Empire of the Sun

Jim and his parents are driven by their chauffeur Yang to the Christmas fancy dress party in Hungjao, a rural area five miles west of Shanghai. At the bottom of their drive, on Amherst Avenue, they accidentally run over the foot of a homeless beggar who has been living there for the past two months. However, it is not clear whether he is still alive. They then arrive at the checkpoint marking the end of the International Zone. It is manned by wary Japanese soldiers, who inspect the car before letting them through. Arriving at the party, hosted by a Dr Lockwood, they see Chinese acrobats and conjurers who pretend to turn themselves into birds.

Jim wanders off from the party into the outlying fields. Walking past the bones of dead Chinese civilians, he heads toward the disused Hungjao Aerodrome. Once there, he finds the wreckage of a Japanese fighter plane and sits in the cockpit, pretending to work the controls, and throws his model glider into the air. Later, searching for his glider, he comes across some Japanese soldiers beside a concrete blockhouse, who spot Jim. Jim’s father, who was looking for him, then comes from the opposite direction calling to Jim. In a highly tense moment, Jim’s father extricates Jim from the situation without provoking the soldiers. After this, they leave the party early, and Jim’s mother reveals that they will be leaving their house on Amherst Avenue for several days to stay in a hotel.

From the hotel beside the Whangpoo river the next morning, Jim watches a group of Japanese marines seize an American ship, the USS Wake. He then sees a Japanese gunboat open fire on a British ship in the river, the HMS Petrel. The force of a Japanese shell hitting the Petrel causes the glass in Jim’s hotel to shatter, and a sliver of glass hits Jim on the nose. With the help of gunfire from a Japanese cruiser, the Idzumo, the Petrel is sunk. Jim and his parents try to escape from the hotel. Jim’s father then goes into the river to help the British seamen fleeing from the Petrel. Meanwhile, Jim gets separated from his mother in the chaos. Finally, Jim’s father returns to Jim and sits beside him, though they are surrounded by Japanese soldiers.

Jim wakes up the next day in a children’s hospital ward in the French Concession area of Shanghai. He is there for three days and explains how, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese succeeded in seizing the International Settlement. Jim gets out of bed and looks for his father who, he is told by a nun, is in a nearby ward with other wounded British civilians. However, Jim is unable to find his father, and he is later released from the hospital and told to return home.

Jim walks along the Avenue Haig in the French Concession and sees a crowd watching a public beheading. As Jim says, the Chinese “liked to be cruel […] to remind themselves of the vanity of thinking that the world was anything else” (42). Jim is then confronted by a youth with a knife who tries to steal his watch. Jim escapes the youth and the French Concession, returning to his home on Amherst Avenue. Unfortunately, he finds that his home is deserted and has a Japanese scroll pinned to the door. He then hears a vehicle approaching and escapes into his garden, before climbing through the garbage chute to get into the kitchen of his house. He finds his mother’s room, abandoned, and falls asleep by the foot of her bed.

Jim waits for three days for his parents to return, surviving off tinned fruit and pressed meat from the pantry. He cycles around the rooms in his house and reflects that “the war had brought him at least one small bonus” (51). On the fourth day, he decides that his parents will not be returning home and cycles to a nearby friend’s house. However, his friends and their family are not there either, and he is slapped hard by one of the Chinese servants as he tries to get in the house. Jim then goes to visit another friend’s house, this one in the French Concession. Again, however, he finds it abandoned. Jim decides to give himself up to the Japanese.

As Jim says, like all his friends, “he had always despised anyone who surrendered” (59). Yet he finds it surprisingly hard to encounter any Japanese soldiers who can safely accept his surrender. Instead, Jim spends his time living in the abandoned houses of European nationals interned by the Japanese, moving from one to another. He does so while repairing his bike which was damaged by a Japanese soldier. Growing increasingly hungry, Jim breaks into the house of a Belgian dentist and finds a can of condensed milk which he devours.

One afternoon, Jim scales the walls of the American Country Club. There, he sees a group of Japanese soldiers cooking food beside an empty swimming pool. One of them takes pity on Jim and offers him some rice to eat. For the next week, Jim follows the soldiers, running errands and chopping wood for them in exchange for food. However, one morning a new patrol appears in the place of the previous one, and its leader strikes Jim.

Looking out onto the river, Jim sees a half sunken freighter and resolves to get to the ship. He uses a piece of broken wood to paddle toward the freighter. Once on it, he is spotted by an American sailor on the nearby shipyard. The sailor rows toward him in a dinghy and takes Jim back to a hidden cabin where he is staying in the shipyard.