70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Mr. G. H. Cautherley, a bank official, and Mrs. D. A. Cautherley, have a boy, George, in Tweed Bay Hospital. Later George will remember his years in Stanley as happy ones. Fast forward a few years and whenever Kiyoshi Watanabe, who was loved by the Camp's children, comes into Camp George will be following him around.

It seems that at some time, probably in 1942, Mr. G. H. Cautherley went to the French Hospital in Causeway Bay for x-rays and on his return smuggled in money raised by Sir Vandeleur Grayburn and other bankers for relief purposes.

The repatriated American banker Theodore Lindabury writes to Elizabeth Grayburn, the daughter of Sir Vandeleur and the step-daughter of Lady Mary:

I was interned with them in a Chinese Hotel from January 5 until June 29 when we left Hong Kong. During that time they were working every day in the liquidation of the Bank and were able, by various means, to secure a sufficient supply of food, other than the rice given by the Japanese. You probably have heard that condition ((sic)) in the Stanley Prison Camp are very poor and should be pleased to hear that they are not in this Camp but are interned with the other Bank people in a Chinese Hotel not far from the Bank.

Conditions in Stanley made it hard for those who'd been wealthy and influential before the war to maintain their privileges. New divisions arose, with 'prosperity', which was always relative, depending on such things as having family and friends outside camp willing to make the sacrifice and take the risk of sending you parcels, or having a friend on the billeting committee. And some people were able to bring more into camp in the first place. Stanley was an infinitely more egalitarian place than pre-war Hong Kong, but it still had its 'have' and have nots'.

Australian journalist Dorothy Jenner is the 'leader' of her area of camp (a 'blockhead'). In a diary entry for today she makes it clear how she sees her job:

I am looking after the have-nots.

In an undated note Jenner made her views on the effects of internment clear:

When people become anonymous they become hateful. Judges & dustmen look the same in the cookhouse & are just as light-fingered. Society - or its segments - with nothing to lose or gain don't possess the dignity of denizens of the jungle. Rogues have more stature than snivelling, grabbing members of this community - taipans caught with their pants down - Externally there is little difference these days between the millionaire and the park dosser. I'll take the simple dosser, he's kinder.

In London Sir Maurice Peterson of the Foreign Office is clear about the future of Hong Kong:

In view of the ignominious circumstances in which we have been bundled out of Hong Kong, we owe it to ourselves to return there and I personally do not believe that we will ever regain that respect in the East unless we do.

But at this stage of the war the Chinese claim to 'retrocession' has the support of America, which is, by a huge margin, the most powerful military and diplomatic force in the region. One of the many missions of the British Army Aid Group is to work towards restoration of British prestige in the short term and the regaining of Hong Kong in the long. The question will hang in the balance until the last moment, and in the tumultuous ten days after the Japanese surrender the matter will be decided by BAAG mission from Macao to Stanley Camp and the determined action of a small group of internees. No-one today, looking down on the starving, ragged, scared and quarrelsome Stanleyites would predict such an outcome.

Sources:

Cautherley family: 'Stanley Recollections and Reminiscences ', University of Hong Library, Special Collections, HKP940.547252 C37;  China Mail, September 15, 1945; Frank King, History of the HSBC, Volume 3, 621.

Grayburns: David Tett, Captives of Cathay, 2007, 294

Conditions, Jenner: Christina Twomey, Australia' Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 73, 74

Peterson: Andrew Whitfield, Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance at War, 2001, 18

Note:

The bankers were living at the Sun Wah Hotel. The 'various means' of supplementing the low-quality ration rice were probably purchases on the open and black markets.