70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Loathsome food pow-wow in morning ((In quadrangle of Married Quarters)).  I was ashamed of being there because it was all so bald and horrible. Angry and hungry people quarrelling about the rations and kitchen staff, and cooking. We had dumplings last night - delicious. Fried fish for the lucky ones, but I wasn't amongst them.

To church at 10am  (Mass in 'Prison Officers' Club).  This afternoon we battled our way (great wind) up to St Stephen's Hall to Benediction.  I didn't know the hymns, but thought sentimentally of Sunday evenings in England, sausage rolls, cheese straws, jam and currant tarts, tinned fruit – then going to Benediction and joining in processions, us children in short white frocks.  So homesick. I'm worried about Mum because she doesn't get enough to eat.

Mrs G getting annoyingly and monotonously argumentative, I'm running out of subjects to introduce as red herrings.

((Note: the first date in the heading of this instalment is precise – Thomas Edgar’s article in The British Baker (September 1946) confirms that the bakers were sent to the French Hospital on February 8, 1942. The closing date is approximate – the Memoir is not in diary form – but it gives a rough idea of the period described.)) 

Stage 2: Becoming a Civilian

 For the moment the bakers continue in the Exchange Building: 

 In the basement of the Exchange Building was a former food control store stocked with huge quantities of food stuffs. The store had been sealed up by some other Jap officials, but Tanaka had a key to a side door. Every morning before we left for work, Tanaka opened the store and allowed us to fill a hamper with tinned food for our meal at the Bakery. We always took a surplus and stowed them in the Bakery for future use. Tinned goods on the Black Market fetched enormous prices.

The bakers learn that they must leave the Exchange Building, which was probably bad news. But through a combination of kindness and fear of getting into trouble with the Kempeitai again (see previous instalment) Captain Tanaka sets up the conditions for Staff-Sergeant Sheridan’s escape – it should be stressed that although Captain Tanaka acted in a consistently humane way to all those under his control, he never betrayed his country and it was in no way his intention to promote a military escape.

About 7^th February 1942 we are informed by Tanaka that we must leave the Exchange Building next day. Hammond, Edgar, Peacock and myself are to move to the French Hospital in Causeway Bay to join Dr Selwyn-Clarke’s team i.e. Evans, Dr Henry and Winter. Tanaka orders us to make out a list for each man for a week’s supply of tinned goods, which he issues from the store the night before we go. We thank him for his kindness and later he comes up to our room. Then he sees some of mine and Hammonds Army kit, which seems to give him a bit of a shock. I am sure he had forgotten that we were military servicemen. He tells us that if we take our Army kit out and the Kempeitai search and find it, we would be sent to the Military camp at Sham Shui Po, and also that he would be in trouble for keeping us. He orders us to leave everything military behind even our pay books AB64 ((= Army Book 64, the soldier’s pay book)) and identity discs. He takes us down to the Dept. clothing store and we select a civilian outfit and a pair of shoes each. He tells us if we are ever questioned by the Kempeitai to deny ever being a soldier.

Next day Evans and co. move us in the Ambulance to the Convent in the French Hospital compound. The nuns allot us a small room in St Paul’s School. We get camp beds, clean sheets, and a blanket each. We dine in the former girls’ Hostel. There are a few Chinese girls still here mainly from Singapore and Penang who were stranded here when war came. The doctors and nurses from the Hospital all dine in the Hostel. Drs, Court, Bunji, Nicholson, Griffiths, Lang, all formerly of Queen Mary Hospital. ((Phillip Court, Frederick Bunje, Murdo Nicholson, Gerard Griffiths, possibly J. C. Lang, although he wasn’t a doctor.))  There are also some Irish Jesuit fathers billeted here. Fathers Grogan, Gallagher, O’Brien, Carey (=Casey), Joy, Byrne, Ryan and a Father Moran who is not a Jesuit ((He was, and S-S. Sheridan met him again after escaping from Hong Kong.)) The nurses are mostly Chinese, one Philipino and some Eurasians, a few French, and one English, Mrs Wood, wife of Capt. Wood R.A.S.C. who is interned in Sham Shui Po. Her two children, Rosemary and Sylvia are also here. The hospital had quite a bit of shell damage being hit several times. The school and surrounding buildings are all pockmarked with shrapnel. Sister Henry, a French nun, told me all the patients were moved into the church in the middle of the compound, strangely enough it was never hit, but a Chinese nun was killed in the grounds of the Convent. For a few days we are taken to and from the Bakery in the Ambulance, then Dr Selwyn-Clarke brings us our permits. They are printed in English, Japanese and Chinese, and in red lettering we are described as Enemy Nationals but are authorised to work under the Japanese. It does not state if we are allowed to walk about the streets, but Selwyn-Clarke tells us to always carry them and produce them when searched or stopped by the Kempeitai. However, we get a test a few days later on the way to work, at a road block. We are ordered out of the ambulance and roughly searched by the Jap Military Police. They had a good look at our passes and then waved us on.

When we get back to the French Hospital in the evening we now have plenty of company, with Drs, nurses, Jesuits, missionaries, drivers and bakers. We all crowd into one big schoolroom and have plenty of discussions. One of the main topics is, how long will this last before the Japs decide to intern us at Stanley or maybe Sham-Shui-Po.