26 Oct 1942, John Charter's wartime journal

The weather recently has been warm and overcast, but three nights ago the wind veered to the N.E. and blew half a gale from that direction. It seemed to blow the clouds right out of the sky and the thermometer dropped about 15 – 20 degrees so that, from sleeping in thin silk night attire (a pair of shorts in my case) and covered only with a sheet, we were still cold last night with two blankets and flannelette pyjamas. Today the wind had dropped to a stiff breeze and the sunlight was simply sparkling; the cold nip has had a wonderful tonic effect, though unfortunately it makes our mouths water for beef steaks and Irish stews and other good, satisfying food.

Yvonne and I decided to take our tea down to the beach this afternoon and sit on the rocks in the sun, sheltered from the cold wind. This beach has a S.E. aspect and is well sheltered from the winter winds. It was beautifully warm in the sun and we wished we had come prepared to bathe. While we were eating our tea we heard a drone of aeroplane engines and then a little while later we heard some distant thuds.

“Did you hear those bombs dropping?” Y said,

“I thought they were ack ack guns”, said I and we both laughed.

There has been a great deal of aerial activity about lately - Japanese planes out on patrol as far as we could make out.

Presently the whistle was blown to clear the beach and we started on our way back. At the Governor’s bathing shed (this beach used to be the Governor’s private beach in pre-war days) we saw Billy Hackett attending to a man who appeared to have had a fainting fit. They were laying him down on a stretcher and I saw it was Alan Johnson of the PWD. Then I saw that his shoulder had been dislocated. He had been bowled over by a wave whilst bathing and had fallen awkwardly on the sand, putting his shoulder out. I helped carry the stretcher up the steps and along the path to the gate where the trolley from the hospital had been brought.

When we reached our room, Elsie told us that a Mr Buchanon, while watching a bowls match this afternoon, suddenly collapsed and died of heart failure. He had had a weak heart for some years so he might have died had he not been in camp. He has a daughter, Nina, who was evacuated to Australia. She left in HK, a father, a brother and a fiancée. Her father died of heart failure; her brother was blown up in the awful accident that occurred when our own troops fired upon the lighter that was bringing over dynamite from Stone Cutters Island when we abandoned that fort; and her fiancée, Ernie Lammert, was beheaded by the Japanese. Poor girl, she may not yet have had the news of any of these deaths and it is possible she will hear of them altogether.

People were all agog with the news of the planes that came over this afternoon. They had seen the planes diving in the Kowloon direction and had heard the thud of the detonations (the same that we had joked about on the beach) and seen puffs of AA shells bursting in the sky. We were all very excited about it as can be imagined. Was HK being attacked at last? Were we near the end of our imprisonment?  After the evening meal we heard more droning and dashed out to gaze skyward with a few hundred other internees. We could make out, very high up, a flight of seven planes. Then following them another flight of six. As they wheeled they reflected the sun and shone like gleaming silver streaks high above us. They disappeared and later came around again in another big circle - Japanese patrols, obviously. Well, it shows they are agitated about something. There is just the possibility that it may have been a big anti-air attack practice for HK, but I doubt it. In any case, the paper had scheduled the practice for Wed. 28th and this is only Monday. Tomorrow’s paper will be interesting!