Charles Schafer-Pan American Traffic Manager-Hong Kong-1942

Although the majority of British, American and Dutch nationals were moved to internment camps, Charles Schafer and four other American citizens employed by Pan American Airways and CNAC managed to escape internment by securing passes to work for the Hong Kong Medical Dept. During the next six months, they trucked 350 cubic tons of food and supplies to the internees and 800,000 pounds-weight of firewood to Hong Kong’s hospitals. Though they had a form of freedom, they never knew when they would be slapped or kicked, or their loads confiscated by the Japanese. Once, a guard slapped Schafer so hard his head rang for hours. They lived on the internee’s rice-beans-salt rations, and managed to avoid catching beriberi by buying other foods outside at enormously inflated prices. Selected for repatriation, Schafer left on the Asama Maru for the Portuguese colony of Mozambique to transfer to the SS Gripsholm and freedom.