7 Sep 1944, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp
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Florence Eileen Hyde dies of cancer. More than one internee believes that her tragic death is in part due to her husband's execution on October 29, 1943. Her young son, Michael, is adopted by Lady Vandeleur Grayburn so continues to live in Bungalow 'D'.
Birth of Veronica Ann Reddish.
Cecil Reddish is a police inspector. His wife Anna ('Dolly') a Gibraltarian. In his diary, discovered long after his death, he wrote:
We're surviving on two bowls of rice a day, usually full of weevils. The pig-swill they call soup turns my guts over! Less than 48 hours after Veronica's birth, Anna has to join the rest of us and stand for hours in the pouring rain. I can't bear to see my beloved Dolly and our baby daughter suffering like this. We're starving. I don't know how much more I can take.
Mr. Reddish weighed six and a half stone on liberation, and was never able to recover his health and work again; he died in 1964 at the age of 54, killed by the TB he contracted in camp.
Veronica offers a summary of the effects of internment on her father's later life:
My father was always very anxious. For him it was the loss of his career, and his future and a bit of dignity too. What he had planned for himself he hadn't been able to achieve because of the prisoner of war camp and his illness.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/japanpowdiaries.shtml
Note:
As far as I can make out, Veronica and her two sisters were interviewed for the BBC radio programme Home Truths, probably in 2006. Their mother, Anna, was still alive and 89 years old at that time.
The three sisters feel that discovering their father's wartime diaries helped them come to terms with difficult experiences in their childhoods.
