HKVDC No 3 Eurasian (MG) Company

Hi Mike,

My father joined the HKVDC in around 1939/40. Although the resolution in the photo is a bit grainy when enlarged, it looks like my father (Sapper Milenko B G, 5258) is in all 3 photos - here, he is in the front row, crouching down, far right.

Hi Mike,

Yes, an amazing coincidence. Very fortunately, my dad was not interned. Was your dad an engineer. My dad graduared from the University of Hongkong in 1939 and was employed as an engineer by China Navigation Co working on various steamships.

He managed to escape Hongkong in March 1942, making his way from Hongkong to the mainland, then over several months to Kwelin and then to Chungking. Thing get a bit complicated - here is a brief summary:

On 22 December 1941, days before the official surrender, my father was one of a flying squad of engineers helping, in his words, “organise the hospital and other activities”. He and three other engineers were captured by a band of Japanese soldiers and ordered to line up against a wall will their hands above their heads. Many years later, when asked about his capture during the invasion of Hong Kong in an interview with a local newspaper (the Manly Daily, Sydney, Australia, 7 March, 1970) my dad stated:

“We thought we were going to be shot but after some discussion among themselves the Japs let us go back to the hospital where we were all virtually prisoners”. Which hospital? I don't know - there were a few hospitals there at the time. At this time, he said his main responsibility was operating the electricity generators at the hospital. He also said that after the first few weeks of essentially total control by the Japanese armed forces, things became far less organised and decision making by the Japanese army was poor which surprisingly allowed for some limited capacity to move on the island.

My dad had said that he and one other engineer escaped from Hong Kong in March 1942, some three months after the Japanese occupation began. They were assisted in their escape by Chinese partisans. In May/June 1942, he arrived at Chungking where he made contact with the Brittish embassy, and the company he worked for, Butterfield and Swire/China Navigation Co.

In Chungking he wrote a 6 page report for the Brittish of "the impressions gained in regard to the conditions prevailing in Hongkong during the three months following its fall on December, 25, 1941". A, archived copy of my dads report and related correspondence between the Australian and Brittish governments is available online at the National Archives of Australia, https://www.naa.gov.au/, reference NAA: A989, 1944/235/1/2/42.

By November 1942, he had travelled to the Middle East and commenced work for the Brittish at the port facility, Basra, Iraq. By this time, the Brittish armed forces had aeroplanes flying from Chungking westwards to Calcutta (over the Himalayan Mountains), then on to Delhi and Abadan, Iran.

Then in January 1944, he departed Iraq on health reasons and travelled on M/T Kongsdal, an oil tanker carrying aviation fuel, from Basra arriving in Australia in February 1944. There were reports of German submarines in the Indian Ocean and Japanese submarines near the Australian coastline. On route, 8 shipwrecked seamen of another ship, SS Fort Buckingham, sunk by a German submarine were picked up at sea.