Lost in the Cold War is the memoir of CIA officer held in Manchuria for 23 years after being captured during the Korean War…
In 1952, John T. “Jack” Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard “Dick” Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were tortured, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war came and went, but Downey and Fecteau’s release hinged on the United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until Nixon’s visit to China did Sino-American relations thaw enough to secure Fecteau’s release in 1971 and Downey’s in 1973.
Lost in the Cold War is the never-before-told story of Downey’s decades as a prisoner of war and the efforts to bring him home. Downey’s lively and gripping memoir—written in secret late in life—interweaves horrors and deprivation with humor and the absurdities of captivity. He recounts his prison experiences: fearful interrogations, pantomime communications with his guards, a 3,000-page overstuffed confession designed to confuse his captors, and posing for “show” photographs for propaganda purposes. Through the eyes of his captors and during his tours around China, Downey watched the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the drastic transformations of the Mao era. In interspersed chapters, Thomas J. Christensen, an expert on Sino-American relations, explores the international politics of the Cold War and tells the story of how Downey and Fecteau’s families, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and successive presidential administrations worked to secure their release.
In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. Utilizing the vivid perspective of its commander Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou. Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His analysis constitutes a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprises in the coastal areas of south China.
Below the stamp for the Broadway Photo Studio, owned and operated by Wilhelm Feuerzeug, a Jewish refugee in Shanghai. The studio was on Broadway East (now Daming Road East). There is a whole and detailed biography of Feuerzeug here, though it seems to miss his Shanghai experience noting he left Trieste (as did the liners for Shanghai) and eventuially reached America. However, in the 1940s it seems he was operating the Broadway Photo Studio.
By the way, the Cafe Corso was also a 1940s establishment – oftren listed as being at 1098 Tungtaming, the post-1943 name for Broadway East.
The excellent Facebook group on Shanghai WW2 internees & Jewish refugees gets a mention in the Daily Express. And,if group patron Miriam Margolyes is determined to get a plaque, then I feel it likely it may happen. Not sure even China would say no to her!! Do join the group if interested…the Express article here online
Looking for a listen? All 4 episodes of Carry on Kidnapping, the true & bizarre tale of Muriel “Tinko” Pawley’s 1932 kidnapping in Manchuria by bandits, now on RTHK Hong Kong’s podcast site. Evelyn Waugh was gripped, hopefully you will be too –
Ultimately the Hong Kong democracy movement of 2019 was going to be fictionalised and Lawrence Osborne’s probably one of the best people to do it…On Java Road…
UK edition
US edition
After twenty indolent years as an ex-pat reporter in Hong Kong, Englishman Adrian Gyle has almost nothing to show for it. And now the streets are choked with students demanding democratic freedoms, and the old world begins to fall apart . . .
Watching from the skyrises overlooking the protests is Adrian’s old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of a wealthy Hong Kong family, who has begun a reckless affair with Rebecca, a leading pro-democracy protestor, full of idealism and reeking of tear gas. The couple are dancing over the abyss, and Adrian is drawn into their clandestine romance with a mixture of complicity and envy.
But when Rebecca disappears and Jimmy goes to ground, Adrian unearths the familiar old urge to investigate, and personal loyalties evaporate overnight. Now an unwelcome foreigner in a hostile land, Adrian must reckon with these vanishings as old Hong Kong quietly slips off the stage. Pursuing Rebecca’s ghost to Java Road where the city’s dead congregate, Adrian re-assembles her final hours – as he struggles to distinguish between delusion and reality.
One last Bloody Saturday related post for this year – US Marines guard the roof of their headquarters (though i think this may be the US Marines Club on Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing West Road). Things were very unclear initially after the Bloody Saturday bombings in the Shanghai International Settlement on August 14 1937 regarding a potential Japanese invasion of the concessions…
On August 14 1937 – the dasy that became infamous in Shanghai history as “Bloody Saturday” – the authorities in the Shanghai foreign concessions issued a joint proclamation regarding air raid precautions. Of course the Japanese had been shelling Hongkou, Baoshan and Zhabei for days but, as the notice says, bombs were not expected on the settlements. That proved to be disastorously incorrect after the accidental bombing of both the International Settlement and the French Concession later that day…
