A interesting history story (true or false)?

I read this story about 20 years ago, and it says it was real but being a book story you never know. Wonder if anyone has ever heard this.





Back in World War 2, this story takes place.





Singapore, The Japs are about to invade and people are boarding ships to escape. A family is about to board a ship (father, mother, and daughter) however air raid sirens go off and Jap fighters attack.





A explosion rocks the dock the family is on and the daughter dissapears in the explosion. The family assumes she is dead.





A couple years later: I think on Guadacanal (pacific battle)





American soldiers are strugeling to take back the island and have their hands full. However a priest from a local orphanage has a problem. He has gotten nearly all the kids out but 1.





A young girl has no where to go, and the priest cant take her with him.. He asks the troops to try to look after her.





Problem is that she cant speak english, and so they have no clue what her name is. (i cant remember theA interesting history story (true or false)?
Variations of this tale literally surface all the time. The 'lost daughter' or 'last son' makes for good news %26amp; magazine reads. The one you rae referening is from Time Magazine. The explanation is mostly likely that the girl was recued and given to a group of 'camp women,' drudge laborers who followed the Japanese Army on their travels tending to laundry %26amp; other 'chores.' The camp women most likely viewed a child as a potential worker or perhaps truly had compassion but the results would be the same.





Here is the link and blurb..





http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl鈥?/a>





';';';';';'The Return of Patsy Li


Monday, Sep. 09, 1946 Article ToolsPrintEmailReprints


Sponsored by





When Mrs. Ruth Li of Singapore had her first baby, a girl, she named the infant Patsy Li (from Pai-ti Li, which is Chinese for ';White Plum Blossom';). Patsy was six and had a younger sister, Lottie, when the Japanese attacked Malaya. Mrs. Li escaped from Singapore with her two children aboard a ship. At sea, the ship was torpedoed and sunk by the Japs.





In the water, Mrs. Li put Patsy on a mass of floating wreckage. She lost Lottie and was herself picked up by the Japs. She believed that both children were dead.





Later, on Guadalcanal, 4.000 miles away natives found a dazed little Chinese girl who had been bruised and slashed by Jap soldiers. They turned her over to a U.S. Marine outfit, who handed her to their chaplain, Father Gehring. Although Father Gehring spoke eight Chinese dialects, he could not get the child to talk. He decided to name her ';White Plum Blossom'; and so called her Patsy Li.





Little Lost Child. New York Times Reporter Foster Hailey saw Patsy at orphanages on Espiritu Santo and Efate and wrote two stories about her. These were read by Mrs. Li's sister, Katherine, who was doing medical research in Manhattan. Although the name was spelled ';Patsy Lee'; in the stories, she was so struck by the coincidence that she sent the clippings to her sister in Singapore.





Mrs. Li decided that Patsy Lee might be her lost daughter. She wrote to Hailey and Father Gehring, and finally, fighting her way through jungles of official indifference and red tape, set out on the long voyage to Efate. Last week she got there and claimed Father Gehring's Patsy Lee as her lost child.





How had the child got from Malayan waters to Guadalcanal? The most reasonable explanation was that she had been rescued from the wreckage by Japanese and taken by their camp women to the distant Solomon Islands. But mothers the world over believe in miracles, and Mrs. Li had no need for reasonable explanations.';';';





Peace





(having found few other sources to verify this one I hold it as doubtful but nice)A interesting history story (true or false)?
sorry, it may or may not be false, many a times the writer makes it spicy adding his own thoughts.