Say Anything Blog

Over the years I have read the accounts given by survivors of this event, it has long been a subject I wanted to find the answer to. Or to, at least, get a handle on.

I first heard about it as a child of 11, sitting in a room, keeping company with a dying old man. He told me of his years in The Orient, Macao, Shanghai, Saigon and Rangoon, prospecting along the coasts of Borneo and New Guinea, sitting in the Colonial Magistrates Cantonment in Hong Kong after a drunken brawl with a group of Diggers.

In his final days he grew frantic to recount the events of August to February, evacuation from Shanghai, the streams of refugees, the train packed to overflowing, the dead lying along the tracks and roads, killed by Japanese strafing, exhaustion, starvation.

Of helping people to the river landings outside of Nanjing to move west, away from the Japs and deeper into China. It was several years later that I understood that the friend Jack he spoke of was Jack Belden, and my respect and reverence for Gen Joe Stilwell began in that dark room during July and August 1973.

People have forgotten, or simply never knew. Stephen Hunter has an excellent review of this film, and if it is still at any theater near you be sure to see it. And think of all the atrocities people are ignoring today.