Books: In a Jap Internment Camp

THE OPEN CITY—Shelley Smifh Mydans—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

The Open City is a sensitive first novel born of bitter experience. It is a moving, convincing—and timely—account of life in a Jap internment camp, and of what happens to the characters of once easygoing civilians penned up in it. It is set in Manila's Santo Tomas camp, where almost 4,000 prisoners were freed by U.S. troops last fortnight. Author Mydans and her husband Carl, ace LIFE photographer, were imprisoned there for eight and a half months.

"This camp," observes Dr. Busch in the Mydans novel, "is no place for personal dignity. The humiliating lack...