20 Jan 1945, John Charter's wartime journal

We have had some hectic and sad days of late. I must just mention Xmas before entering up these later events.

On Xmas Eve, Vera and Jack Armstrong and the two Fortescue’s came and had a curry dinner with Y and me. It was fun having the old residents of this room back. The Lammert family had arranged a party with sundry friends which they were having in Maisie Bruce’s room and that left us the room for our party. B. Bichino’s choir came round just as we were finishing and sang carols. It was a perfect night with a nearly full moon and the choir sang beautifully; it really gave us a Xmas feeling.

On Xmas Day we met Maudie and Vera and went to choral communion and then back to their room for coffee. The Bidwell’s had arranged a slap up Xmas Dinner to which they had invited a few friends; so, in turn, Y and I had arranged to let them have the room to themselves and, as it was a lovely sunny day, we took our lunch out onto the hillside – the first picnic Xmas Dinner I have ever had! And it was great fun. We had asked Anne Muir and Winnie Deane to have lunch with us but they had already made prior arrangements. Poor Elsie had not been feeling well for the few days before Xmas and she was feeling rather wretched at their Xmas Eve party, with earache. When we returned from church in the morning, Harold greeted us with the news that Dr Talbot had packed her off to hospital with suspected mastoid! It was hard luck.

On Xmas afternoon Y and I again set forth for block 10 where 14 of us were gathering in Maudie’s room for a tea party. Everyone brought tea and ½ lb of rice flour in the form of cakes, buns, scones or biscuits; our own kitchen had made everyone a large pastie of rice pastry stuffed with minced vegetables and beans and egg yolk and fried in oil. They were really very good and were very filling and we made a small pudding for the occasion as well. By the time we had conquered ½ lb of cooked up rice cakes for tea we really felt quite replete. Then the kitchen staff produced outsized vegetable rissoles and rice for the evening meal and these we had to carry forward to the next day. Oh, I forgot to mention the tins of I.R.C. sardines that Y and I had opened for lunch in lieu of turkey!

A good day in Stanley depends chiefly on one of two things a) enough (or preferably, more than enough) to eat and b) good and exciting news of one kind or another. Well, at Xmas, although there was no special news, we all had plenty to eat.

The Japanese had allowed the canteen to order special Xmas fare, beyond the Y72 per month limit for each person. Someone in the canteen got an I.R.C. box (which measures about 12” x 10”) stood it on edge and dressed the sides with small curtains looped back and set it up as our Xmas window display. In this window were placed the items of the special Xmas fare (for those that had the money to buy) which consisted of (per person) ½ lb rice flour @ Y10; ½ lb noodles @ Y14; ¼ lb Chinese Moon cakes @ Y14; and ¼ lb Chinese biscuits @ Y13 and a 12 oz bottle of syrup between two people for Y17. I have never seen anything so pathetic in the way of dressings! It made you want to laugh or cry at the same time, and reminded us all too clearly of bright windows full of turkeys, hams, puddings, sweets, preserved fruits – but why torture myself!!

Well, we ended Christmas Day by going to bungalow D where Phil and Henry had invited numerous people to foregather (including five ukulele and guitarists). So thither we went armed with our thermos of coffee and two mugs and sat out of doors wrapped in our warmest clothes and singing the songs of home. It was a delightful evening, the Japs had allowed a special extension and we could stay out till 8 p.m. on Xmas Eve and Xmas Day instead of having to be back by 6 p.m. as usual. 

We sat out under the leafy trees - about 30 or more - and watched the brilliant silver moon put to bed the crimson sun beneath its canopy of flaming clouds and its soft, misty, grey-blue blankets of the sea. Not at all like an English Xmas evening, but the nearest approach to contentment and peace of soul that I have felt for a long time.

Yvonne Ho, bless her, once more sent us a lovely Xmas parcel. It contained 1 cattie of wong tong; a tin of tomatoes, a tin of condensed milk; a tin of Chinese cured fish and a tin of pineapple cubes! The wong tong we looked upon as a gift from heaven and ate it after our meals. The tins have gone into the food box to be eaten in due course.

For a present, Yvonne gave me a most useful shaving mug, made of a gold lined tin which had a lid and round it a warm jacket of wool and a cover of khaki jerkin material with my initials and decoration thereon. Also a pipeful of tobacco collected from our cigarette ends! I gave Y a packet of cigarettes and small brooch I had found! The brooch belonged to her! 

It happened like this: about March or April of last year, Y and I started digging up a portion of the hillside below the cemetery for the purpose of making sweet potato beds. Yvonne had been wearing a brooch in the shape of a naval anchor made, probably, of red celluloid with a brass pin, which she had bought years ago at Woolworths for 6d and which was a treasured possession. After the first morning’s digging she found the brooch had dropped out of her blouse and, search as we might we could not discover it. Just before Xmas I went to this plot to dig up some potatoes (if there were any) and in the first spade full of earth turned up, there was the brooch! True, it had a somewhat mottled appearance! But Y greeted it as a long lost friend when she opened the packet, and attached great significance to the return!

Xmas Eve had its excitements: there were no less than five air raids on that day. Several planes flew over the camp and the Formosan guards all let fly at them with their rifles – without any apparent result.

On Thursday, 28th, Y and I had arranged a picnic tea with Maudie, but on the way to Block 10 we met Miss Franklyn who told us that poor Maudie had stepped in a saucepan of boiling coffee and was in bed with a badly scalded foot. We have always said, if Maudie fell overboard she wouldn’t get wet, but she put her foot in it this time and got wet alright. She had been chatting in the Block 10 women’s toilet room (which serves as the general chatty room as well) and had reached up for her bag of straw, which was hanging from the wall in a dark corner, when she stepped backwards and put her foot right into their saucepan of boiling coffee that someone, unknown to Maudie, had placed on the floor. Fortunately Philip Court had dropped in for a chat and he and sundry resident nurses and Vera were able to attend to Maudie straight away. Fortunately there was some Tamifax (or what ever the stuff is) at hand, also, miraculously a small bottle of brandy. D. Court sent for morphia because Maudie was suffering badly from shock and felt as cold as an ice bag. She had recovered pretty well by the time we arrived in the afternoon, but Dr Court persuaded her to go to hospital, and that evening Phil and Vera and I took her there. Dr Court was afraid that, without proper treatment, her foot might go septic, but none of us thought she would be in for more than a few days. But she is still there and looks as though she will be there for a few days yet! It was a bad burn and for a day or two she suffered agonies. Anyhow, there have been no complications and now she is just waiting for the hard protective crust to fall off.

Dr Talbott attended Elsie (Bidwell). He is an ear, nose and throat specialist and a fine surgeon. He hoped the mastoid would draw out through a small perforation in Elsie’s ear drum and that an operation would be unnecessary. He had no X-ray facilities and Elsie waited from Xmas till Jan 6th before she was finally operated upon. Dr Smalley, who was in attendance, said that in all his long surgical experience he had never seen such a badly infected or such an extensive mastoid. The operation lasted about 2 ½ hours. But Elsie has made an amazing recovery and is coming out of hospital on Monday. She has lost a good deal of weight, poor girl, and it is not easy to feed up in this place. The Bidwell’s, particularly, have never believed in keeping much in the way of reserve foods, which has always seemed short sighted to me, but we all have our own views on the subject and, anyway, she still has her engagement ring to dispose of – but of that anon!

Before leaving Xmas, I must mention Father Meyer’s Xmas cake (he is the senior of the two Roman Catholic priests left in camp). He organised a raffle for a 10 lb Xmas cake, the ingredients of which were to cost MY500 ((pdv £4500)). He obtained permission from the CP to sell 2,500 tickets at Y1 each which allowed about 1 ticket for every person in camp. I believe he was able to obtain permission from the Japanese to purchase special ingredients from town. The fame of the cake soon spread and within the first day of the issue of the tickets, they were all taken up! Everyone was given a chance to purchase their ticket and in this room, we pooled ours and formed a syndicate. So many people grumbled that they could not purchase more than one ticket, that Father Meyer obtained permission to make and raffle a second cake, there being, I believe, no limit to the number of tickets for the second cake. The draw took place on Xmas Eve. Maudie, Vera, Elma and two people from another room had also formed a syndicate and believe it or not, their syndicate won the cake! Every one says Maudie has the luck of a fat priest! So they had 2 lbs each and of course, Maudie gave Yvonne and me a slice. It really was delicious. A Miss Doring of these blocks won the other cake. I don’t know what profit Father Meyer realised on the second cake but I should think that altogether he netted at least MY4,000 (pdv £36,000) which he is using for needy hospital cases, particularly amongst his R.C. flock. I believe the Bidwell’s profited in this way, which is fortunate.

The camp has a not very successful poultry farm. They had hoped to produce sufficient fowls to supply the camp internees with a small helping of chicken each for Xmas. Most of the birds however, died (I forget the cause) and so in order to raise funds to purchase new stock and food, there was a camp raffle of 15 chickens; everyone was allowed two tickets at 50 sen each. We tried our luck but without success.

A day or so after the distribution, I saw one of the proud winners with a scraggy little pullet about 4 months old, neither good for eating or egg laying at that juncture of its life. Mrs Kellar had a long piece of string tied to one of its legs and she was leading it around and putting it in all the gutters near the kitchen where there were odd grains of rice and scraps of food. It was quite intelligent for so young a bird and I must say that it made the most of its opportunities. Mrs Kellar complained that she had nowhere to keep it and was not much amused at everyone’s suggestion that she housed it under her bed!

On the whole I was rather relieved that we had not won a prize, though no doubt the first prizes were better specimens. I should have been tempted to sell it for an enormous profit if we had won a bird, as the business of a) feeding it or b) plucking, drawing and cooking it in this place would have been more than a joke! The eggs that the camp poultry farm produces go chiefly to the hospital (TB cases) or malnutrition cases. There are several private owners of poultry too and many of these make contributions of eggs in return for being allowed to clean out the empty kitchen rice containers etc. What a game!

The piggery that the Japanese talked about so much has never materialised. Apparently they could not get hold of enough pigs to start it off!