camp.

In February or March 1945 we were moved to the Yu Yuen Road Camp outside Shanghai. There were no toilets and trenches were dug in the ground. We were fed on rice and cracked wheat. One time we got pork and I remember being very ill.

The sort of people who were in the camps with us were Policemen, prison officers, doctors, dentists, anyone who was working in the Far East at that time. My father showed he was a good leader and was given the position by other internees as a leader and had to make decisions about food distribution and other things.

We were supposed to get Red Cross parcels once a month but we only got three in the whole time we were in the camp. It was discovered after the war that the Japanese had put the Red Cross parcels in warehouses and they were full of condensed milk and chocolate and spreading cheese. They didn’t even open them for themselves.

There was no schooling organised at first but later we had lessons in the morning and the afternoon. The teaching was all oral as there were no books and we had to just remember things. I think this is why I have such a good memory now. When I got back to UK after the war I was able to step into a classroom with people my own age and was just as far on as everybody else. it was hard in the camps but you survived as long as you kept healthy.

As children we used to go to the fence to talk to the Chinese and it was them who told us we were free. Then the Americans came and brought us food and I got very sick from eating chocolate. I was also ill after the war with the rich food and I used to break out in boils regularly. The Americans looked after us and we stayed in the camp from August to November when we got on to a New Zealand boat ‘The Arana’ which took us back to the UK. We sailed to Southampton and then got a train to the North East of Scotland.

When we were in the camp my father got friendly with an Austrian Jew and learned German. After the war he got a job on the staff of Spandau Prison, Berlin. When he got there he got to know Rudolph Hess who was a prisoner. My father died in Berlin and my mother is still alive today.

In 1994 I made a trip back to the Yu Yuen Road Camp and was very traumatised at the experience.

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