It is 1941, the year of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
Empire of the Sun takes you to the pre and post World War II and the repercussions of the detonation of the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the eyes of a very young British boy trapped in a war where there are no winners.
Young Jim is the British boy in Shanghai who has it all; a good education, clothes and his passion for airplanes. His placid world comes apart when World War II reaches his doorstep and he is separated from his father in St. Marie’s Hospital in the French Concession. He is discharged from the hospital and he finds himself walking the streets of Shanghai alone in a world turned upside down.
On returning to his home on Amherst Avenue, he finds it all changed. The lawn is uncut, the power is cut off and the swimming pool is drained. His scavenging escapades lead him straight into a curious friendship with an American air steward called Basie.
Together they are caught by the Japanese and Jim is sent off to a detention center where he is soon reunited with Basie. They are soon transferred to the Lunghua prison camp where Jim believed his parents were kept. Their absence in the prison camp, does not deter Jim from being a survivor and he soon ingratiates himself with the camp commanders and cooks; anyone who is imperative to his survival.
Jim is the boy who makes the war a part of his daily life. He relishes the sight of the fighter jets flying over the camp. He takes pleasure in sorting out the Nakajimas from the Mustangs that take off and fly over the Hungjao airfield next to the prison camp. The sight of a dead and decaying pilot does nothing to deter his childhood ambition of becoming a pilot.
His sole aim is to find his parents whom he believes are in the Soochow prison camp and when the war is over, he assumes that they will resume life in their mansion on Amherst avenue like before.
Four years pass and he is still in the Lunghua prison camp, fighting for his life with the people he chose to attach himself to for survival. He occupies his days in the camp running odd errands for everyone and learning latin and mathematics from Dr. Ransome and the other camp occupants.
The years in the prison camp teach Jim the very basics of survival. After many false alarms signaling the end of the war, he is finally evacuated from the Lunghua prison camp to be taken to Nantao.
At a rest stop at the Olympic stadium, he is witness to the white flash from the atom bomb over Nagasaki. He decides to return back to the Lunghua prison camp which had been his home for the last so many years.
The camp is occupied by British and American POW’s and civilians who are hoarding the rations dropped by the American relief planes. His tale of his experience at the Olympic stadium, arouses their greed and they take him back there to loot the fine furniture he had seen there. By some misfortune, they are shot down by nationalist and rebel groups and his feet inevitably take him back to the camp where he finds the camp taken over by the American and Dr. Ransome is there to take care of him before he goes over the edge into the realm of madness.
One can say that this story ended happily ever after. If that were true. The end of one war is the beginning of the next. Young Jim has grown up the hard way. One finds this boy rather uncanny. He is typically British, stiff upper lip and stoical in this war. Even the prison inmates find his character unnerving and decidedly odd. The sight of rows and rows of dead bodies decaying with a million flies in them provokes no emotion in the boy. He does not cry nor does he exclaim in horror or alarm.
The only events that arouse any emotion in him are the flying machines of war and the prospect of the end of the war. There are many accounts and incidents in the book that sicken you to the stomach and make your head spin. And when you look at it from the perspective of a very young boy like Jim, you shudder to think of the repercussions it will have on him. That is an element missing in this book. The passionless and detached narrative makes one wonder how much the author has suffered himself.
The details of the horrors of the camp and the inhumane conditions suffered by the inmates is nothing short of ghastly. The account of a war that left a million scars on the world brings to life the reality of the horror of what a war can do and how it is able to affect the lives of everyone.
Empire Of The Sun is a first hand description of most of the experiences of the author J.G. Ballard who was interned there from 1942 to 1945 in the same prison camps mentioned in the book. It is a profound and moving account of what it was like to be a boy in Japanese occupied Shanghai at war time.