Barbara Anslow remembers old Hong Kong. Part 2: 1938-42

In part 1, Barbara talked about her first visit to Hong Kong as a young girl, living here from 1927 to 1929.

In this part 2, Barbara tells us about returning to Hong Kong in 1938, then being evacuated with her mother and sisters in 1940. While in transit in the Philippines, they received news that her father had died suddenly, which meant they all returned to Hong Kong. They decided to stay here, and so were caught up in the Japanese invasion of December 1941, and the internment that followed.

But back to 1938 - the family were following her father who'd been posted to the Royal Navy's dockyard in Hong Kong. What brought him back to Hong Kong again? (Scroll down for additional notes and photos.)

(E-mail subscribers, if you can't play the recording, please visit the web version of this page.)

Additional notes:

• 01:10: The view of Queen's Road (today's Queensway) outside the Navy flats where Barbara lived with her family:
  

   

• 03:00: USS Panay Incident, 12 December 1937
• 03:50: Barbara has sent us an extract from a letter she wrote while in the Philippines, telling a friend about the evacuation from Hong Kong in 1940.
• 06:20: Auxiliary nurses, the ANS.
• 07:45: Read Mabel's own account of becoming a nurse during the fighting, and nursing at the Bowen Road Military Hospital.
• 09:45: Barbara's diary entry for 17 June 1942 describes Mabel's arrival at the Stanley Interment Camp: "While I was working in the hosp. I heard from one of the nurses that a young girl had arrived to join her mother, with others from the Bowen Rd. Hosp., so careered up to the blocks. Outside the Dutch Block a business-like person was directing unloading operations on the lorry - Mabel, wearing unfamiliar clothes: competent, capable, independent ..."​