Prisoner of the Japs

Words at war, presenting when do you as prisoner of the Japs? What is Hong Kong anyway? Hong Kong? Why, it's a tiny island off the coast of China. Oh, Chinese? Well, no, it's a British colony.

It's one of the most powerful outposts of the Empire. Sorry to interrupt. Perhaps you have not heard of Japan's greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. Oh, we don't need to worry about that. Hong Kong's an impenetrable fortress.

It has been for a hundred years. But peace is 1941. Hong Kong airport has been destroyed. All planes, smashed. All naval installations are under artillery bombardment. Japan is at war with Hong Kong. Words at war.

Tonight the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council on Books in War Time brings you another in its series of radio adaptations of important books of this war. Each week selected episodes are dramatized from some of the most stirring of our war-inspired literature.

Tonight we hear the story of an American newspaper woman who happened to be in Hong Kong on the day the Japanese attacked. The book is Prisoner of the Japs. The author is Gwen Du. Monday, December 8, 1941, was to have been my last day in Hong Kong.

I'd planned to take a plane that evening from the airport to Japanese smashed. I didn't want to leave Hong Kong. Something was going to happen there, and that's why I'd come in the first place, as correspondent for the Detroit News and Newsweek magazine.

But that Monday I was going to leave. No one left. Only those who died. The defenders of Hong Kong were pushed steadily back. The city was squeezed like a nut in the jaws of a nutcracker until the shell of it and the meterboard were mashed.