Hahn, Emily "Repatriate"

A serious look at the problems faced by repatriated U.S. internees, both during their ocean-going time travelling home and then finally back home in the United States. The story opens onboard the Swedish America Line’s GRIPSHOLM, which, under control of the International Red Cross, served as a repatriation ship from 1940 through 1946, ferrying interned diplomats, civilians, wounded and POWs between belligerent Allied and Axis nations. This particular trip finds “Johnny” travelling back to the States with many of the men with whom he had been interned in a Shanghai concentration camp at the outset of the War. In today’s jargon, Johnny is suffering from post-traumatic stress, though in this 1944 tale he is descibed simply as suffering from “nerves.” He certainly cannot abide spending yet another minute with his fellow former prisoners, and looks forward to peace (and privacy) once he sets foot back on American soil. Upon arrival in New York, though, he soon comes to understand that he still needs those comrades since no one else whom he encounters has any real understanding of what he has been through.