70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Mrs. E. A. Koodiaroff (Block 5, Room 33) sends a card to Mrs. N. Smirnoff, Russian, French Hospital R. 33, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong:

Dear Nina,

Hope you are well all together, Little Sasha will be a big boy since. We are well and healthy, Michael is big boy and attending his school. Wishing you and family everything best.

Best Regards,

God Bless you all

Yours E. Koodiaroff

Arthur May has been kept uninterned to work as an emergency engineer. He's been attached to the Health Department and has played an important role in Selwyn-Clarke's network of illegal relief workers, acting as the link with pharmacist Arthur Rowan, who's the main supplier of the drugs that are smuggled into Stanley and the POW camps. He's also acquired wire and cables for electricity, cookers, cement for drains and so on for sending in camp. A hidden radio has also been the source of smuggled news.

He's also attached to the Dairy Farm (where there are also uninterned British civilians) and lives in a flat in Sassoon Road, close to the farm.

In July 1944 he was arrested and interrogated by the Japanese for two weeks and today he's sent (along with two currently unidentified health inspectors) to Ma Tau-chung Camp where he will remain until the end of the war, when he has an important role to play in the restoration of British rule. ((See http://gwulo.com/node/14312 and following.))

No later than today  the Indian POWs at Ma Tau-chung Camp in Kowloon have been moved to the nearby Argyle Street Camp. This will open the way for the camp to be re-opened for Third Nationals (neutrals). For reasons not yet entirely clear, many of the men (and a few of the women) who have been 'guaranteed out' of Stanley will also be re-interned there.

Sources:

Card: David Tett, Captives in Cathay, 2007, 170

May:

date of transfer: Arthur May Papers, HKU Special Collections; 

materials and news for Stanley, two weeks interrogation, health workers: 'A. F. May' in HK PRO, HKMS 100-1-6

Ma Tau-chung: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, Kindle Edition, Location 2475

Note: There is a discrepancy between the date given by Arthur May for his transfer to Ma Tau-wai and the BAAG's report that it wasn't opened until tomorrow and then at first for Third Nationals. I am keeping the contradiction in the sources for the moment but hope to resolve the question in the future.