Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center

Lunghua Civil Assembly Centre was one of the internment camps eventually established by the Empire of Japan in Shanghai for European and American citizens, who had anyway been resident under Japanese occupation since December 1941. James Graham Ballard was interned in the camp as an adolescent. His experiences there inspired the book (and subsequent movie) Empire of the Sun. Lunghua Civil Assembly Centre was originally the Kiansu Middle School. It was located on Minghong Road about three miles (5 km) from Shanghai Longhua Airport. (Pre-WWII documents use the alternate spellings of Lunghua and Lunghwa; the modern anglicized spelling of the town is Longhua.) The school was damaged in the Second Sino-Japanese War and was empty until it was...