70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Volunteer R. E. Stott is sent from Tweed Bay Hospital in Stanley to St. Paul's Hospital ('the French Hospital') in Causeway Bay where the better food provided is expected to speed his recovery from a ruptured duodenal ulcer.

He is planning an escape:

Had I been able to do so I would have endeavoured to pass as Eurasian, but unfortunately was too well known by local enemy agents to succeed, Dr. Selwyn-Clarke listened intently but made no suggestions to help neither did he request me not to escape.

See also entry for August 11, 1942

Dr. J. B. Mackie manages to get into Argyle Street Camp to bring tinned food and tea for a friend there. He tells Isaac Newton about the Japanese response to the escape of Gordon King:

The result was all passes practically were withdrawn and everything was tightened up, all the camps became cut off from visitors and news. All R. A. M. C. ((Royal Army Medical Corps)) officers had their passes withdrawn and most of the Civil M.O.s ((Medical Officers)) were interned in Stanley ((up to that point many members of the pre-war Health Department were carrying on their work)).

Morris 'Two-Gun Cohen' starts the day still a prisoner of the Kempeitai. Since his interrogation (see Feb 11), he's provided them with an inaccurate written account of his activities with the Chinese Army, been beaten up without any attempt to ask him questions, and at one point been told by Rex Davis, who understands Japanese, that the two of them are to be beheaded.

But today, much to his surprise, he's sent with the Special Branch prisoners (including Davis) back to Stanley. During the first part of their journey, they are suddenly bundled into a side street off Nathan Road: Rensuke Isogai, the new Military Governor of Hong Kong is arriving, and they are not thought worthy of looking at him.

Sources:

Stott: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entry for August 14, 1942

Mackie's news: Isaac Newton, Diary, page 61

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times Of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 298-299

Note: the date of February 20, 1942 for the arrival of  Lieutenant-General Isogai to assume the military Governorship of Hong Kong is given by John Luff in The Hidden Years (172). Philip Snow and Oliver Lindsay suggest slightly earlier and later dates respectively. Ramon Lavalle, the Argentianian Consul, in an affidavit of March 11, 1943 gives February 25.

Note:

Amazingly it is now possible for us to see something of what Cohen and the others were prevented from viewing; this link contains film of Rensuke Isogai arriving at Kai Tak, and of the Chinese procession that welcomed him:

http://www.t3licensing.com/license/clip/750155_001.do