70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Shows diary entries from seventy-one years ago, using today's date in Hong Kong as the starting point. To see pages from earlier dates (they go back to 1 Dec 1941), choose the date below and click the 'Apply' button.
  • 12 Nov 1941, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

    Date(s) of events described: 
    Wed, 12 Nov 1941

    This afternoon Soong Ching-Ling (Madame Sun Yatsen) opens a carnival on the naval recreation ground at Caroline Hill. The purpose of the event, which is scheduled to run for a month, is to raise funds for the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, (Gung Ho) an organisation set up by New Zealander Rewi Alley and others to create a network of small-scale industrial enterprises to contribute to the Chinese war effort.

    Madame Soong is received by T. B. Wilson, head of the American President shipping line, and Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen - Wilson's head of the Carnival Organising Committee and Cohen's a member.

    The event features an exhibition of Gung Ho products and a Philippine circus group brought over from Manila. Rewi Alley has come in from China to be present and leaves for Chongqing in the nick of time - December 6.

    Source:

    Rewi Alley, An Autobiography, 1997, 147

    Note: George Wright-Nooth considers that the famous 'Stanley Tiger' was 'probably from a circus that had been located at Causeway Bay'. Could this have been that circus? (Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 98).

    Note:

    For Wilson see also December 6, 1941.

  • 12 Nov 1941, Barbara Anslow's diary

    Book / Document: 
    Date(s) of events described: 
    Wed, 12 Nov 1941

    Churchill says if Japs and USA come to grips, Britain will follow USA 'within the hour.'

    I'm a bit afraid that Xmas won't come.

    Reply from Home Government about evacuation – no chance of people coming back yet.

     

Subscribe to 70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries