Interview With
Irene Duguid Kilpatrick



Oxted, Surrey, July 17, 2008

By David Pringle and Rick McGrath


It was a cloudy Friday afternoon when Dave Pringle and I drove from Weybridge to Oxted to meet with Lunghua CAC internee Irene Duguid Kilpatrick. Irene, famous for her letter campaign against Empire Of The Sun -- she objected to JGB's use of real names for fictional characters -- warmly greeted David and me and talked for over an hour in a rambling conversation about her Lunghua memories and the young Jimmy Ballard, who was best friends with the younger brother of her best friend.

Irene reconfirmed what she had told me in a letter -- that young Jimmy was always telling outrageous stories -- as well as how the internees spent their time at Lunghua, what Shanghai was like before and after the war, and how they all sailed home via the Suez Canal.

I've roughly boiled it all down to 50 minutes or so. Hopfully one day I'll also get it transcribed.






Irene Duguid Kilpatrick, July 17, 2008



These are the armbands (this one is "B" for British) foreign nationals were required to wear after the Japanese took over Shanghai's International Settlement in 1941.



Irene's Japanese "passport"



Irene and David hold up a map of the camp Irene drew when she returned to the U.K.



Larger version of the map. Click on it to se it even bigger.