They are herded into the Nam Ping Hotel, which has clearly been used as a brothel in the recent past. The lobby is dingy and smudgy-looking, with peeling red paint and garish gold Chinese characters painted onto signs.

First, they are told to take off all their watches and jewelry and place them into a large sack. Then, a Japanese soldier jerks his gun toward the stairs to indicate they should go up.

The rooms are tiny, and things get ugly, with people rushing to claim their space until they realize that no matter how quick they are, they will have to squeeze four or five into a room. The stucco walls are bubbled with moisture and decay and flakes of ceiling fall down at the slightest tremor. There are iron beds with wafer-thin mattresses and mintoi, the Chinese quilt, with large, copper-colored stains. Large cockroaches scurry around, alarmed at the sudden invasion, and the floor is wet and unpleasant. It is chaos, with people demanding toilet paper, towels, clean water, not knowing that no one is there to supply them. Some don’t seem to realize the days of amahs and chauffeurs are gone. The toilets stop up almost immediately and the hallways are filled with an unspeakable odor. Will and Hugh organize teams to clean. Some refuse, or don’t show up. Will tells the others not to worry, that there will be plenty of work to go around soon, and that everyone will do their share. The Japanese provide no guidance-some look amused at the chaos, and others are simply oblivious, putting their feet up and having Chinese children run errands for them, fetching them beer and cuttlefish.

There is no food the first night. They go to bed hungry, rooms alive with the sound of whimpering children and the labored breath of their parents. Will tucks his hands into his armpits, hears young Ned’s snore-a strange, interrupted, barking sound-and wonders what Trudy is doing.

And so he finds out. Not tooth powder but food. Food is the luxury. The Japanese hand out a watery vat of rice in the evening, with not enough chipped bowls and spoons. There is some putrid boiled meat, a few rotting vegetables swimming in brown water. The first evening, some women refuse to eat it. By the next, everyone takes their share. They find Chinese willing to go fetch food for coins tossed from the balcony, but this is an iffy proposition at best as some disappear with the money, never to be seen again. Those lucky enough to have their amahs or houseboys on their tail throw down money and get fish and vegetables tossed back in return.

There is a lieutenant in charge of the hotel, Ueki, a small man with round glasses and a mustache. He is impossible to read as Will finds out when he is elected to meet with a supervisor about the living conditions and the food. It is an odd meeting, tense and excessively polite.

Ueki has commandeered the hotel manager’s office behind the reception desk and is sitting behind a metal desk with an open bottle of whiskey and a lit cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. Smoke hangs thick in the air, unmoved by the fan that circles slowly overhead.

Will bows because it seems the right thing to do. Ueki inclines his head slightly.

“I have a few issues I’d like to bring to your attention,” Will says.

“Speak,” says the man.

“The toilets need to be cleaned, and we need supplies to clean them with. Can you provide us with some toilet brushes and cleaning powders? Also, a plunger would be helpful.”

“I will see what I can do.”

“And Mrs. Aitken is eight months pregnant and quite uncomfortable. Could we find a bed for her? She’s in a bed with two other people right now. Everyone else is doubled or tripled up as well.” Except the corpulent secretary from Australia who refuses to give up her bed, but that’s another matter.

“Fine.”

Ueki waves off the request, so Will is not sure if he means yes or no.

“And the food…” Will hesitates.

“Yes?”

“The food is inadequate.”

The short lieutenant studies Will.

“Do you want smoke?” He offers a slim silver case, probably freshly looted from some friend of Trudy’s.

Will takes one and leans over so that Ueki can light it.

“Do you know where I learned the English?”

“No, but it’s very good.” Will tells himself he’s not currying favor, not being obsequious, just honest.

“English missionary came to Japan, taught me for three years.”

“There are lots of missionaries doing good works out there,” Will says, it seems to him, idiotically.

“He was good man. For him, I will try to help you.”

Will says thank you, and then sits for a moment before he realizes he has been dismissed. Getting up, he says thank you again.

Nothing ever comes of the meeting.

It is in this unlikely place, this old brothel, that the detainees find themselves pooling information and tales of what had happened in the days prior. Since they have nothing but time, they gather around, exchanging stories, trying to piece together a coherent history of the final, chaotic days before the surrender.

Regina Arbogast, a delicate-faced socialite who arrived at the parade ground in a rickshaw and seven trunks, six of which she was forced to let her servants bring back home, is full of stories of atrocity that happened not to her but to friends of friends of people she knew. She is full of opinions and appropriated outrage.

“The Chinese got the brunt of it really. They’re defenseless, without a proper government to help protect them. They’ve been under our protection for so long, they don’t know what to do. All the girls have been raped, but the Japanese are afraid to touch the English. They know it will come around in the end.”

Regina had been staying at her friend May Gibbons’s house, where they were living in fairly high style until some Chinese gangsters came in and tied them up while they looted the house. She talks incessantly about the jewelry she lost and how she’ll never be able to replace it. Her husband, a successful importer and businessman, finally blows up after she has gone on for a particularly long time.

“For God’s sake, Regina, just shut up and give us some peace. I’ll buy you all the jewels in China after all this is over.”

She looks at her husband balefully and whispers to her friend, Patricia Watson, about how beleaguered she has been and how Reggie has been just impossible throughout. Patricia smiles and looks satisfied. She had, quite by accident, been spared her valuables at the hotel as she had placed them on the floor in front of her, and the Japanese had refused to bend down to pick them up, and had not bothered to ask her to do it.

A young woman, Mary Cox, says her husband was grabbed by Japanese soldiers and made to clean up after bodies had been dragged along the street, shedding body parts like animals. They had to clear all the bodies before they got in the water supply and spread disease. He came home soaked in blood and bits of decaying flesh and wept before falling on the sofa, exhausted. He was gone the next morning. She hasn’t seen him since. She has a two-year-old boy, Tobias, who trails her, one hand always on some part of his mother, the other holding a toy airplane. He hasn’t spoken since Christmas, she says. Another man, gaunt with worry, says he had been walking with his wife down Carnavon Street, and some soldiers had come and seized her. They held him at gunpoint while they took her away. He hasn’t seen her either. “And yet,” he says, “I used to think the Japanese were the most peaceful, serene people, with their cherry blossom paintings and the elaborate tea ceremony. How can they be so brutal?”

“A soldier is only one part of a country,” Hugh says. “Certainly not representative of an entire people. And wartime makes different animals of us all.”

“How can you say that?” Regina Arbogast cries. “They are each one as brutal as the other, as far as I’m concerned. You would never see a British soldier behave the way these animals have behaved to us.”