10 Aug 1945, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Jean Gittins describes a tumultuous day;

On Friday 10th the authorities issued an order: every man with a technical qualification was to assemble at 2 p.m. with his family outside his block ready for immediate transfer...An atmosphere of doubt and excitement pervaded the camp. Engineers and technicians pulled their possessions from under their beds and threw them into whatever contaniers they could lay hands on. No matter how little they had entred the camp with, the 'treasures' they collected had outgrown the small cases many had brought. Pandemonium broke loose as people rushed around - there were debts to be collected, farewells to be made. The rest of the camp speculated wildly.

And historians have, as far as I know, not been able to do more than repeat or add to the speculations - it's never been established what was behind the transfer of the technicians. Were they to be used as hostages, sent to Japan to help keep things going there, or were they being kept out of play simply to spite the incoming Allies who would need them to get Hong Kong going again? Some of the technicians feared they were to be executed, and Franklin Gimson seems to hint at this when he writes that some people thought it was a 'special segregation of technicians who might be useful {to the Allies} in the reconstruction of Hong Kong'. Gimson also notes that some optimistic souls though the techinicians might be on their way to repatriation, something that was virtually impossible at this stage of the war. Perhaps strangely, I've never seen it recorded that any of the internees allowed themselves one obvious thought: perhaps, having removed although those who might be useful to them, the Japanese were going to shoot everybody else.

In any case, two couples marry to stay together (and a third would, if only their banns had been called).

Clifford Cecil Frederick Crofton, who worked for the Prison Post Office, marries Gertrude Tamara Jex, a stenographer with the HKVDC.VAD. Eric Humphreys, who'd earlier been out of Stanley living at the French Hospital, marries Sheila Bruce.

During the fighting Crofton had been with the Stanley Platoon (prison officers), which saw some of the fiercest fighting.

Sources:

Technicians: Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 150; Gimson Diary, Weston House (Oxford)

Crofton Marriage: Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 622

Platoon: http://gwulo.com/node/12244