S. A. S.

The clapboard torture house, built by the Japs on the campus of Shanghai American School, was gone; its victims' screams no longer echoed down Avenue Petain in the city's old French quarter. But over the Georgian school buildings flew a motheaten U.S. flag; S.A.S. was in session again.

Since 1912, when Protestant missionaries founded S.A.S., it has been the main home for China-based American schoolkids. There businessmen, missionaries, military and Government personnel knew that their boys & girls would somehow capture the sense of belonging to a U.S. that many of them might not see for years. By June, 1941, when the Government ordered most U.S. nationals home, S.A.S. was educating 500 to 600 American youngsters a year, putting 35 to 50 of them into U.S. colleges. Almost everything about S.A.S. was American, from its sentimental school song ("Fair is the name we love. . .") to its menus (Chinese dishes only twice a week). Native instructors taught Chinese, otherwise the curriculum was straight out of the Little Red Schoolhouse. On S.A.S.'s 15 willow-shaded acres, with its two gyms and the only quarter-mile track in Shanghai, American boys learned to excel at American sports.

Last week S.A.S. began a new term and a new life, under a new principal. The job of restoring S.A.S to its prewar heights had fallen to Peking-born Thomas C. Gibb, 36, son and grandson of U.S. missionaries, who taught English there before Pearl Harbor, has since been the acting dean of Haverford College. Finding a student body is the least of Gibb's worries. His worst headaches: locating books, desks and beds in supply-shy China; drumming up a faculty.

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