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Show Pacific Waif, Pal of Marines, How Growing Up SINGAPORE ... The wonder ' waif of the Pacific is almost grown up now. She's 12 years old. Patsy Li, the little Chinese girl who six years ago mysteriously turned up in the midst of the war , on Guadalcanal, is studying in a : Singapore school. But she hasn't forgotten her days with the United States marines on Guadalcanal. She hasn't had a chance. Newspaper stories up and and down the coast have kept the memory alive for her. Little Patsy, like many a youngster young-ster her age, is limelight-conscious. But in her case this threatens to become a serious personality problem, prob-lem, according to her guardian. That's why there are to be no more interviews. A lot of American marines who were on Guadalcanal will remember remem-ber Patsy and wish her happily over the rocky road of adolescence. Sick With Malaria. They will remember her as the 6-year-old, very sick with malaria, who one day in the heat of battle was carried by natives to the American Amer-ican lines. She had been found, wounded and very ill, in an abandoned aban-doned Japanese camp. The marines adopted her and she became famous as "Patsy of Guadalcanal." Patsy had been separated from her mother, Mrs. Ruth LI of Singapore, Singa-pore, when the ship on which they were escaping from Malaya was torpedoed off the Netherlands East Indies in February, 1942. Mrs. LI J was rescued. No trace was found of her child at the time. Three thousand miles from the scene of the sinking, on Guadalcanal Guadal-canal an. American correspondent wrote up the story of the little Chi- ! nese girl. Sister Reads Story. In New York, Mrs. Ruth Li's sister, a cancer research worker, read the story and noted that the little girl answered to the name of Patsy Li the name of the little niece she lost in the torpedoing off the Dutch East Indies. She wrote to her sister. It was a clew and the mother flew to the orphanage in the New Hebrides where the girl had been placed and recogri-ed Patsy as her missing daughter. How she traveled the 3.000 tribes from the place where the ship sank to Guadalcanal, nobody knows. j Probably the Japanese fished her out of the sea, adopted her and brought her with them to Guada-canal. Guada-canal. It's still a mystery to eveiy-one. eveiy-one. including Patsy. Today in Singapore a growirg- : up aPatsy often asks: "Have y:u i ever met an American marine? I They're wonderful." |