70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Another month gone, thank God. Lately I have been pretty fully occupied and when evening has arrived I have not been able to summon up the necessary energy to write up my diary. My duties as Block Labour Officer kept me pretty busy, especially during the mornings. Afternoons and evenings – till the light goes – are generally spent in our garden or in rehearsing ‘Laburnum Grove’, J.B. Priestly’s play, which I am producing.

The trouble with all these three occupations is that they entail so much running about – not like working at a desk – and on this very low diet it is rather fatiguing. In addition, my digging of refuse pits, for which we draw an extra food ration at the evening meal three times a week, has now come to an end so I miss the extra food – even though it did amount to little more than extra rice.

I have now turned bricklayer again and am building some brick stoves for water boiling for the community. The camp quota of electricity is gradually being reduced and we envisage the time when the electric water boilers will no longer be available. In any case, many of them are beginning to burn out and we cannot get new elements for them. These boilers are the electric clothes boilers which many of the occupants of these flats had had installed before the war. They have been shared out amongst the various blocks in the camp. They have done yeoman service considering they have been going about 12 hrs per day for nearly 2 years. We now have only two left. They hold about 7 gallons each and take about an hour to boil the water. So everyone in these blocks gets 2 to 2 ½ pints of boiling water per day for making tea, coffee and cooking etc. People are not supposed to use hot water for washing of any kind, though most people do for such things as shaving or washing hair.