70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

During the last few days there has been an awful to-do amongst the black market dealers. It started last Wednesday and apparently has quietened down now. Mrs Flaherty, the Chinese wife of the late Mr Flaherty (who died in camp about a year ago) was the beginning of the trouble. She is a born gambler. Some time ago she spent a few months in prison here because of her black market dealings with the Formosans and Indians. They took from her jewellery and money to the value of thousands of Yen (some say hundreds of thousands) and she came back to camp penniless and looking pretty thin and the worse for wear. However, quite undeterred by her imprisonment and treatment, she soon started dealing again and has long since re-established herself.

Now I don’t wish to be scandalous, but it is a fact that Mrs Flaherty (aged 40 odd) was ‘carrying on’ with a young Formosan (aged 20 or so), who had become enamoured of her. He happened to be the brother of the Sergeant of the Formosan guards. Apparently there has been a good deal of crooked business and jealousy amongst the various cliques of black market dealers and their Formosan and/or Indian associates, and some of the other Formosans told their Sergeant that he had better look into his brother’s private affairs. The upshot was that Mrs Flaherty was summoned up the hill where she was questioned by the Japanese officers and during their examination of her she said:  “Well, why pick on me amongst all the dealers?”

The Japanese in charge of the camp evidently want to stop this black market dealing and enquired who the other dealers were? Mrs Flaherty then gave a number of names and this simply infuriated the Formosans because she had split on their European contacts.

A little while ago I said no woman in camp had been struck by a Formosan or Japanese: well, it would be inaccurate to make that statement now. Mrs Flaherty was simply lambasted. People in Block 10 could see it all from their bathroom window as they beat her just outside the HQ buildings. Two Formosans stood on either side of her with poles and just whacked her back – shoulders, seat and thighs. When they had finished, she walked jauntily back to her block, pushing up her hair which had become dishevlled, just letting the guards know she didn’t care a damn for them; but then she collapsed. She was taken to hospital with two fractured ribs and both wrists fractured. Her wrists were damaged in her efforts to protect herself. People who witnessed it were absolutely shocked; but most people agree that she has asked for all she has got. 

Charlie Smith was the other victim that the Formosans dealt with and he too went to hospital. He (to use an Americanism) had, apparently, been ‘high-jacking’ black market goods bought by other dealers. One method was to stand near the fence where, during the pitch dark nights, the Indians were doing a brisk trade, and when one of the Europeans had made a purchase and was carrying the stuff away, the ‘high-jacker’ would grunt like a Formosan, whereupon the trader would drop his goods and run like the devil and our Charlie would pick up the sack and walk home. At any rate, it’s a lovely story! However, the Formosans would not object to him doing this to Europeans, who dealt with the Indians, for the Formosans do their damndest to stop the Indians dealing.

But another method of high-jacking was for a Formosan to appear in a dealer’s room at night and say that his goods were needed for checking purposes, or some such reason. The dealer dare not resist and being unable to see or identify the Formosan in the dark would have to hand over his goods which he would then lose, for the Formosan would take the goods to his own dealer and either sell them again or split the difference. Whether Charlie Smith was guilty of either of these misdeeds, I really do not know, but gossip attaches his name to them. At all events, he did something to upset the Formosans for they beat him well and truly.

To digress a little: I hear one European handed over a packet of blank paper to one Indian in lieu of Yen notes. The Indians then retaliated by putting stones in some of the goods – both sides are guilty of crooked dealing; it is so easy in the dark: there is not even ‘honour amongst thieves’. I could almost fill a small book with tales of black market dealings, some really funny.

Well, after Mrs Flaherty had split, the Japs had one after another of the dealers up the hill and questioned them. They wanted to know from whom they received their goods and as most of them refused to mention names they were beaten on the seat until they did. Seymour and Vanthal had to spend the night there. A Formosan provided Vanthal with a blanket and when the Japs discovered it and asked who had given it, they turned to the guard and said: “Are you pro Japanese or pro British?”

A few of the dealers seem to have escaped detection but most of them were summoned up the hill. No further action seems to have been taken and no punishment, besides the corporal punishment, inflicted. But they seem to have succeeded in frightening the dealers, at any rate for the time being.

There is a story that the Formosans had stolen food from one of the Japanese army stores and sold it here. There is another story that, with a possible crisis approaching HK the Japanese are afraid that if foodstuffs can get into camp so easily, arms and communications may find their way in by the same method. This seems unlikely to me, however. Still, there does not seem to be much affection between the Formosans and the Japanese.

((Formosa - modern-day Taiwan - became a Japanese colony in 1895 after the First Sino Japanese War. The Japanese Imperial Army raised Formosan units, but they were regarded as inferior troops and tended to be used for garrison duties and as POW guards.))