Families interned in WW2 China

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite facing malnutrition, starvation and disease, Christopher John Huckstep's father set up a school in the Japanese internment camp where his family was sent in 1943. Herbert Huckstep ensured the 350 children of Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre were taught a wide range of subjects using brown paper bags to write on. The school was called Lunghwa Academy and it had its own badge, motto and certificates. A syllabus was followed, exams were taken and there were even evening classes for adults. The Japanese set up more than 20 internment camps in China and Hong Kong holding an estimated 14,000 people, but it is not believed that such a sophisticated schooling system was established elsewhere. In spite of the many hardships, educational standards were kept so high that qualifications taken in the camp were later recognised by the Cambridge exam board when the exam scripts were taken to England after the war. Christopher John Huckstep shares his memories with Josephine McDermott. (Photo: Christopher John Huckstep and other children at Lunghwa Civilian Assembly Centre, Shanghai, in 1945. Credit: Oscar Seepol. Image courtesy of Susannah Stapleton and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Namu Lancer Combo and I'm excited to tell you that my award-winning
0:05.3	podcast Dear Daughter returns on the 27th February for a brand new season. Dear
0:11.2	Daughter is a podcast from the BBC World Service full of personal insight and
0:15.8	thought for letters of advice. It's a handbook to life for daughters everywhere.
0:20.7	So if you haven't already, catch up with the first season now while you're
0:25.7	waiting for season two. Search for Dear Daughter, wherever you get your BBC podcast.
0:36.8	Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service. With
0:42.6	me, Josephine McDermott. Today I'm taking you back to the Chinese city of Shanghai
0:48.2	during World War II. I've been talking to a former foreign resident, 93-year-old
0:54.2	Christopher John Huckstep, known as John, who was a child living under Japanese
0:59.2	occupation. These were the Easter holiday activities at the school initially. It was Senior Girls
1:07.8	Netball followed by Senior Boys Football followed by Junior Boys Football and then Junior Girls
1:16.1	and Junior Boys tennis. Yes, I think we are in George's school. Remember that list. We're
1:23.7	going to come back to that later. This is a story about a school like no other. In the 1930s,
1:32.7	thousands of European civilians were living in the glamorous city of Shanghai. Only part
1:38.2	of the port city was governed by China. Another section was controlled by the French and
1:43.6	the international settlement was run by the British and Americans. After serving in the
1:48.9	First World War, John's father Herbert Huckstep moved to Shanghai in the 1920s to take up
1:55.0	a teaching position. There he met John's mother Agnes. They were both teachers and my father
2:01.6	ended up as superintendents of education in the Shanghai Municipal Council, which is responsible
2:08.3	for education in the whole of international settlement in Shanghai. In 1937, Imperial
2:15.8	Japan allied with Nazi Germany invaded Shanghai. For several years, the settlement carried
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