Paul Atroshenko's childhood memories of wartime Hong Kong: View pages

((Date is approximate))

The Shell House Episode

The company which had employed my father in the construction of air raid shelters had carefully selected a good one for the families of their employees. We were evacuated from Kowloon to Victoria Island.

Before that evacuation, I had seen what I thought was a British warplane being shot down by a Zero in a dogfight. This must have impressed me greatly as I had reason to recall that event soon after with considerable effect.

After the surrender of Hong Kong, the Japanese quickly began the process of deciding what to do with the European population they had captured. I was only four years old at the time (that unlucky number again) but I still have vivid images in my mind from that time.

We were taken to Shell House on Victoria Island for processing. I recall a large room filled with nervous Europeans, several in uniform. Reports had filtered through that the Japanese had committed various atrocities such as bayoneting wounded soldiers in hospitals. What happened next I recall only vaguely, but the story was told to me later by my parents and confirmed by several others who were at Shell house at that time.

A day or two after Christmas, a squad of Japanese soldiers led by an officer carrying a large samurai sword burst into the room. The soldiers seemed to be a little drunk, perhaps having celebrated the fall of Hong Kong. They were furious that the British had resisted effectively for 17 days and seemed to be in a mood for revenge.

Just as it seemed likely that a massacre may occur right there and then, I apparently walked up to the Japanese officer in charge and said to him, “Japanese plane go up, English plane go down”. I had remembered the dogfight which I had seen a few days before.

The Japanese officer was delighted. “Sodaska”, he exclaimed. He then put me on his knee, patted my blond head, and barked out an order to his troops. Two of them left the room and returned soon after with three gigantic walking and talking dolls which were presented to me. They had taken them from a department store which had been full of Christmas gifts.

When the Japanese left, many of the British in uniform came over to me and also patted me on the head. They believed I had helped to avert a massacre of the civilians of Shell House, and they politely ignored the fact that I may have belittled the British Empire and its air force, which was close to treason for a little British chap like me.

Shortly after, two of the dolls given to me by the Japanese were taken by other, bigger children. I quietly wished that the Japanese would return to kill these nasty, thieving bullies! There is little mercy to be found in the heart of a swindled four year old.

The Japanese sent all the British to Stanley, which became a prisoner of war camp. Those Europeans who belonged to neutral countries were allowed to remain free in Hong Kong. Some Americans were sent to the USA in a prisoner exchange, and among them were friends of our family.

Since my mother, father and brother were stateless aliens, they were freed. Although I was a British citizen, having been born in Hong Kong, as a four-year old I must not have been considered a security risk by the Japanese and I was permitted to remain with my family.

Years of hardship and danger had begun.

There is an embarrassing postscript to this story. Much to my father's dismay, when I was little my mother had insisted on giving me the nickname of “Pussy”. He had lived in America for 10 years and knew what the word pussy stood for there. Many years after the war, well-meaning strangers would come up to me on the Star Ferry or on a bus, address me as Pussy, and thank me for my treasonous act in Shell house. It was mortifying.

My first big air raid

My brother and I had the misfortune to be caught up in the very first air raid which the Americans launched against Hong Kong. I was five at the time, and my brother was seven. We had gone to visit a Russian family which had three daughters, each older than us.

They lived in Kowloon a few blocks away from Nathan Road. Their home was an entire flat on the top floor of a three storey block of flats. This block consisted of two sections of three stories each, joined by a party wall, with two entrances side-by-side. Our friends lived on the left-hand section of the block.

We were sitting in their dining room, idly chatting with the girls. Then, far in the distance, we began to hear explosions… quiet, rumbling ones at first, but steadily getting louder and louder. Suddenly there was an almighty crash close by and the three girls quickly jumped to their feet, and, without saying a word, they started running down the stairs towards the front entrance.

My brother and I watched in amazement as the three girls disappeared from view. We remained frozen on the sofa. Then another explosion erupted nearby and the whole flat shook. Plaster and dust rained down on us. My brother jumped up, grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the stairwell. We ran down as fast as our tiny legs could carry us.

When we arrived on the ground floor there was a noisy argument going on about the front door. Some wanted to shut the door to save us from the debris flying around outside. Others were afraid that shutting the door could cause us to die from concussion caused by the bomb blasts. The doors remained open, for better or for worse.

Across the street I saw an old Japanese woman opening the door of her house. There was a whistling sound, she looked up at the sky and quickly shut the door. The bomb hit the house and I saw the roof collapsing. Suddenly her house was just a pile of rubble.

Minutes later, we heard that hideous whistling sound again but this time, instead of an explosion, there were just four muffled thumps. We all wondered what that meant. It was only days later that we discovered that an American bomb had gone through the roof of the adjoining flats, and had then crashed through the third, second and first floors, landing without exploding onto the ground floor. The unexploded bomb lay just a few feet away from us on the other side of a thin dividing wall. My guardian angel must have been working overtime on that day.

When there appeared to be a lull in the bombing, my brother and I decided to make a dash for home. For some silly reason we thought it would be safer for us to run rather than stay with our friends. Perhaps we had had enough of the arguments in favour of closing or opening that front door.

We had just made it to the first corner when something horrific stopped us in our tracks. A motor car was burning in the street and the driver had got out. He was covered in flames and he must have been in agony, but I can't remember him screaming. All I can recall is that he was lurching silently towards us. My brother and I were like two timid mice hypnotised by a cobra. We couldn't move as he came closer and closer. Then he collapsed about 6 feet away from us and we were instantly released from his spell. We turned the corner and started running as fast as we could towards Nathan Road.

Halfway down the street, a Chinese woman jumped out of a doorway and grabbed the two of us by the collar, and quickly dragged us into the safety of her building. I turned around and saw a Japanese officer, his samurai sword slapping on his thigh, running down that same street. An American plane must have been strafing the street because the officer's stomach seemed to erupt in a mass of red. He had been hit several times in the back.

We waited there for several more minutes until the sounds of the aeroplanes and the bombs slowly faded away. When we arrived home we discovered that the area near our house had hardly been touched by the bombs. The district where the three girls lived had been the epicenter of the attack. They and their parents were obliged to live elsewhere for a few days while the unexploded bomb was safely removed.

I have no idea where the American planes had come from so early in the Pacific War since it would have been dangerous waters for a carrier task force. Perhaps they were a squadron of the Flying Tigers. The air raid came as a huge shock to the Japanese. I had mixed feelings about it because I wanted the Americans to win the war but I wasn't too happy to have their bombs dropped all around me.

Our family came through the war intact, though not without considerable hardship. During that first air raid, a family my parents knew well were walking along Kowloon Road when they received a direct hit from an American bomb. The mother, the father and the two children died instantly. A huge hole in the road was all that served as a memorial to them.

Postscript from Fanling

About 4 PM on the day of that first big air raid, we began to be worried about my father who had gone by train to Fanling, which was in the New Territories. He was in the habit of catching the same train back to Kowloon, and always used the fifth carriage. My Mother and I went to the station to find him. On the way there, close to the Peninsula Hotel, we saw a train which had been hit by bombs. To our horror, the fifth carriage had been overturned and completely destroyed.

My mother quickly realised that it was the carriage which papa always used. There were trucks driving away with dead bodies and piles of squashed vegetables. We ran to the Kowloon railway station and told the man at the information desk that we were looking for my father. The man asked us what my father had been wearing. This did not reassure us.

After searching the crowds looking for papa, we finally went home. My mother was hysterical with grief and Viacheslav and I found it impossible to console her. How was she going to bring up two young children by herself in Hong Kong during this terrible war? By that time we were utterly convinced that papa was dead.

At about 8 p.m. that evening, my father walked in through the door, carrying his two familiar rattan baskets full of vegetables. My mother promptly fainted, either from joy or because she thought he was a ghost. Papa then told us what had happened to him at Fanling.

Because my father refused to cooperate with the Japanese, it was impossible for him to obtain a normal job. His way of making money was to catch a train to Fanling, buy good fresh vegetables there, and then sell them as a hawker. He soon developed a string of loyal customers who were mainly members of various foreign consulates of neutral countries, or those which were allied to the Axis Powers. Many of these consulates were scattered around the Peak in Hong Kong.

Since the Peak Tram had stopped operating shortly after the Japanese occupation, this meant that my father had to cart his vegetables from Kowloon to the highest roads on Victoria Island. The Peak Tram was pulled by a cable and the Japanese must have decided that they could use that cable elsewhere, probably for some military purpose, so the cable was removed.

My brother and I occasionally went with him on these selling trips and tramping up and down Victoria Peak was an excellent way to keep fit. Sometimes my father would use a battered old pram to carry the vegetables and we would help him push it up the hills.

Being a creature of habit, my father always caught the same train and the same carriage to Fanling and back. On that day, after finishing his purchases, he was about to enter the carriage of his choice when a Japanese soldier challenged him and said that that carriage had been reserved for Japanese officers. When my father still tried to get on the train the soldier roughly pushed him backwards, sending him sprawling. His baskets flew open and the vegetables were scattered all over the platform.

By the time my father was able to gather up his goods, the train had pulled out of the station, much to the amusement of the Japanese soldiers. That carriage, with its precious cargo of Japanese officers, received a direct hit from an American bomb. There were no survivors. My father’s luck had held out once more.

This was just one occasion among several when my father had almost died or been killed during the war.