70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Exactly a year ago today the Canadians were repatriated. And they all told us (and we agreed with them) that we – the women and children at anyrate – would be following in about 2 months time! Still the Americans before them said the same thing! Now, I think, we can forget about repatriation, for I do not think it is likely to materialise now. However, life here is full of surprises (most of them unpleasant!) and most of us had given up hope of ever seeing our parcels – but they arrived; so one never can tell.

We were each issued with our third parcel last Thursday, a week after we had received the first two. This delay had been occasioned by the fact that, after the first issue, people with blown tins or damaged goods had them replaced from tins in the remaining parcels and after that a recount and reallocation of the balance was necessary. About 50% of the cheese was bad – so much of it, in fact, that no cheese replacements were made. Quite a lot of the chocolate was worm eaten and mouldy and so, also, were the prunes and raisins - but what do Stanley internees care about a few extraneous worms and a little mould? We thrive on them! 

It is a shame, though, that the delivery of the parcels has taken such a long time. Usually, food consignments for the tropics are packed in lead lined cases, if they are not canned goods, the delivery is rapid and the goods properly stored – in cold storage where necessary. These I.R.C. cases were not lined and the individual parcels were of cardboard. Consequently the goods packed inside in cardboard or paper containers had all suffered a little. The smell, or flavour, of the coffee and chocolate had permeated all the other cardboard packed goods. We had scraped the bad part off one of our blocks of cheese and put the scrapings in an omelette which we made with canteen egg yolk powder. It smelt simply deliciously cheesy, but when we took our first mouthful, behold, it tasted of coffee and chocolate!!  However, these are minor drawbacks and after the food we have become accustomed to, these parcels are simply wonderful.

I had just completed my morning’s woodcutting on the day the parcels arrived, when I was asked to go down to the rations garages, where they were stacked, and help hump up to our blocks the quota that was due to us. I tried one of these 100 lb cases on my back, but thereafter I found someone else to share one with me! It was pretty tiring work.

The parcels contained on average, a greater proportion of tea than coffee, and out of our 6 parcels, Y and I had 4 packets of tea and 2 of coffee. The coffee of course, has proved to be much more popular, for the canteen price of coffee has made it prohibitive except for the wealthy, whereas we have all been able to purchase tea; true, it has been a pretty horrid quality of Chinese tea and the I.R.C. stuff is infinitely nicer, but still, tea has not been almost unknown to us as has coffee. However, Y and I have managed to keep up our supply of home made coffee (from roast soya beans) and strange to say we like our own coffee better, if anything, than this I.R.C. coffee. This Canadian coffee is not like the normal coffee we are used to; it tastes as if it is made more from a cocoa type of bean than the ordinary coffee bean (which is slightly more bitter). Yvonne found someone who was willing to exchange a 4 oz packet of tea for 4 oz of coffee (the full packet of coffee weighs 6 oz) so we got our tea plus 4 oz of coffee. We hope to be able to do the same with the other packet. The volume of 4 oz tea and 6 oz coffee is about the same; but where 1 teaspoonful of tea makes us 4 mugs of tea, it takes 8 teaspoonfuls of coffee to make the equivalent quantity of beverage: so tea for us is an altogether better proposition.