31 Oct 1943, John Charter's wartime journal
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Father’s birthday tomorrow, so I will wish him “Many happy returns”. I hope I shall have seen him before his next. Sunday, the last day of the month. Still no further news of repatriation, though we wait for it daily.
Tonight we ate our first vegetable from the garden! We had not intended to, but the weather has turned quite chilly these last two days (two blanket weather) and after quite a concentrated rehearsal from 2.30 to 5 p.m. this afternoon, we came back feeling pretty peckish.
Today has been a meatless day and nowadays the vegetable ration too seems to have grown very small and the evening meal consisted of a scoop of rice and a vegetable rissole made of sweet potatoes and yams with a little bit of minced meat in the middle which had been saved over from yesterday. With these small rissoles (which are slightly sweet) we generally have a green vegetable served as well, but today this was lacking. We usually curry the vegetable which, with the rice and the sweetish rissoles, makes quite a nice dish, the rissoles alone being rather cloying.
As there was nothing to curry tonight we decided to see what the garden could yield and I went down with a pair of scissors and snipped off the bigger outside leaves of some of the Pak Choi Sum plants. None of them was sufficiently ready to be picked by itself. I hope they won’t go and die now! Anyway, they made an excellent curry and when we had eaten it we felt quite pleasantly replete for once – though it soon seems to disappear again.
Our tomatoes are really doing quite well. About 55% of the seedlings I planted have perished in some way or another! But 80% of the survivors are doing well, and one in particular is fairly burgeoning into leaf and flowers. It has developed two side shoots which I must cut off and transplant. The peanuts are sprouting well, though I believe this is quite the wrong time of year to plant them! And 5 out of the 24 rather ancient looking maize seeds I planted have germinated. I must put down a few more. Ants are the very devil with the seeds – they simply love seeds, and as sure as fate, a day or two after I have planted some seeds, I find innumerable little ant holes beside them, and streams of ants coming and going. They must have eaten half the carrot seeds I put down too. The Lo Paak, or Chinese turnips seem to be doing quite well. The greenery of the sweet potatoes is suffering quite considerably because the potato bed is rather near the rocky slope that goes down to the sea and when the wind is strong and comes from the East or NE, as it does at this time of the year, the plants in this bed get doses of salt spray which wither the leaves. How willingly would I leave all my garden produce to someone else if only we heard we were to be repatriated.
A few days ago it stated, in the paper, the Teia Maru arrived at Goa on Oct 15th, the Grisholm arriving on the 17th, and after the exchange of repatriates it sailed again on 22nd for Tokyo via Manila, where it was due on Nov 14th. Later a bulletin was issued stating that information had been received from the Japanese to the effect that the Teia Maru would call at HK on its next Westward voyage and not on its Eastward trip. So, alas, our hopes of getting some more IRC food during the first half of Nov have been dashed.
At present, there is considerable anxiety about our prisoners in the gaol here. On Thursday last, some people passing the gaol saw some Europeans (three of them) being put into a black maria under escort; another van was full of armed gendarmes and a squad of Chinese coolies set off too. The cortege made for the flat field below the Prep school (where I have been on anti-malarial work on several occasions and where I once counted some 40 or more recent graves). This field was out of sight of the camp. The cemetery was closed that afternoon. There is a fear, which we all sincerely hope will prove groundless, that these Europeans were taken down there for execution purposes. People who witnessed their departure said they heard them say goodbye, but to whom I do not quite know.
There has been a rumour in for some weeks now that Fraser (Colonial Defence Secretary for HK), Scott (Deputy Commissioner of Police) and Waterton (Govt Wireless) had all been found guilty on charges of activities of some kind against the Japanese – wireless communication, or receiving wireless instructions perhaps from Chungking – and had had the death sentence passed on them. It will be truly terrible if this has really happened. The poor wives and relatives of the other prisoners are nearly beside themselves with apprehension and worry. As I say, I hope it will prove untrue. Gimson has written to the Japs reminding them of their promise to inform him of the charges made against these British prisoners (promises never, so far, fulfilled) and saying that the acute anxiety felt by their relatives in camp was seriously affecting their health and state of mind and he asked for reassurance, on their behalf, of the condition of the prisoners. I doubt if he will receive a satisfactory reply.
