23 Jan 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The 400 or so people being held at the Kowloon Hotel are sent to Stanley Camp. They are kept waiting in the street outside for hours and then joined by people held at other hotels before going by ferry to Stanley.

George Wright-Nooth and other police internees at the Luk Hoi Tung Hotel are also sent to the Camp.

Because the police are among the last to arrive, there is little choice of accommodation, and they end up in Bungalow C, which was badly damaged in the fighting. There are hastily dug graves of British soldiers nearby, the area is littered with live ammunition, small arms and unexploded grenades, there's a shell hole in the roof and all the windows are smashed. Because of the blood, filth and human excreta, a respirator must be worn when cleaning the bathroom. Forty-seven people end up living in the bungalow.

Also in Bungalow C is Gwen Priestwood, who'd been forced to abandon a plan to escape the day before the Murray Parade Ground assembly. She and seven other women sleep in a room less than 14 feet square, 3 on camp cots, Priestwood herself on a doubled-up quilt, the rest on mattresses.

Bill Ream has spent two nights sleeping on floors, but today he's invited by the hospital staff to join them and 'help Mr. ((Frank)) Anslow with the stores and do odd jobs as they came along'. He is therefore able to move into the former Leprosarium with the other medical staff. They scrub and clean the building vigorously and then the 18 men settle in to relatively comfortable quarters.

Defence Secretary John Fraser enters Stanley from the Prince's Building.

Lewis Bush is interogated for 12 hours at St. George's Building, at that time the Kempeitai headquarters for Central/Victoria. Bush is a naval officer in the Volunteers and one of the few fluent speakers of Japanese in the British ranks - he taught for years in Japan and is married to a Japanese woman, Kanneko. The Kempeitai believe that Bush is a dangerous spy, and after the interrogation he's taken not to Shamshuipo but to Stanley.

Phyllis Harrop is still managing to stay uninterned:

This morning Rose ((see note)) and I walked over to Tai Koon ((one of the hotels Allied civilians were kept in before being sent to Stanley)) to see if we could obtain any first hand news of the moving of internees. On the way down Queen's Road we were stopped by a party of sentries, one of whom was very belligerent.

Rose has forgotten her pass, and, after an unplesant encounter during which Harrop fears her finger will be cut off with a bayonet to get her ring, they are forced to retreat. On the way back to the restaurant Rose and her husband are running, they pass the sentry at the corner of the Hong Kong Hotel, now Japanese military headquarters, 'except for one floor which still housed wounded soldiers and nurses'. This sentry objects to the crowds on the road and lunges at them with his bayonet to force them back:

The bayonet point went through my sleeve, narrowly missing my arm. All he did was to grin from ear to ear.

The streets are dangerous for those still allowed to walk them.

Sources:

Police: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 82, 86-88

Priestwood: Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed Wire, 1943, 47-48

Ream: Bill Ream, Too Hot For Comfort, 1988, 37

Fraser: Constance Murray diary, p. 1 (Weston House, Oxford)

Bush: Report of Lieut. Lewis M. Bush R.N.V.R. (H.K.)

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop: Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 121

Note 1:

Bush implies that he was sent to Stanley because the Japanese thought he could do less harm there. Kaneko, who had been used by the Japanese as an interpreter in the period after the surrender, was also arrested and accused of espionage and making anti-war propaganda (the second charge was true, the first wasn't) . She was eventually sent to Japan and allowed to live with her parents, but suffered terrible harrassment from the Kempeitai and ordinary Japanese furious at her loyalty to the Allied cause.

See also http://gwulo.com/node/14388

Note 2:

'Rose Simpson': Phillip Cracknell has plausibly suggested that Harrop's friend Rose Simpson and her husband are Rose and Emil(e) Landau, the owners of the Parisian Grill at 10, Queen's Road Central. They and their staff helped her in her escape, so she had good reason to disguise their identities.