70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Yesterday evening we went to the Police Concert which was held in the hall at St Stephens College (as are most concerts). It really was very good indeed and relied very little on community singing, as most previous concerts have done. There was a Prison Inspector who had rescued all his conjuring apparatus (from $800 to $1000 worth (pdv£2,800) from the prison and gave quite a good show. The Balalaika Singers, a group of about 15 White Russians, sang Russian folk songs. The interned Russians must have become naturalised British; 3 of them were in the Police Force. Then the ‘College Rowdies’ (a Police quartet with guitar and ukulele sang ranch songs etc. There was a recitation; a solo song or two; a very humorous monologue and a few silly stories. The concert lasted from 7 to 9 and ended with 2 or 3 popular choruses with the College Rowdies.

The previous concert, held on Shrove Tuesday and organized by Father Murphy was far more impromptu and consisted mainly of community singing with a few solos. It was quite good fun, but some of the last wars sentimental songs such as ‘Keep the home fires burning’, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary etc. gave me the pip and made me feel far from cheerful, as it reminded one of good old England too much and made me long to be out of this wretched mess.

The concert was preceded by a cinema show kindly given by some Japanese official. In the circumstances it was not greatly appreciated as it was chiefly about Japanese industrial development – picturing the manufacture of many and varied articles. The bit that caused the most interest was the bottling of beer! And the final shot of that particular item, showing frothing beer pouring into a glass produced a loud cheer!! The film even showed Japanese bombers taking off and then releasing bombs in the air. This was by no means a new sight to us! And was, indeed hardly tactful! However, we all clapped politely at the end of the film.

Today I had a nice morning’s rest. We finished the flue to the kitchens yesterday afternoon and at 4:30 I managed to get a jug full of boiling water and had a shave, shampoo, and hot wash all over. It was lovely and I put on a clean set of clothes. How one appreciates these little things now. Our soap is limited and during this cold weather I change my underclothes once per week only and Yvonne does the washing and mending. How different to our former life when I had a bath and clean clothes at least once each day.

I might explain that the greater part of the internees in this prison camp occupy the former European Warders’ flats. There are four blocks consisting of six flats per block (in the storied buildings) two flats opening off each landing. These flats contain a living room (18’ x 15’) and a dining room (12’ 6” x 15’) with a good sized balcony (9’ wide x 30’ long); two bedrooms, a bathroom and lavatory suite, and a lavatory off the hall; a small pantry, a small kitchen, a covered back balcony which is quite big and which gives access to two servants rooms, (about 10’ x 7’), a servants W.C. (Chinese type), a copper and tool shed and a small servants kitchen with chattie type fires and sink. Normally, these 24 flats would be occupied by 24 European families with (at a generous estimate) a total of 96 Europeans and about 48 to 60 Chinese servants. This is the maximum peace time capacity of the flats with two double bedrooms, and actually I expect it never exceeded 72 Europeans.

Now, however, 700 people occupy these same 24 flats. It really is disgraceful, and the risks of epidemics starting, and quickly spreading in the hot weather is very real. There are 50 British who are housed in the Dutch block and they too draw their food from our block kitchen.

I have drawn a sketch plan of the communal kitchens which I was asked by the committee to design.

At present all the rice and stews are being cooked in the coppers (normally used for boiling clothes). So the new kitchens are to cater for about 750 people. One big rice pan produces approx 270 bowls of boiled rice, so three gives enough for over 800. The meat and fish and pasties can be stewed or fried in the stew pans and the vegetables and soups cooked in the coppers. We are hoping to get some hot iron plates on which chipatties etc. can be fried or baked, and rice cakes made. These will be interchangeable with the stew-pans. In the kitchen there is a bay for food preparation, a food store and a fuel store. The intention is to store the rice and vegetables etc. in the food store, but my personal opinion is that it will prove unsuitable for rice storage, as rice is a commodity that must be kept in a dry place or it will go bad, and the hot and humid atmosphere of a kitchen where the rice and beans are boiled in the big pans for a long time will, I think, prove damp for the rice to store.
                                
Adjoining the kitchen is the General Store: this communicates with the kitchen by a hatch and if necessary food could be kept in the General Store. Water and electric lights are being laid on to the kitchen. The question of drainage may prove a difficulty.

These communal kitchens, stores etc. are being built in a block of 14 brick and concrete car shelters. The back and ends of the block are entirely enclosed, there being no partition walls or doors to the garages. We built up ¾ high walls in front, between the columns, knocked a wide doorway in the end wall, and cut long, narrow, horizontal ventilation slits at the back, above the cooking range. Most of the new walls we constructed are built of the hollow concrete blocks which had been used for building blast proof screens at the back entrances to the flats, to act as air raid shelters. These walls had to be demolished, the concrete blocks cleaned up and then re-laid.

We had only four 90 lb bags of cement for use on the stoves (built in brick) and the brick flues and stack. We had to use 1 cement: 3 sand: 6 red earth for this, and the concrete block walls are bedded entirely in red earth mud. It is amazing how affective this red earth is. As it happens, the concrete blocks (which measure 1’ 6’’ x 9” x 9”) are very heavy and stand up quite well if bedded evenly in mud. Each block weighs approximately 90 lbs and when the walls were four and five feet high, it was very exhausting work lifting up the blocks and laying them gently in position. It was rough on one’s hands too, and very soon the skin on my hands began to grow tough and the tips of my fingers became quite considerably less sensitive to touch.

Our kitchens have not proved a success alas. I made drawings of the stoves and flue etc. as previously described. However, a very stubborn little fellow named MacCormack, a foreman bricklayer from the Dockyard, who had been appointed chief bricklayer, insisted on building things as he thought fit. He refused point blank to build in the dampers as I had indicated; he refused to build in the fire doors; I had started building a 14” x 14’ chimney stack which I had intended to narrow at the top to about 12” x 12”.  But he finished the upper portion and battered it back so that it measured only 12” x 7” at the top (this to take the smoke of 8 stoves). I had alas intended to build it in to the edge of the projecting concrete flat roof to give the flue additional support. Why was he given his own way?  Because if anyone remonstrated or tried to get him to do things differently he merely put down his tools and refused to work. As it was he had taken a whole week off, and as he did more work in a day than three of us unskilled workers (and better brickwork at that by a long way) Neilson and MacCrea ((possibly McRae)) (the latter in charge of labour) said,“Let him carry on and we can alter things afterwards”. 

This has proved fatal. Precious cement was wasted and the stoves could not be used. He had allowed a depth of 7” only between the fire bars and the bottom of the big rice pans. This was inadequate as the rice in the bottom of the rice pans tended to burn before the rest was properly steamed. I had shown the depth as a full 12”.

So I had to knock down the part of the chimney stack he had built and rebuild it myself; the blacksmiths have cut and fixed fire doors; Blackmore and Ogden have had to remove the fire bars, cut out bricks and mortar from the bottom of the big stoves and lower bars and all by 3” and raise the pan itself by building up a brick and cement rim. That is nearing completion and there will be a full 12”. The blacksmiths have cut dampers out of the heavy sheet iron and some metal guides out of the glazing bars of a metal French window that had been blown out by a shell! Now it remains for me to chip out the channels for the dampers and cement in the frames. What a lot of time and trouble could have been saved if it had all been done in the first place.

One of the chief troubles is that this low block of garages is flanked on two adjacent sides by the 3 storied blocks of flats and this means that a very strong down-draught is caused in our kitchen flue when the wind comes in a N.E. direction, over the high blocks and down onto the garage blocks. We cannot help this, but I am hoping to counter it with a cowl or T piece which we will fix on top of the flue. Before, the down draught blew the smoke straight into the kitchens and with no damper or fire doors the fires were impossible to control. When the cowl is fixed I hope everything will be in order. The Blacksmiths have laid on water from a tap on the lawn. The Electricians have installed electric lighting; the window openings have been covered with wire netting to discourage flies and prevent possible theft of food and utensils. There is talk now of laying on power to the kitchens and moving in 8 electric stoves…………and so it goes on.

On Monday 16th February 1942 the Japanese sponsored paper ‘The Hong Kong News’ announced with banner headlines the fall of Singapore. We found this bit of news very depressing and would not at first believe it.  Singapore had been looked upon as Britain’s impregnable Eastern fortress and its early fall makes one realise how gravely the Home Government, or someone, has underestimated the strength of the Japanese. Truly we are a race of muddlers, and it is only our tremendous tenacity and considerable wealth that will enable us to emerge, with our allies, victorious in the end.

I believe too that the democratic principles for which our allied cause stands are right, and though, cut off from news of the outside world as we are, I believe that ultimately our cause will emerge victorious. Without this belief, life here would indeed be intolerable. This we presume, is the ‘good news’ that the Japanese officer had ironically told us we should hear on 15th February. Apparently, according to the Japanese timetable, Singapore was scheduled to fall on the 15th February, and fall it did! There are apparently only about 120 European women and children in Singapore, but according to the ‘Hong Kong News’ some 60,000 troops (regulars and volunteers) were captured. The Japanese also state that the Philippines have fallen, though apparently American resistance there has not yet completely ended. High Ho! The Japanese army is certainly proving a very efficient fighting machine.