Editorial June 20, 1988 Issue

Lost ... or found?

William E. Moody

Steven Spielberg's recent movie Empire of the Sun opens with a series of vivid scenes of Shanghai in 1941. It is only a matter of days before the city will fall to the Japanese war machine, and the picture we're shown is one of stark contrasts.

We see the city's small community of European investors, businessmen, and their families attempting as best they can to carry on with life in its usual manner. Yet any distinctions of class or privilege are soon all but destroyed. When the Japanese actually invade Shanghai, both the native Chinese population and the Europeans are caught up together in the awful flood of panic as everyone tries to flee ahead of the advancing tanks and troops. Families are separated in the sea of people; children are lost.

The movie then weaves an extraordinary story of one of these lost children, an eleven-year-old boy from a wealthy British family, who eventually becomes a prisoner of war. The child spends his next three years in a prison camp until the conflict is finally ended.

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