29 May 1942, John Charter's wartime journal

We had previously been given lists of articles they hoped to provide and were asked to place a tick against those we required. These included shorts, shirts, dress material, hats, handkerchiefs, underwear, socks, sleeping mats, shoes, saucepans, spoons, forks, mugs, basins and other very useful articles. Owing to the prohibitive cost of things now in Hong Kong it was not possible to get all these things - at least, a very limited number of some of articles were brought in. Where demand exceeded supply, names were put in a hat and the allocation of articles was decided by drawing.