F) Surrender!

Surrender!

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, 1941, came the surrender. The houses of those away from home on active or public service were immediately looted – principally by the Chinese, but also by the Japanese soldiery. Oriental looting must be seen to be believed. The ‘have nots’ left nothing behind. When every stick of furniture and every article of personal effects had gone, they started on the woodwork and metal fittings. Doors, window frames and floorboards all went; houses being reduced to empty shells. To the Oriental, wood and food are of equal value, for the latter is useless without the former. Rice cannot be eaten uncooked.

The Japanese gradually took control. They soon made it clear that they were treating the Colony as conquered and not occupied territory. There was no question of the Colonial Government being allowed to carry on the civil administration (as in France). Having made the troops prisoners of war, the Japanese proceeded to implement their anti-foreign policy of “Asia for the Asiatics.”  Legally, a British subject is a British subject, whether white, Chinese or Indian. The Japanese exercised racial discrimination. Expressing sentiments of friendship for Chinese and Indians, they rounded up British, Americans and Dutch, told them to parade with what they could carry, and without opportunity to make their houses secure (if not already looted), crowded them into a number of Chinese hotels and brothels in such density that three or four had to sleep sideways on the beds, using chairs to support their legs. Sanitary arrangements were indescribable; a hundred persons of both sexes to one toilet. No food for 48 hours, and then only rice. No arrangements for cooking, beyond such as the prisoners could devise for themselves.