5 Jun 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp
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Internee Paul Oscar Peuster, a market overseer, dies in the French Hospital, Causeway Bay, at the age of 61.
A notice appears to the effect that the Japanese have declared the ongoing erection of latrines and placing of ropes to be 'in abeyance' while the tiger's in the vicinity.
George Wright-Nooth's diary:
Geoffrey Wilson's birthday, and as he got a large parcel yesterday, sent from Macao by his wife Joy, we decided to have proper breakfast...We had milk and treacle...then bacon and bread. The bacon was the first I have tasted since the war...it was superb....
In the evening we had Geoffrey's official birthday party to which we invited Penny Guerim, Nina Smith and Betty Grant....
Young seminarian Bernard Tohill and his fellow Salesian Father Haughey and five members of the Maryknoll Order (a Father, a Brother and Sisters Mary Clement Quinn, Mary de Ricci Cain and Mary St. Dominic Kelly) and four or five others leave Camp for Hong Kong. Father (to be) Tohill and Father Haughey have previously signed a declaration that they will not indulge in 'subversive activities' and they've been 'guaranteed out' by Bishop Valtorta. The party is taken on the back of the ration lorry to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank to get provisonal passes. The two Salesians then go to St Louis Industrial School and about a month later Father Tohill is given the job of looking after the School's boarders - over 80 by 1944. The sisters go to the Convent on Caine Road.
Sources:
Peuster: Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 642
Latrines: MacNider Papers: 'Sea bathing, Repatriation', 47
Wright-Nooth: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 132-133
Tohill etc.: Father Bernard Tohill, Some Notes From Diary of the Years 1941-1942, 17; Maryknoll Diary, June 5, 1942
Note:
Joy Wilson was the secretary of Consul John Reeves. She was to become the leader of the British Army Aid Group agents in Macao:
