70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

I am gradually beginning to realise that war is over and what that means! It really is wonderful. So much has happened during these last few days that I cannot even attempt to write it down in detail.The pamphlets instructed us to remain in our camps and maintain order until relief – which was on the way – arrived. We were told to be of good cheer, our troubles would soon be at an end and so on.

We hear the British Fleet is on its way here and we spend our time watching the horizon. The pamphlets were signed by Gen. Weydemeyer, so the plane must have been American after all ((Likely to have been a plane from the US 14th Air Force as Gen. Weydemyer was in charge of all US forces in China)).

We have not yet hoisted our flag. We are dying to see it go up and think Gimson is an awful stick-in-the-mud. However, I will say this for his point of view: if we wait until the British S. Pacific Fleet sails in and Admiral Fraser and British Bluejackets and Marines come marching in here to Stanley with their bands playing and hoist the flag – well, I think it will be one of the greatest experiences of my life and well worth waiting for. The very thought of it brings tears to my eyes. After 3½ years to see the flag of freedom fluttering over us again, will be wonderful beyond description. I hope there will be an official ceremony in any case and that the Admiral won’t be too busy to come himself. We have one main flagstaff erected and beside it seven smaller ones for the seven allied nations.

Last Sunday morning (19th August) at about 10.30, the first batch of civilians from town came in by bus to visit the camp. Zindle has arranged for a bus to make two trips per day, bringing 50 each time. They arrive at about 10.30 a.m. and depart at 12; arrive again at 2 p.m. and depart at 4. Yvonne Ho was amongst the first in bless her, with her sister Helen. Were we glad to see them again! Yvonne was so excited that she was almost incoherent at times.

Yvonne had brought with her some home made cake (made with wheat flour) and some bananas. I have never in my life realised that cake could taste so good! The civilised flavour of a sweet, wheat flour cake, after months without any is just unbelievable.

I gathered that Herbert Grose had got away into the interior and from Chungking had got through to India. Yvonne thought he had probably gone on to England but she did not know for certain. She is very unhappy about Herbert. I wonder when I shall get news of him. Hongkie, she said, had gone into the interior with his two children.

My goodness, they have had a hellish time during the Japanese occupation. Quite different to ours. They have had much greater freedom of movement and better food (the better off people) but their nervous strain must have been ten times worse. They were always being watched. Helen Ho was followed about for 8 months on end! They did not attempt to disguise the fact that they were watching her and often someone would be sitting and watching their house until she came out and would then follow her. Yvonne said that often at night she would suddenly wake with a start at the passing of a motor car and think: “My goodness, is it stopping at my house?”

People were taken off for questioning without the slightest warning. She said that people were called up for questioning quite often for nothing that they themselves had said or done but merely because a friend had written to them from somewhere in the interior and used some such phrase as: “See you soon”. The Japs would then accuse them of trying to escape from HK without a permit and smuggling out information etc.

Frank Angus, who is Dr Selwyn-Clarke’s secretary and was working for a long time at Rosary Hill, says that Helen Ho was simply wonderful. The risks she ran in getting in drugs and medical stores were simply terrific. She was detained for questioning on more than one occasion and was put in prison for some months. Frank says that he thinks, when her story is written up, she will be given a decoration of some distinction. I do hope so. ((She received an OBE in 1946 for her services during the war.)) Some of the civilians have been just wonderful.

Yvonne said that at first she was put on to organising the dispatch of parcels to the camps, but after a time the work became so exhausting that she said she could not carry on and the Japs then put her on censoring letters. There were five censors and after a while the Japs asked her to watch the other four and act as informer. She said that she told them straight out that she had never been brought up to do that sort of thing and had no intention of starting. They seem to have sold most of their possessions in order to keep going. The Japs had forced them to sell one of their houses for Y50,000 which was a negligible sum. The number of suicides and executions in town have been appalling. The atrocities too have been terrible.

Buckie says that a number of St Stephen’s girls or old students have been in to see them and they, one and all, say that they dared not write to this camp. Buckie says that nearly all of them have friends or members of their families who have been in trouble with the Japanese. One girl had a friend who left for Canton and asked this girl if she would look after her typewriter for her. Some one informed on her, the Japanese accused her of stealing the machine and put her in prison for six weeks.

Mr Lammert had a Chinese clerk from his office come and visit him. He had got away to Macao and had just returned to the Colony. He said that the food situation was so bad in the Colony at one time that hundreds of Chinese were dying daily. According to him the highest number of deaths in one day reached 800. I find that this is hard to believe for there can’t have been much more than 1 million Chinese left in the Colony. But conditions were evidently simply awful. Dead bodies in the harbour were quite a common sight. I don’t suppose we shall ever know what some of our Chinese friends suffered.