70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

The parcels are in! They came in yesterday and, strange to relate, the number actually delivered exceeded the amount previously stated by the Japanese! Well, someone was fooled somewhere. Gimson made no statement to the camp about the thefts from the lighter and as it turned out, it is just as well that he kept silent about it because everyone is thrilled at getting more than we expected and very few are aware that some were pilfered. No one knows how this extra is accounted for. I wonder if the Japanese had intended to hold some back and then changed their minds.

After the first lot of Red Cross parcels had arrived in camp (nearly two years ago now) plus the bulk supplies of food, quite a number of internees here received in their private parcels from friends in town, such items at tins of ‘meat and vegetables’ and brands of bully-beef which had evidently just made their appearance on the HK market and were identical with the goods we had received! It seems as though there is some giggery pokery somewhere. Anyway, things being as they are, I think we’re lucky to have done so well, and everyone is delighted. So far each of us has received two parcels and it looks as though there are enough left for one more each!

Now I must record the contents of each parcel:

• 1 lb Cow and Gate milk powder (in tins);
• 1 lb butter;
• 1 lb jam or marmalade;
• 1 lb packet of biscuits,
• 12 oz tin of Fray Bentos Bully-beef;
• 10½ oz tin luncheon meat roll,
• 8 oz tin salmon;
• 8 oz packet sugar;
• 7 oz pkt raisins;
• 5 oz bar milk chocolate!;
• 4 oz pkt cheese;
• 3 ½ oz tin sardines;
• 1 oz pkt salt and pepper;
• 6 oz pkt of coffee or 4 oz of tea; and
• a cake of unscented toilet soap.

16 items in all. They are marvellous parcels. The two best items are undoutably the milk and butter. Our bodies are so starved for these fats that when I consume them now, I can almost feel my body absorbing them on the spot! Y and I are revelling in butter and jam on our biscuits at present (spread as thickly as we do in peacetime) though after the first tin of each is finished I expect we shall content ourselves with the wartime ration of butter or jam, or a thinner scraping of both. We were lucky in getting two different types of jam (apple and raspberry, and apple and strawberry) and two different marmalades (pure orange and lemon, grapefruit and orange). It is marvellous to be able to sit back and feel that for the next two or three months our food situation is secure – we need not worry our heads for quite a time now.

One really unkind trick that Fate has played on us has been, for a long time to give us bread with nothing to put on it, and now we have the spreads but no bread to put them on! When the biscuits give out we shall have to concoct rice scones or something of the sort, or try eating the butter and jam on boiled rice, though that seems rather a waste. There is still no sign of the electricity coming on again.