70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Bird's Eye View: The Balance Sheet (1)The Dark Side of Stanley: Selfishness, Bullying, Fighting, Theft and Informing

The Camp Runs Down

Stanley Camp is slowly coming to an end. The number in camp now is probably sinking to the 500 level. The exact date on which the last internees left is unknown - I've chosen October 18th as the notional finale - but most have already gone, back to Hong Kong or to Britain or Australia. Gimson left camp first, and returned to lead out a 'skeleton administration' of senior civil servants and support staff, many nurses leaving on the same day. The hospital ship Oxfordshire and the Empress of Australia have evacuated the sickest and weakest. Merchants hoping to restart their businesses, essential workers needed to get Hong Kong working again - anyone desperate to get out of Stanley who could convince transport allocation supremo Duncan Sloss of their need for priority use of the limited bus services soon followed. (1)

It's time for some overall assessment of the experience of Stanley Civilian Internment Camp, or, to give its correct but little used name after early 1944, the Military Internment Camp. In today's 'Birds Eye View' I discuss a matter that's undoubtedly under-recorded in the Chronology for various reasons: not the wrongs inflicted on the internees by their captors but the damage done by their own bad behaviour. Some readers might feel confident their own conduct in these harsh circumstances would have met, if  not surpassed, the highest standards of unselfish concern for others and strict adherence to the laws and norms of the community. The writer has no such confidence in his own virtue and what follows is meant in a non-judgemental spirit.

Overview

About 3,000 people were in Stanley during its roughly three years and eight months of existence as an internment camp for 'white' enemy civilians. All kinds of people lived together in conditions of deprivation and confinement, and it's natural to ask how they responded to this ordeal. Those who were there at the time have left mixed testimonials: some have stressed the way in which people 'pulled together' and helped their fellows, while others portray the camp as rife with selfish and even criminal behaviour. American oil man Norman Briggs' overall conclusion is that the events which unfolded in Hong Kong were 'more selfish than inspiring', while Barbara Anslow feels that, on the whole, people pulled together and helped out where they could.(2)Briggs was repatriated in late June 1942, and some believe that things got better later. The Reverend J. E. Sandbach thinks things started badly but got better as the camp organised itself both practically and morally - division and conflict were replaced by good levels of co-operation (3) while William Sewell, a Quaker missionary, is more contradictory but suggests the same trajectory of less selfish behaviour gradually emerging:

We could all have shared and shared alike in a great experiment, supplementing by our own efforts the limited supplies the Japanese sent to us. However, this was not to be. Insecurity and lack of supplies caused nearly everyone to think first of himself; there was no infectious wave of generosity in Stanley.

Nevertheless, Sewell did feel that it was 'the miracle of Stanley', that in a group of disparate and miserable people 'a spirit of camaraderie and community' did eventually arise (4).

Selfishness and General Unpleasantness

So the question arises: just how selfish were people in Stanley? The problem is that three thousand people over a period of almost four years are going to produce almost every kind of behaviour, even in 'normal' circumstances, so it's relatively easy to 'prove' almost any proposition you like about the internees with judiciously selected examples. The best approach is to try for a statistical estimate, although this will inevitably be rough and ready.Dr Gustl Canaval reported that in the early days 'there was a bad character in almost every room, (5) and as he estimated that people were averaging 10-12 to a room that gives us an approximate figure of 10% of people behaving badly. When Sir Arthur Blackburn, a Chungking diplomat who found himself trapped in Hong Kong, was in Tweed Bay Hospital at about the same time, his wife shared with three couples, two of whom were amiable, while the third treated the others badly, Lady Blackburn in particular. (6). When the pair later shared with two other couples, things were fine, so perhaps from these two experiences we can deduce a figure of one in five, 20%, who were acting in an anti-social way. My best guess is somewhere in between these two figures: about 15% of people in the early days had decided to look after themselves even at the expense of others.

Fighting and Quarrelling

The 'big picture' as to violence is good: there was an absence of major crimes, and no-one was murdered or suffered life-changing injuries at the hands of another internee.  Perhaps more surprisingly there were no successful suicides, and probably only a small number of attempts, the two I'm aware of both in atypical circumstances.The worst case of violence I've found so far was a fight between two Dutch couples in May 1944 in which one of the men seems to have punched the other repeatedly in the eye.(7) The dispute was over room space, not surprisingly a typical cause of dissension: I think my parents were lucky in that when they entered Stanley on May 7, 1943 they were billeted in a largish room in Bungalow D with only one other couple! Tempers often flared as people defended 'their' small portion of a room, although this didn't usually lead to actual violence.

If space was a scarce resource in Stanley, so was food, and that was another cause of argument. Edith Hamson noted that 'just about every time someone distributed food, one of the residents ((of Bungalow A)) complained about his or her share'. One day she was doing her best to divide a loaf of bread equally amongst 45 people when a woman she calls Rennie (probably not her real name) complained that she'd been deliberately given the smallest piece. When Edith refused to give her a different slice, the result shocked her:

I didn't even see it coming. She lashed out with her open hand and slapped me across the face. Arthur ((her husband)), who'd been anticipating a fight, ran forward to stop me from retaliating. He wasn't quick enough. Without hesitating I lunged at Rennie and we both crashed to the floor while the remaining bread scattered across the ground. I was out of control as I landed on top of her, my face plunging into her shoulder. Like a wild animal, I sank my teeth deep into her skin. She let out a high-pitched yelp and grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back and causing me to release my grip. We continued rolling around, slapping and scratching at each other...(8).

But this fierce fight - which ended only when the two women were dragged away from each other - was Edith Hamson's 'first experience of physical aggression' among internees, and she came to realise how hard life was for Rennie, who was in camp on her own without support or friendly assistance. The two women eventually reconciled. Physical fights took place then, but seem to have been rather rare, while arguments of different levels of intensity were probably common. But who can be surprised at the existence of tension between starving people living in cramped conditions often with room-mates they hadn't chosen? What about the crime, much more to be feared under the circumstances, of theft?

Theft

Food was obviously the major target for the camp's thieves - although jewellery also disappeared - and nothing edible was safe: communion wafers were stolen, and there were more than occasional allegations that kitchen staff were abusing their position so that they ended under 'close watch' while at work. Sadly even cats were taken for food. (9). Some chose to plant their vegetable 'gardens' on the roof to make them more secure, as otherwise, 'Nothing was ever allowed to mature - if the owner didn't harvest his crop, it would be stolen long before it was ready'. (10) This is confirmed by Norman Briggs, who wrote, 'Anything in the garden that could be eaten was stolen right and left', and who goes on to note that 'some fairly prominent members of the British community were caught in the American garden' (11). George Wright-Nooth notes the irony that the biggest episode of theft in Stanley was carried out by his comrades in the police, who systematically robbed Godowns close to the camp. Norman Briggs suggests that the police used the money from the sale of these stolen goods to get the black market 'tied up'. (12) Still, as the police were stealing from the Japanese, and other internees benefitted either through gift or sale, maybe this shouldn't be considered a crime at all!

A Note on the Justice System

The Americans themselves were far from innocent, as Briggs would have been the first to admit. The British quickly set up a court under Chief Justice Sir Atholl MacGregor, and, until the repatriation of late June 1942, the Americans had their own institution under Shanghai lawyer Norwood Allman, who tells a nice story: after prolonged vigils, the Americans caught in the act two sailors who they rightly suspected were stealing from the canteen - in this case not out of immediate hunger but to sell on the black market. The culprits now had to be dealt with, and Allman was able to learn from MacGregor's mistake: he'd sentenced his first case to a month's solitary confinement, which turned out to be a reward for the criminal and a punishment for the team of guards, who had to return after their shift  to their over-crowded quarters while the villain continued to enjoy the luxury of privacy! Allman imposed a sentence of twenty days confinement plus heavy labour. (13)

 Less serious cases were dealt with by minor courts or by the district representatives ('blockheads'). It seems that the courts were kept busy, but as no complete record of their operation exists, it's hard to draw any firm  conclusions about levels of criminality.

Informing

The internees set up this justice system because they didn't want to hand over any of their number to the Japanese for punishment. By far the most serious crimes in Stanley were committed by those individuals who passed on information about their fellow internees to the Japanese, as it's likely that this led to the imprisonment, torture and death of some of the resistance. However, no named individual has ever been proved to have been an informer and it's impossible to do more than take a guess how many people were involved - mine is that the number was low.

Several sources blame informers for the arrests of some of those involved in the camp's illegal radio listening operation (14). The level of caution showed by different agents varied, but it seems to have been fairly widely known that some of the news circulating in Stanley came from Allied broadcasts not Japanese sources; nevertheless, it was well over a year before anyone was arrested for this activity, which had been going on from almost the start of internment, and even then some of the listening and support groups escaped detection.

Summing Up

It seems that selfishness, anti-social behaviour (like the bullying of Blackburn's wife) and theft were at their worst when the food situation was also poorest and the camp was at its most crowded - from the establishment of Stanley in late January 1942 until the American repatriation of June 30 1942 freed some of the best billets in camp. Thereafter behaviour improved along with living conditions. I would guess that it got worse again in 1944 when the food situation started to deteriorate as the American land, sea and air campaigns made it harder and harder to get food into Hong Kong. And surely the strains of a seemingly endless confinement must have taken their toll moral as well as physical toll? As yet there's no evidence for my supposition and the general area of selfishness, anti-social behaviour and criminality in Stanley needs much further research.

References:

 (1) Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 153.

(2) Carol Briggs Waite, Taken in Hong Kong, Kindle Edition 2006, Location 24.

(3) Imperial War Museum Interview with the Rev. J. E. Sandbach, Reel 7.

(4) William Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 1948, 53; 72-73

(5) Extracts from statement of Mrs. M. E. Martin at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/topics/2833

(6) A. D. Blackburn, 'Hong Kong December 1941-July 1942', 81 at http://hkjo.lib.hku.hk/archive/files/644b505b3f148e43524adad318e1f54b.pdf

(7) Hong Kong PRO: HKRS163-1-103, 'Documents Relating To Proceedings'.

(8) Allana Corbin, Prisoners of  the East, 2002, 149-150.

(9) George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 127, 123;

(10) Gittins, 1982, 101.

(11) Briggs, 2006, Locations 2097 and 2101.

(12)Wright-Nooth, 1994, 135; Briggs, 2006, Location 2509.

(13) Norbert F. Almann, Shanghai Lawyer, 1943, 13-15.

(14) IWM Sandbach Interview, Reel 4; Canon Martin, in Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years, 1982, 132.

(15) Wright-Nooth, 1994, 155.

Notes:

1) I'm leaving out the black market as I don't regard this as criminal behaviour. Personally I regard it as helpful, even essential, and at the worst it affected only willing 'victims' - see my comment here.

2) I'm also leaving out racist speech and behaviour; almost all sources agree that the experiences of the war led to a diminution in the pervasive racism of 'old Hong Kong', but that such attitudes still persisted both in and out of Stanley. This complex and important issue needs separate treatment.