I had tired of keeping out of sight. So, there being strangely few soldiers about, took myself for a short walk, knee deep in stinking rubbish, and with flies pestering. At the first corner I came suddenly upon the corpse of a well-dressed young Chinese - perhaps a nocturnal prowler come to grief, or perhaps merely a body dumped to save funeral expenses.
There were some stalls in the street, selling a little food and a lot of valueless junk, mostly looted. There were also many public gambling booths, in shops, around the market and on vacant lots. Mostly they offered the dice game of Yankee Sweat, fan tan, and the Chinese card game pai kau. They were all reasonably cheerful and all well-behaved. I laid a small bet, lost and left it at that.
Looting of abandoned houses on the hills around us now openly in progress. The looters could be seen in long files like ants, climbing up the hillside paths everywhere on Broadwood Ridge, Stubbs Road and Blue Pool Road, and coming down again carrying furniture.
In the early afternoon troops assembled on the racecourse; we heard their bugles and banzais. They were computed to number two thousand. This was part of the victory parade.
From our roof later we could see horse lines and tents in the racecourse, and much activity in the blocks of flats overlooking it. More troops were being billeted, and the occupants are being evicted to find accommodation where they can.
Food is still scarce, and the fact presses heavily upon our spirits. The shops in our district are not yet reopening. In any case they would have little to sell; all commodity stocks have gone underground. We still have half a bag of rice and a modest store of tinned beef and fish, but no cooking oil.
Observing the looting and remembering Kowloon, not to mention our Japanese visitors, we contrive hiding places. We taxed our ingenuity. I used some banknotes to prop up the wobbly leg of a table, and we slipped single notes between shelf brackets and the wall. We discovered that the old-fashioned mantel in our bedroom was hollow; with a little skill the end panel could be removed, giving access to a long cupboard of nearly two cubic feet capacity. In here we put our tinned stuff. Under the stairs at our front door we made another cache, and later added to these.
