70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Reflections on the second year

1943 has been a grim year in some ways: the camp has continued to be over-crowded, the rations never enough to keep away an agonising sense of hunger and – if a post-war China Mail is to be trusted (see Chronology, December 25, 1943) – by the end of the year everybody has started to get on everybody elses' nerves. And the constant fear that makes up the generally unacknowledged background of the internees' lives now has precise and terrible shapes: at different times in the year internees report hearing the horrifying screams of Chinese men and women being tortured in Stanley Prison and on three occasions in 1943 the Gendarmes have come into Stanley and taken away some of its inhabitants (see June 28, July 7 and July 11). On October 29 a period of rumour comes to an end and some internees watch as 32 men and one women are taken out of the prison by van and executed on Stanley Beach - it's not clear if the executions are in or just out of sight of the camp. On November 2 the names of 6 internees and Charles Hyde, whose wife and child are in camp, are posted on the notice board – Chester Bennett, a former Stanleyite, is omitted. All have died for their role in the resistance, either in camp or in town. The Stanley resistance is almost broken by these events, although it will never quite disappear.

As 1943 draws to a close, every part of the camp contains men and women anxious for or mourning their loved ones, but it seems that the Bungalows at the Stanley Village end of the camp are suffering disproportionally, because it's here that most of the people sent in from town in the wake of the spring 1943 arrests are living (see Chronology, May 7, Jones Diary May 19, July 2, July 16). Bungalow D, home of Florence Hyde and Michael Hyde, also houses Lady Mary Grayburn whose husband died of malnutrition and medical neglect on August 21. In the same small Bungalow lives Hilda Selwyn-Clarke and her daughter Mary: Dr Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke was arrested in town on May 2, and is still in Stanley Prison, while close by in Bungalow 'E' are Kathleen and Mary Edmondston, the wife and daughter of David Charles Edmondston, who was arrested later that month. The Bungalows will suffer again, early in 1944.

The deaths and imprisonments are not just a personal or a local loss: Dr Selwyn-Clarke had been active from the start in promoting the internees' interests: he was the one who suggested the healthy and attractive Stanley location for their camp, and, as soon as he realised the conditions they were living under, he began to organise a comprehensive network to procure food and medicine and smuggle it into the camp. Vandeleur Grayburn and David Edmondston, the two senior bankers at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, led the money-raising effort that funded this work (and Chester Bennett after his release from camp was also active in helping the internees in both legal and illegal ways). With Grayburn, Bennett and Hyde dead, Edmondston in prison and the rest of the bankers in Stanley, the relief effort is continuing, but on a much smaller scale.

But something amazing has also happened in 1943, something perhaps noted with quiet satisfaction by a few workers at Tweed Bay Hospital but not realised by the majority of internees: in spite of the dreadful conditions and the appalling rations, fewer people have died in 1943 than 1942.

According to Geoffrey Emerson's carefully compiled figures, 1942 saw 30 deaths, aside from that of American diplomat Russell Engdhal, who died in an accident (see May 14/15, 1942). In 1943, leaving aside the internees executed for their role in the resistance and Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, who died of the dietary and medical regime in Stanley Prison, only 17 people died. It doesn't seem as if the higher rate in 1942 has anything to do with wounds received during the hostilities: it's possible that the first internee to die, Charles Bond (Chronology, January 29, 1942), had his demise hastened by his ill-treatment as a civilian during that period, but the fact that his was the only death in January, that there were two each in February and March, but 4 in April and five in May suggests that generally speaking the December fighting played little or no role. Perhaps it was more a case of those whose health was worst dying because of the harsh conditions of the early months in camp. Many former internees claim that mental attitude was important to survival, so perhaps there were also some deaths because people couldn't adjust to the starvation rations, the over-crowding, the deprivation of goods and services and the loss of freedom. I've suggested elsewhere (http://gwulo.com/node/14063) that the period from July 1942-June 1943 was the best time for the internees, with no executions, extra space after the departure of the Americans and the rations as good as they ever were going to be, and perhaps this is also borne out by the mortality figures (which will worsen in 1944).

Whatever the reasons for the sharp fall in deaths from 'natural causes' that marked 1943, it's worth reflecting on the question of the camp mortality rate in general. Internee leader Franklin Gimson later claimed that the overall death rate was actually lower than would have been expected from a similar population in peace time, and, although this is impossible to prove statistically, the death rate was low enough to make this a plausible idea. Given the nature of life in Stanley, one is forced to ask 'Why?'

The first reason is one pointed to by former internee Norman Gunning in his book Passage to Hong Kong: the harsh conditions in camp actually saved the lives of those who were drinking, eating and smoking themselves to death in the period leading up to the war! It's a sobering thought: free consumption in conditions of prosperity is if anything more dangerous to one's health and even life than being forced to half-starve on rice infested with mouse droppings, a small slice of dubious bread, and a meagre portion of watery vegetables while cutting down on (or abandoning) smoking and drinking.

The second reason is less surprising: Stanley had an unusually high ratio of medical personnel to potential patients. Most 'white' British doctors had remained civilians so were interned in Stanley, a large additional contingent of nurses arrived in the summer of 1942, and something that had rightly been controversial before the war actually turned out in the internees' favour: a number of women, often with prominent husbands, evaded the 1940 Evacuation Order by taking a nursing course and getting labelled an 'essential worker'. True the courses were short and perhaps not over-demanding, but they did ensure that even more people had some degree of medical knowledge.

After the war, the former Stanleyites looked back on the performance of their doctors, nurses and hospital assistants with justified pride. They worked with only the most basic equipment, and not always that. They were often reliant on drugs smuggled in by Dr. Selwyn-Clarke and his network, or by other courageous people. They were as hungry, scared and frustrated as anyone else, all factors that make concentration on demanding medical procedures more difficult. Yet never in the whole literature of Stanley Camp as far as I know it have I read that a single person died because the staff of Tweed Bay Hospital failed to provide the best care possible under the circumstances.

Note:

The list of deaths in Stanley is to be found in Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment 1942-1945, Hong Kong University Press, 2008, 186-188