70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

In the Kowloon Hotel they don't need to be told about the surrender; Arthur Hansom writes to Edith:

Beloved all is quiet. There has been no guns firing since yesterday evening and we are all of the opinion that it must be because HK has surrendered. We had about 100 people brought over here from HK last night most of them were from Stanley way and they had very depressing news with them. {This was presumably the group from the Repulse Bay Hotel.}

At Argyle Street Camp, Dr. Newton writes in his diary reflections that probably many would have echoed:

The surrender is probably for the best as it saves more slaughter, but goodness knows it means a prettty grim prospect for us until this war is over.

Marie Paterson ('Pat'), the nurse who slipped out of the Jockey Club yesterday night, has alerted Dr. Selwyn-Clarke:

In rushed one of the girls who had been raped during the night, crying 'Hide me quickly!' Before we could do so, a dishevelled soldier ran in and grabbed her, saying 'Go Jap.' She tried to cling to me, crying piteously. I motioned to the soldier to release her, saying 'No can, plenty work to do.' But he dragged her away, and they were halfway down the ward when there was a sudden shout from the entrance. He let go of the girl and dashed away. Released, she ran back to us. Then we saw why - a group of officials were {coming} into the ward. We recognised, with overwhelming relief, our Director of Medical Services, Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, with another European and two Japanese offficers.

It's agreed that the Jockey Club post will be evacuated with the nurses going to Queen Mary Hospital and the patients being distributed between two other hospitals. Marie Paterson's courageous escape has brought help just in time.

The Maryknoll Fathers and a few other Catholic ecclesiastics - thirty four in all - have been locked in a garage with their hands tied behind their backs. Two men, considered neutrals, are not tied up, and they help some to loosen their bonds, while others manage to do so themselves. But some spend the whole night tied in this increasingly painful way. Two have dysentery and no-one's had anything to eat. They start trying to get food from the sentry at 10 a.m. and eventually Father Toomey trades a valuable watch for a half-full water canteen. Later another canteen is handed in and at 4.30 they get their first meal since 11 a.m. on the 25th. - hardtack biscuit and evaporated milk.

For many of Hong Kong's civilians today will be the day when they encounter the conquerors for the first time. Even the Chinese-army general and hard-bitten adventurer Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen feels 'more frightened than I'd ever been in my life'. He's in his favourite haunt, the Hong Kong Hotel, and he and the others there are dozing on chairs or on the floor of the hotel lobby. At about midnight there's a rattling and a banging on the doors and a Japanese officer with a pistol followed by two soldiers with rifles at the ready enter and ask for Cohen. T. B. Wilson, who's in charge this evening, hesitates to answer, so Cohen reveals himself. He's taken to a temporary HQ in a near-by office block and politely asked for the whereabouts of a number of prominent Chinese Nationalists. He replies that he doesn't know, and is released. Realising that he's been set free in the hope that he'll lead the Japanese to his associates, he gets messages to everyone to keep away from him. He returns to the Hong Kong Hotel and stays there, growing more and more 'frantic', until  the January 5 assembly on the Murray Parade Ground.

Bill Ream is at Queen Mary Hospital:

On 26 December my grave-diggers failed to turn up. Two of us had the very unpleasant task of burying five Canadians who had been blown up by a hand-grenade tossed into a pillbox.

Soldier's wife Jean Mather is with her mother at the Gloucester Hotel. They watch the large dining room fill up with Japanese soldiers - 'a stunned and somewhat bedraggled looking set of "guests"'.

The bakers - Patrick Sheridan, James Hammond, Thomas Edgar and Serge Peacock -  are in the Exchange Building. Captain Tanaka, the Japanese officer in charge of communications, takes control of the building. Nobody is allowed to enter or leave, but Tanaka treats his prisoners humanely, providing them with good food and eventually arranging English-language film shows in the Café Wiseman.

Frederick Ivan Hall of Lane, Crawford manages to get out a cable to his family back in England:

Quite well: home soon.

Alex Summers of MI6 sends his last radio message out of Hong Kong. He will go to Stanley Camp where he will succesfully maintain his cover as a local businessman throughout the war. He later noted that the Japanese displayed a definite interest in the wherabouts of the former MI6 head Charles Drage (see  below).

Sources:

Kowloon Hotel: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 113

Dr. Newton: Oliver Lindsay, The Lasting Honour, 1980 ed., 164

Jockey Club: Mabel Winifred Anslow, It Was Like This, 2001, 97-98

Maryknoll Fathers: Maryknoll Diary, December 25-26

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 287-288

Ream: Bill Ream, Too Hot for Comfort, 31

Mathers: Jean Mathers, Twisting the Tail of the Dragon, 1994, 18

Bakers: Thomas Edgar, article in The British Baker, September 13, 1946 (see also today's entry in Sheridan's hostilities Diary)

Hall: Derbyshire TImes and Chesterfield Herald, 14 September 1945, 5

Summers: Keith Jeffrey, MI6, Chapter 17.

Note:

Charles Drage's book on Cohen quotes its subject to the effect that 'On Boxing Day we knew it was all over. In the afternoon the news of our surrender was broadcast'. This chronology is followed by Cohen's later biographer Daniel S. Levy, and if it is correct the events described above took place on the night of December 26/27. However, I think it's probable that Cohen's memory was deceiving him and that they really took place on the night of December 25/26.

When we awoke the next morning ((the 26th.)) it was light in the basement because everything had been blown out of the windows the night before. It was 8:30 in the morning and we had heard or seen no one all night. The sun was shining brightly and we could go upstairs and eat our breakfast, which was a nice change from eating in the dark basement.

We went upstairs and helped clean the house. We could see now that the first bomb had blown the top floor off the house next door, also the corner nearest us. Nobody was living there at the time. The people who had been there had moved out a few days before because they were afraid of all the bombs and shells. They wanted to try to find a safer place to live. The second bomb had landed in the street in front of us and the third to the left of us, demolishing the house.

We saw the first Japanese soldiers at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, December 26, a group of officers came in and, after looking around, they came up to us and pointed at the door, and said, “Five o’clock out.” They seemed to know only three words. That gave us about two hours to move all our things and also find a place to move into.

Reverend Buuck and his boy went over to see a friend of ours living about a block away while the rest of us gathered our things together. Reverend Buuck came back in about a half an hour saying we could move in. 

We were glad to find a place so close even if it was badly shell shattered. The window and door frames looked like they would fall out any minute, and most of the glass was broken in the windows. Nearly all the plaster was down. We put cloth or paper over the openings. This kept out the cold somewhat.

While we were moving, the Japanese soldiers were swarming around in the house. One went to sleep on our bed. We were told we couldn’t take the beds, but they did let us take our army cots. They watched us work and laughed at us if we carried heavily, but they didn’t try to stop us. We were glad that we were left alone. (Doris remembers Eunice and she were hidden in the closet.)

The Buuck family and our family lived in the front room. Twelve people lived in this small room about 12’ x 18’, with a bay window on one side. Other people moved into the other rooms. For the next ten days this was our home.

We didn’t dare go outside because Jap soldiers were everywhere. We didn’t know what the Japanese would do with us. We put up our cots every night and folded them in the morning. We thought we might be interned, but we had no idea when or where, so we made rolls of our bedding every morning and tied it to carry easily. We also put some clothing and food into pillow cases. We tied two pillow cases together so that the children could carry them over their shoulders.

While we were living here the Jap soldiers could walk in at any time. They would usually notice the children first and start playing with them. They would ask the little ones if they could count the bullets in their belt and lift the gun. They told them to be careful not to cut their fingers on the bayonet. Most of them said they had children in Japan two or three years old that they had never seen. We are sure that the Lord protected us here too, because we were never mistreated by any of them.

7.30am: Sat on street for about one hour. Marched to Jarolen Road.

Found house robbed by firemen on return.

My Love,

12 noon now - I haven't tried to write - one's feelings are so upset. I was rung up at 4.30 this morning by [?Winnith] - that the General hoped I'd get busy clearing the dead and sweeping up the streets - I nearly replied B------ the General - but I just said Oh Yes. But I can't go out myself - they'd commandeer my car I am sure and I can't send the lorries out until safe conduct passes or something are fixed up. I could get no one on the phone in the C.S.O. and at last got D.M.S. He went himself to the Japanese H.Q. and has fixed up something. We must carry on of course or there will be a horrible epidemic - so we are all to work under the Red Cross now and I am to get passes for my lorries etc.  Tiffin coming on now so I'll stop.   B.

I got all my passes and so I went into town this afternoon -  I was stopped  several times but they soon passed me on  We have had a visit too from a posse - they told me they think this place will be suitable for a hospital  so we may have to turn out soon.  I have all sorts of schemes in my head to salvage our belongings - I may try  some day. Well  Darling  I can't write much these days  - forgive me. 

I think of you all the time and wish I knew how and when you heard the news and what you felt.  But don't worry about me - we'll be all right.   So Cheerio Darling.   B.