70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Since the new Japanese personnel took charge in May we have had regular outside roll calls or parades every Friday. For the parade before the last the Japanese ordered that, on the approach of the Japanese officers and at the order of our respective Block Representatives, all internees should come to attention, bow and then stand at ease. None of us really objected – after all, the Japs would certainly expect their own people to do it – but being British I think we all felt a trifle ridiculous and in our blocks it gave rise to some barely concealed snickering. The Indian Quarters, however, were far more blatant. When the first squad of stiff necked (or, in this case, stiff backed) Britons came to attention and more or less simultaneously bowed from the waist, it was too much for the adjacent group who simply laughed outright. The Japanese officers, who in their turn were politely bowing and saluting (they bow slightly as they salute), couldn’t see any thing funny in it at all and, in fact, were rather annoyed by it. They ordered the offenders to remain on parade after the rest had been dismissed and they kept them there for ¾ of an hour. However, the bowing order was rescinded for the next parade and now only the Block Rep. has to bow whilst we stand to attention. So I think we won – quite a bloodless victory for a change!  As a matter of fact, it is rather charming to see tiny tots gravely bowing from the waist. I love to see Chinese children do it for their elders. The Oriental must think Europeans are very lacking in polite manners.

The Japs have just dealt us another couple of blows: the first being that no rice can be issued raw and the second that they made a mistake, when the last lot of firewood was issued some months ago, by telling us the quota was 1 kilo per person per day when it should have been 1 cattie. With regard to the first, it is an awful blow as it puts a stop to all our ground rice cakes and puddings etc. but in the circumstances one cannot blame the Japs really: for they have concrete evidence that some wretched internees had been selling their rice to people outside the camp (either Formosans or Indians). Now it is a case of the many suffering because of the few.

The price of rice in camp was Y50 per lb while in town it was over Y150 so some people thought of the bright idea of selling it under the wire; in fact someone (I forget the name) was found with a sackful over 130 odd lbs! Well, there are some people in camp – chiefly women – who simply cannot eat their full daily quota of rice. Quite a number have developed an unhealthy puffy fatness due chiefly, I am told, to the large percentage of water present in boiled rice foods. These people were much better off if they could draw the rice raw, grind it and make cakes or biscuits or other dryer forms of rice food and many were able to sell their surplus rice and so obtain money for purchasing foods in the canteen or black market. There are other people (like Y and me) who can eat more than their daily issue of rice and we were glad to be able to buy or exchange things for raw rice. So long as it remained within camp it was a help all round, but now these perishing idiots have spoilt everything for us. It is possible still to buy someone’s portion of cooked rice but few people want anymore plain boiled rice and it has to be eaten straight away or else, in this heat, it soon goes sour.

Also, the business of collecting it is a fag. Our blocks provide everyone with a four ounce piece of bread each day (which contains ¼ oz ground beans) instead of allowing everyone to bake one cake per day in the communal bakery oven as they had been doing recently. In addition we get 2 oz cooked as congee for breakfast and 4 oz boiled for each meal. This makes 14 oz Nominally we get 16 oz (450 grams) per day but actually supply is always short and we never get more than 14 oz (18 for workers as against a nominal 20). The bread is quite nice but it is not nearly enough for people like Y and me and as I say, before this we were able to buy extra rice which we made into ground rice puddings or cakes for supper. So we feel a bit hungry these days!

The firewood mistake is serious. 1 kilo = 2.2 lbs and 1 cattie = 1.33 lbs which makes 0.87 lbs per person per day difference. We were somewhat astonished at the time when for no apparent reason the Japs increased our quota from 1 cattie to 1 kilo (that is the worst of working with so many different weights and measures). Gimson sent a reminder to the Japs that our next issue of firewood was due on 5th July and were they making the necessary arrangements. They replied that this mistake had been made and that our present stocks must last till September! How business is ever done in Japan I don’t know.

There always seems to be some headache or other in this camp. What will happen we don’t know for this shortage of fuel has coincided with the Jap order to issue no raw rice and now 100% of the rice has to be cooked by the community instead of about 65% and that makes quite a difference in fuel consumption. When people drew raw rice a lot of cooking was done on chatties which saved the community firewood. I think they will have to allow us something extra or by the end of July we shall have used all our carefully hidden reserves and we shall be completely out.

This war seems to be going on and on. So much so, in fact, that Yvonne and I have decided to learn Cantonese and we have actually been going now for 5 lessons. Miss Brameld or Bramweld, a missionary, is teaching us and we have a lesson every Wed and Sat evening that lasts about 1 hour. Isa has leant us her ‘Cantonese for Everyone’ by H.R. Wells, which is an English-Chinese text book. Old man Wells, who has been a missionary in China (HK chiefly, I think) for many years, is in camp here with his wife. They are both octagenarians. Both he and his wife gave Chinese lessons here, but he has no beginners’ class now and, also I am told he is a little deaf and his own diction is rather indistinct, so I think we are better off with Miss Brameld. She is very keen and says she is enjoying teaching us. Kathleen Rosselet has asked if she can join the class, so now there are just three of us. We should have started to learn when we came here. If we could only have forseen such a terribly long imprisonment, how differently we should have planned our lives and occupations. Would we? Yes, I think we most definitely would have. Anyway, we have started, so now, perhaps, the war will end!

I am no linguist and I am told that after Russian, Chinese is about the most difficult language in the world to learn. Whether this is a generally held opinion or not, I cannot say. But it is certainly amongst the most difficult of all languages. There are hardly any rules of grammar and there seems to be no regular rhyme or reason in it at all: it is just sheer memorising and my memory, which was never my forte is much worse on this diet than it normally is. Miss Bramweld wants us later to start learning Chinese characters. I don’t know whether we shall or not; they are an even worse headache. At the moment we are struggling with the tones. You can say the same word in about 6 different tones and you have six different meanings. Yvonne is the bright one at the game. I plough heavily along in her wake! But it is a fascinating language and I am glad we have started learning it. If we live on in HK for some time it will be very useful too – if we ever learn enough to talk the language.