70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

On July 29th Maudie Min went to town! In an ambulance!! It isn’t as bad as it sounds. She has had some tummy trouble and the doctor attending wanted an X-ray of her. The only way in which X-rays can be obtained is for the patients to go into town to the French Hospital (which is still being run by the Sisters).

Dr Selwyn-Clarke (Director of Medical Services) comes into camp generally two or three times per week, on either Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays (incidentally we hear the Japs have stopped these visits of his; I hope this is incorrect as he is doing splendid work for the internees).

Well, about Maudie and her visit to town. She met Sophie O’Dell at the hospital, also Mr Phillips of the HK Bank, and they had a grand old chin wag. She had been allowed to take some money out with her and with it Sophie was able to buy various things. (Maudie, of course, was not allowed to leave the hospital). She says people in town are having a somewhat difficult time as everything is so terribly expensive. In fact I wonder how some of them manage to exist at all.

A number of people came to see Maudie at the hospital and amongst them were Yvonne Ho and her sister. I wish we could have seen them. Yvonne said Herbert had managed to get the job of inspecting water metres - trust Herbert to land a plodding job like that! However, he is keeping himself on it which is something in these days.

Maudie arrived back at camp two days later. We almost forgot to ask her about the X-ray in the excitement of meeting her and listening to local news. However, the X-ray had shown quite a satisfactory state of affairs, so she need not worry. She came back like Santa Clause with a sack of good things. She gave Y and me two lovely new laid leghorn eggs, a bunch of bananas and a fresh pineapple! Pineapples were only 80 cents (pdv £2.25) each in town at that time - true they are normally about 10 cents or 15 cents but 80 cents is ridiculously cheap these days. If only the Japanese would send in some fresh fruit with our daily rations.

Actually bananas arrive every day. Mrs Kerr managed to obtain Yamashita’s permission to have them brought in and Helen Canaval redistributes them to a select few. I don’t know the daily number but I imagine it is in the nature of 100 to 150. Fortunately we were asked if we should like any and we said, “Yes please”. They varied in price from 10 to 15 cents each before the devaluation of the dollar; now, alas, they are 30 cents each (pdv 85p). Y and I share one between us each day and the others get one each or one between two according to the number Helen can let us have. She reserves quite a few for invalids or those that need extra food. The hospital gets a daily quota of bananas and all patients can have one - if they can pay for it!

Well, Maudie has had quite a break from the monotony of camp life, though she said that two days out was quite enough, meaning that if she had stayed any longer it would have unsettled her. What she wants more than anything else, of course, is a sight of Capt. Min. Still, Sophie, who manages to get a sight of him at the Argyle Street Camp in Kowloon, says he looks slim and very fit indeed.

Early in August ninety V.A.D. nurses and a few A.N.S nurses came into camp from St Theresa’s Hospital (opposite Argyll Street Camp) and Bowen Road Military Hospital. They were brought in lorries and all their luggage was assembled with them on the bowling green in front of the Warders Club and the ‘Dutch Block’. No one was allowed to meet them until all their baggage had been inspected. Yvonne, however, managed to get into the enclosure and greet Anne Muir and other of her friends. It was a sight in Stanley Camp to see all these white uniformed figures, and it really was quite an event. The gossiping that ensued!! When the baggage had been checked it was carted up to Block B10 in the St Stephens group by the police and the nurses were shown to their allocated quarters. What a difference to our early arrival in Stanley when we all struggled with our own baggage and scrambled to find accommodation for ourselves or our party!

However, these V.A.D.’s deserved a better fate than that, for they had been working in the hospitals from December to August and after the surrender they had had to work hard on very little food. They had to wash out baths and bathrooms, scrub floors, wash stained and dirty linen with no soap at all; in fact they had to do everything themselves including cooking, for there was no coolie labour or wash amahs to relieve the heavy drudgery - and this in the heat of a tropical summer.

I went along with Yvonne that evening and visited Anne Muir. Poor Anne; I felt so terribly sad when I saw her. She was very brave and kept amazingly cheerful, though you could see it was an ordeal for her to meet old friends whom she had last seen with Gordon. And she has now come to the scene of Gordon’s death; a sandy grave and a rough board with his name and three others, already half obliterated by the weather. And then, Mrs Black, Alison and Mrs Lyons. The ghastly part about it is that many of these men lost their lives after the surrender, when the loss of further life was sheer waste and furthered our cause not one iota: for Stanley Peninsula had been attacked by the Japanese from the land side, not from the sea, and our garrison there had been completely cut off and all lines of communication with GHQ were cut, so it was impossible to let them know of the surrender until the Japanese let a British dispatch rider through their lines with a white flag.