PRISONER OF THE JAPS

It-happened-to-me account of a lady correspondent-photographer (Detroit News) which provides more than a sufficiency of horror and heroism. After much persistence. Owen Dew obtained a passport to the Far East and was in Hong Kong on December 7th. Too many Japanese, too few defenses and defenders, as civilians witnessed the inadequacy of the outpost during days of siege and bombing. Many of the Americans and English banded together at the Repulse Bay Hotel which put up an individual fight of several days (Marsman's I Recaped From Hong Kong covered this too). Eventually surrender and the months that followed during internment in a hotel, then a concentration camp revealed the inconceivable brutality of the Japanese, actively in rape, torture, killing-passively in their neglect of their prisoners, starvation rations, vermin, disease. Finally, with preferred treatment as part of the press -- Owen Dew was sent home as an exchange prisoner. Mas both news -- and human horror value -- this story; it is, however, sometimes strident.