70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

A week ago a labour squad was organised to re-surface the road from the pier below the Prep School to the camp, along which the Jap lorry brought our dry stores – rice, oil, firewood etc. To obtain the broken bricks which were used as a foundation for the surface, we demolished a small disused Chinese temple on the shore. I was with the demolition party and during operations we knocked down some old and dry China fir poles that had supported the roof. When we knocked off work we broke these poles into manageable size lengths and hopefully carried them with us when we lined up to be checked by the Japanese guards. The squad who worked on the previous day had not been allowed, by the guards, to take away wood at all. This day, as luck would have it, the guards were different and they raised no objections. So I carried home a 6’0 length of about a 6” diameter dry pole – a most useful supply of chatty firewood. That is of tantamount importance now as fire wood is simply non-existant.

It really is a problem. During hot plate days Y and I used our daily quota in cooking our vegetables for lunch, our congee for supper and coffee every other day after lunch. Now we just put our coffee in the thermos, the committee has made arrangements for cooking communal congee and we are able, as I have already mentioned, to bake our vegetables two or three times a week; so we have reduced chatty cooking to a minimum. This winter we plan to grow a lot of tomatoes, carrots and turnips which we can eat raw!