70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

An article on page 2 of today's South China Morning Post claims to be breaking 'the silence that has almost automatically been kept' about the trials and executions of Allied citizens, both civilian and military, during the 'dark days' of the occupation.

It's not all accurate, but there are a number of interesting points:

the claim that messages smuggled out of the camps went to 'a central distributing organisation in the city' run by David Loie;

the claim that the Japanese probably got their first inkling of the resistance organisation through the detection of a message carried by an Indian woman to Captain Ansari ((See Henry Ching's diary for April 21, 1943. ))

the claim that some inernees in Bungalow 'C' saw something of the executions, or at least the preparations for them, on October 29, 1943, but didnt fully understand the significance of what they saw;

the claim that the wife of Colonel Newnham (executed December 18, 1943) was in Stanley Camp and was never told anything of what was happening to her husband;

the claim, based on statements by Indian warders, that 400 prisoners died of starvation or malnutrition at Stanley Prison in the first year of the war.

Note: 

In 1918 Lanceray Newnham married Edith Phyllis Henderson. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Newnham)

I can find no trace of her in the Provisional Lists drawn up in early 1942, but these aren't complete.

Update: in an email of March 17, 2015, Marion Hebblethwaite, author of a series of books on the recipients of the George Cross, kindly confirmed that Mrs. Newnham was in Stanley.