Wartime wedding

Thanks, David.

He was a baker so was kept outside Stanley until 1943.

I've posted some scans on the Yahoo Stanley Group Website: this one has  a letter from a repatriated American telling his parents of his marriage, and an article he wrote for The British Baker  about  some of his wartime experiences:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stanley_camp/photos/album/2134418497/pic/list

There  are also scans of his letters/cards from Stanley in the 'Files' section of that Website.

Sorry - I should also have said he arrived in Hong Kong in 1936/7, having misrepresented his age to get a job with Lane Crawford!

Thanks for that.

Does this mean he couldn't have arrived in Hong Kong before 1938? My date of 1936/7 is family tradition and might be wrong.

I've put scans of some documents relating to my father and a short account of his life in Hong Kong on my blog:

http://jonmarkgreville.wordpress.com/

[Admin: the direct link to the account is http://jonmarkgreville.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/thomas-edgar-a-baker-in-wartime-hong-kong/]

Thanks so much. I'm very pleased to know both the location and the (probable) dating.

Do you know the exact Stubbs Rd. location? I want to visit it if possible when I'm in Hong Kong later this year.

Thanks for this, and sorry for the delayed reply - I've been away. I'll visit the location you suggest and let my imagination do the rest!

Moddsey: I don't know if this bears on your hunch as to the location of Lane Crawford's Bakery, but I've just noticed that in my father's British Baker article he says that Captain Tanaka arranged film shows for him and his staff in the Cafe Wiseman.  This must be the cafe at 14 Queen's Road, in the redeveloped Exchange Building (1926), which was run by Lane Crawford and had for a time been called the Lane Crawford Restaurant and then the  Exchange Restaurant before reverting to its earlier name (information from Carl T. Smith, The German Speaking Community in HK 1846-1918- the address is too long to link to).

The building can be seen on this carefully annotated photograph, which shows that it was next to the Gloucester Hotel (take the cursor into the photo and wiggle it around and the names of the buildings come up):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49694825@N08/5023530526/

 That seems to be a reasonable walking distance from the part of Stubbs Rd. you think the bakery itself was located in.

Thanks, David.

I've discovered I've actually got a photo of Exchange House in my father's archive. It's part of an 'advertorial' for Lane Crawford that went out in the HK Telegraph in November 1938 and takes the story a stage further:

http://jonmarkgreville.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/thomas-edgar-a-baker-in-wartime-hong-kong-some-supplementary-material/

That's very useful, David, so thanks again.

I plan to walk from the Exchange House site to Stubbs Rd when I'm in Hong Kong and, although imagination does 90% of the work, some authenticity helps too!

Firstly, as a result of the information recently provided on Gwulo, I now realise I'd misunderstood my father's British Baker article: he was interned not in the Stubbs Rd Bakery but in the Exchange Building, and Lieutenant Tanaka's film shows were in the part of that building occupied by the Cafe Wiseman.

Secondly, I think the tall man standing behind my mother is Owen Evans. My father lists him as one of three bread delivery drivers working with him in early 1942 (their names are confirmed by Gwen Dew), and in notes complied by my uncle the best man at the wedding is given as 'Mr. Evans'. The other two helpers were US citizens, and the wedding took place on the afternoon of the day the Americans were repatriated.

Mr. Evans worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit and was one of those caught up in the Hong Kong fighting through accident:

On the Unit's arrival in Kweiyang, Llew and Owen Evans had been sent to Hong Kong on medical advice for a much needed holiday. Llew got away just before the Japanese arrived. Owen spent the rest of the war in internment. For about nine months he was allowed liberty and was engaged in relief and Red Cross work, including the organization of a home for destitute Chinese. Then he was interned in the Stanley Camp until, on the fall of Japan, he was released. He insisted on remaining in Hong Kong for relief work for many months.

 http://www.ourstory.info/library/4-ww2/Friends/fau07.html

Thomas Edgar notes in his British Baker article that the Lane Crawford bakery in Stubbs Rd (Happy Valley section) had been taken over by the Japanese, so that when he was given permission to resume baking for the hospitals (January 9, 1942) he opened the Green Dragon bakery in Wanchai.

The American Charles Winter, writing to Thomas’s family from the repatriation ship M.S. Gripsholm on August 18, 1942, notes that the Japanese had offered Thomas his old Lane Crawford job back – unlikely to have been a welcome offer under the circumstances, and one he obviously managed to sidestep.

But at some point in the war the Japanese decided to change the function of the Stubbs Rd premises. In a letter home a couple of months after liberation (October 17, 1945) he wrote:

We don’t know when we shall be going home yet as everything is still in a horrible mess. I am still trying to have the Lane Crawford bakery in production. I have four men from the repair ship H. M. S. Resource but the Japs were using our bakery as a button factory, rattan basket factory and for salt fish, so you can imagine the state of affairs. We hope to leave here about January or February.

If the biographical information at the top of the British Baker article is accurate (it may not be) he didn’t get home until summer 1946.

PS scans of all documents mentioned here can be inspected at  

http://jonmarkgreville.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/thomas-edgar-a-baker-in-wartime-hong-kong-some-supplementary-material/

There’s also a detailed chronology of Thomas’s activities in the early part of the war, drawing partly on information acquired by the kind of help of some Gwulo posters.

For H.M.S Resource see e.g http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-28Depot-Resource.htm

She seems to have stopped briefly in Hong Kong on her way back to the U. K.

Hello!

The link in my previous comment will take you to a page that includes scans of a Lane Crawford 'advertorial' with some photos of the bakery interior. There are also three small photos of a bakery, which are almost certainly not the Stubbs Rd premises but which might just be the old Burrows St ones.

The exact location in Stubbs Rd is not yet known, although I think Moddsey's conjecture that it's close to (not necessarily on) the site of the AIA building is likley to be correct. The only clues are 1) my father always refers to it as in Happy Valley, which (subject to correction) I believe rules out some parts of Stubbs Rd. 2) he says that after the fall of Kowloon the bakery was 'in the direct line of fire' between invaders and defenders - I think this probably means mortar fire, and suggests a generally 'at risk' location rather than one in which rifle shots were exchanged around or over the bakery, but if there is any record of such a situation arising in the Happy Valley part of Stubbs Rd., then that might indicate the location.

In any case, thank you for your interest.

PS I think you probably meant exterior photos of the bakery - none exist as far as I know, but if anyone has one I'd love to see it!

Please note the blog links given in my posts above are no longer in use.

New links:

http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-a-baker-in-wartime-hong-kong/

http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-some-documentation/

Moddsey:

Yes, the paper's information can only have come from the family, so should be accurate.

But:

1) my father's brother in some notes made in the mid 1980s dates his move to Hong Kong as 1936/37;

2) you kindly identified a placard in the background of one of his photos as an advert for the film Green Light, shown in Hong Kong in 1937. I've looked again at this and it IS a photo (sometime he sent home postcards) and the film identification looks very plausible. Of course, someone else could have given it to him.

So it seems that my father 'probably' arrived (or departed) in April 1938. When I'm next in Hong Kong I'll seek permission to investigate the Lane Crawford archive and hopefully find something conclusive (and also the exact address of the Stubbs Rd. Bakery).

Thanks ffor your continuing help.

PS Thanks for the link. I've never seen a photo of the adult US repatriates before.

Thanks, Moddsey.

I think that explains the apparent discrepancy in the dating - the funeral is a 1937 postcard and my father sailed to Hong Kong 1938.

Interesting article. Thanks again, Moddsey.