Review: Lost in China: A Memoir of World War II

In 1941, when Jennifer Dobbs was seven years old, her parents left her and her younger brother, John, with a trusted family servant at their home in Kunming, China, while they traveled to Hong Kong for a couple of weeks of business, shopping, and catching up with friends.

Lost in China by Jennifer F. Dobbs '56, published by Peach Pit Publications.Jennifer’s father, F.E.L. “Ted” Dobbs, had been recruited by the British Foreign Office after graduating from college in 1924 to work for the Chinese Department of Finance. Jennifer and both of her brothers were born in China, and Mandarin was their first language, although they also spoke English at home and school.

While their parents were in Hong Kong, the Japanese attacked the British colony, just hours after bombing Pearl Harbor. Ted was killed, and Alice, Jennifer’s mother, was held in a prisoner-of-war camp, from which she was eventually released in a prisoner exchange that took her to the United States. The eldest brother was at a boarding school in another area of China at the time, and family members were able to get him to safety. However, Jennifer and her brother John were cared for by the trusted servant and friends of the family, who then found them places at a Canadian boarding school in China. Nearly a year after the Hong Kong attack, Jennifer and John undertook a monthlong journey on supply planes across India, Africa, and the Atlantic to rejoin their mother in the United States.

It is a dramatic story that attracted the attention of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported on their return in January of 1943. But in her memoir, Lost in China, Jennifer F. Dobbs ’56 wisely begins her story in 1939, recognizing the story she has to tell is about more than her separation from her parents. Much of the book shares the story of her family’s moves west from Shanghai, away from air raids, and her recollections of life in China, where the war against the Japanese had begun in 1937.

Dobbs’ book provides a personal look into a theater of World War II that is less often discussed in the United States, and her approach of simply relating her experiences as a child during the time emphasizes how war affected Chinese communities and Western families living and working in China. This is not a book about World War II, but rather a book about a family in China during the early years of the war.

While the family’s story is the most compelling reason to read Lost in China, Dobbs makes two choices with her writing that make it an interesting book in terms of craft as well: giving herself permission to imaginatively fill in details she does not know and using simple word choices and syntax that evoke the voice of a child.

Before the book begins Dobbs notes, “This is a story about a little girl…. Most of the story is true. What isn’t true was invented to make sense of the true parts.”

Not often, but in a few key chapters, Dobbs lists the location as “My Imagination,” and she uses the freedom she has granted herself to explore what might have happened, especially as she dramatizes her parents’ time in Hong Kong. The book has end notes after each chapter, and for the first Hong Kong chapter, Dobbs indicates that her account is partially based on a letter her mother wrote while in the Stanley Civilian Internment Camp in Hong Kong.

In general, the end notes are informative, providing useful context and history, while allowing Dobbs to maintain her other interesting stylistic choice. Unlike the imagined chapters and the end notes, chapters relating her direct experiences are written in a very simple and direct style, describing people, conversations, and actions in a straightforward way. This makes the narration sound as if it is coming from the mouth of Dobbs’ younger self and makes the stories she shares feel immediate and impactful.

Lost in China is a compelling account of an unusual childhood that offers readers a way to learn about China during World War II, as its author did, through experiences, caring people, and novel places.

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven