70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

After an exhausting truck drive from Kweiyang {Guiyang} Phyllis Harrop finally reaches her goal, China's wartime capital:

We arrived at Chungking {Chongqqing} about seven o'clock...desperately tired and filthy with dust and grime.

She meets Colonel McHugh of the US Army and gives him news of his friends from Hong Kong. She sleeps like a log.

In London the papers lead on Eden's speech of yesterday:

The Daily Express launches the slogan 'Remember Hongkong', and then reports:

JAP ATROCITIES HORRIFY WORLD

Two of the most terrible revelations made by Mr. Eden in the House of Commons yesterday were these :—

Fifty British officers and men were bound hand and foot and then bayoneted to death.

Women, both European and Asian, were raped and murdered. One entire Chinese district was declared a brothel, regardless of the status of its inhabitants.

 In Canada the news was also met with horror. From the same Daily Express report:

There were shocked cries when Premier Mackenzie King read the statement in the Canadian Parliament. "Words cannot begin to express our sense of outrage and feeling of bitter resentment," he said. "Retribution for this barbaric behaviour will follow in full measure in due course."

Source:

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 188

Note:

Harrop's text gives March 10 for her arrival but the Chapter sub-heading has March 11 which fits in better with her other dating.

Note:

The claim, taken from Eden's speech, that an entire district was made a brothel is untrue. One BAAG source was later to state that the reality was that one district - Wanchai or part of it - was declared the only one in which brothels were allowed. I don't know if this is true or not.