18 Jan 1943, John Charter's wartime journal

I am much behind with the news!

Christmas was somewhat peculiar. No one, except for a few people with children, felt very much like Christmas jollifications of more than a mild nature. The events of the previous Christmas are still stamped too clearly in our minds, and there are many who observed the first sad anniversary of a lost soldier husband, father or brother. But for all the sad memories that this Xmas brought, we did not let the festive season pass un-noticed, nor did we miss the feeling of hope and good cheer that it brings. And it certainly was better than the previous Christmas!

The ‘United Churches’ had produced a Nativity Play, written and produced by Cyril Brown, and the Roman Catholics also presented a Nativity Play produced by Father Murphy. In addition there was a carol concert which Betty Drown had produced and this had been arranged partly to accompany but chiefly to follow a sweet little nativity mime produced by the Sunday school department of the United Churches. The mime really was enchanting.

Christmas Day fell on Friday and the carol concert and children’s mime was due to take place on the preceding Wednesday with the Nativity Play on the Thursday. Unfortunately a woman in the Indian Quarters was rushed off to the camp hospital with diptheria. This was an awful blow, as all public meetings had to be cancelled for a week in case there was infection about. They injected this woman with the one dose of anti-diptheria serum that this camp possessed. It was arrested in time and I understand she is now alright. There was a good deal of alarm and concern in camp that a fatal epidemic should begin, for as I say, the medical officers here have literally nothing with which to fight such an epidemic, though, I understand requests for the necessary inoculation serums have been made repeatedly to the Japanese.

We hear there was a fairly mild ‘dip’ epidemic at the Sham Shui Po Camp, but that even so there were several deaths. Thank God we have so far escaped any serious epidemic in this camp; disease here would spread like lightening in these overcrowded conditions.

The Japs were considerably worried by this one case; they isolated that whole block from the rest of the Indian Quarters (it housed about 120 people) for a week, taking swabs of everyone in the block; they confined the members of this woman’s family (husband and two small children) to their room, having first disinfected the room by spraying. The unfortunate people in this Block B13 (amongst whom was Winnie Deane) were beside themselves with annoyance and boredom. I went to see Winnie and talked across the rope barrier. She said she and her room mates were so fed up they were hardly on speaking terms! Christmas parties and engagements etc. were all upset. But fortunately their period of isolation was brought to an end on Thursday as there have been no positive swabs.

All the nativity plays had to be postponed, but we gave our carol concert (without the mime) in the evening of Xmas Eve on the bowling green. Quite a lot of people turned up to listen and we had flood lighting (of sorts) on us. It went quite well, though the audience, I believe, noticed the cold more than the singers. There were about 56 altogether in the choir, so we made quite a good noise. We sang a few of the well known carols and a number of the lesser well known old English ones like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ and the ‘Boars Head Carol’ etc. Yvonne, Elsie and I had joined the female and male sections respectively of this choir sometime ago, when we started off with Canterbury Pilgrims. Betty Drown has now embarked upon ‘The Messiah’ by Easter – pretty ambitious but a good idea. I took the Kings Solo in Good King Wenceslaus with Ronnie Whitfield as the page. Dr Mullet sang the Kings part with me at the bowling green, but left me to do it when we gave our programme again outside the hospital on Xmas morning – my first solo in public! The people in hospital much appreciated it I think. Betty Drown composed one very good carol herself, a very good effort.

We had a small tea party on the afternoon of Xmas Eve. Maudie, Mrs Johnson, Vera and Jack Armstrong, Ann Minns, Mrs Corra and Christine and Ray Hughes were our guests. The other members of our room were not keen on inviting anyone to a communal party, but they kindly left us the room for the afternoon. Yvonne produced a very creditable chocolate cake for the occasion.