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Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp: View pages

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3 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Birth of Olivia Maria Ogley to W. O. Ogley of Lane Crawford and Mrs P. D. Ogley.

 

Elizabeth Anstall writes - with supporting signatures - to the BCC to protest about the plan to take 89 cents (almost 20%) of the gift sent by the Pope to each internee and use it for a relief fund. She argues that the gift is already 'relief' and there's nothing to stop anyone who wants giving 89 cents, or everything to the camp's needy. John Stericker, Camp Secretary, will reply on September 7 that the deduction is in accordance with the wishes of Bishop Valtorta and that individuals might spend the money on cigarettes whereas the welfare fund will help those in greatest need. Perhaps facetiously he assumes that Elizabeth Anstall and the other signatories fall into this category.

Before the war Hong Kong fought off any proposal to introduce an income tax. Attitudes are changing in the new circumstances.

 

The first draft of POWs to be sent to work in Japan is boarded today.618 men are in the holds of the Maru Shi - many of them are the 'hard men' who refused to immediately sign a promise not to escape, and other people the Japanese or the British authorities regard as undesirable (for example, because they're suspected of stealing the food of weaker POWs). They wil sail tomorrow, and a higher percentage of this draft will survive the war than of any other.

Sources:

Anstall: MacNider Papers, 'Pope's Gift'

Draft:Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, September 3, 1942
5 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

William Shaw, aged 58, dies of heart failure in bed just after lunch.

 

The Maryknollers receive HK$5 (presumably per head) as their share of the relief from the Pope.

 

Dorothy Jenner witnesses two fights: one is between a married couple, the other starts when one internee refers to another as an 'old bitch' and ends with bloodied noses. 

 

The Optimists return to the Bowling Green 'and delight their audience'.

 

Captain Charles William Linklater Shearer, a retired Master Mariner, is released into Hong Kong.

Sources:

Shaw:http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367495

Shaw, Maryknollers, Optimists: Maryknoll Diary, September 5, 1942

Jenner: Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 71

Shearer: Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 647
8 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The Chinese Volunteers are released from Shamshuipo. They spend a few days in St. Teresa's Hopsital, are forced to sign a promise not to fight again, and then they're free.

Maximo Cheng, one of those released, states that no explanation for their release was given to the POWs. It's possible that this was a Japanese attempt to win credibility for their 'Asia for the Asians' claims. According to another Volunteer POW, the Japanese always showed partiality to the Chinese in Shamshuipo: 'they never ill-treated us.'

But Raymond Mok, another POW freed today, says that some of his fellows thought the reason for the release was economic: outside Camp the Japanese wouldn't have to feed them and they could work for their rations.

Both Cheng and Mok escaped from Hong Kong and carried on the fight, Cheng wit the Chindits, Mok as a BAAG Medical Officer.

Sources:

Chen: Interview with Maximo Chen,  http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80020175

Partiality: Peter Tan, cited in Peter Cunich, A History of the University of Hong Kong, Volume 1, 2012, 541

Mok: Interview with Dr Raymond Mok, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80020174
10 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

ALFS VALUE SIX HUNDRED IN NAVE SOLE ORIENTEM NOCTE TRES OR QUATRE STOP FURTHER VALUE ONE THOUSAND BEING ARANGED FOR MONTH END STOP

Dr. Selwyn-Clarke sends a coded, multi-language telegram to try to alert the Allied authorities to the transfer of POWs to Japan by ship.

Translation:

600 POWs will be sent to the East in ships on the night of the third or fourth. Arrangements are being made to send 1000 more at the end of the month.

In his autobiography Selwyn-Clarke wrote:

Once before, when passing a message through Macao in order to get the International Red Cross to press for representation in Hong Kong, I had made use of secret communications. I  now made a second, and my last attempt, to use the same route, and it was tragically unsuccessful.

The message doesn't get throuigh. The ship leaving at the end of the month is the Lisbon Maru.

Sources:

Telegram: The Ride Papers (kindly supplied by Elizabeth Ride)

Autobiography: Footprints, 1975, 81

Note: see entry for October 1.
12 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Those members of the Maryknoll Order who had turned down the American repatriation in the hope of eventually being allowed to go to their mission stations in China are allowed out of Stanley:

What a day! We are to be released from our confinement and go back to civilized life! We toted our baggage in the morning down to the American Club Block A-4, and there at 10:00 a.m. it was examined, not too minutely, by the gendarmes. Nothing was confiscated, however. At about eleven o'clock the truck which brings the food out to the Camp backed up and the first group, consisting of Fathers Toomey, Troesch, Downs, Keelan, Siebert, Walter and Knotek, Brother Thaddeus and Sisters ((Mary)) Dorothy ((Walsh)) and Henrietta Marie ((Cunningham)), got in. At the Depot were many of our friends to see us off and to wish us well. At 2:30 in the afternoon the second group, consisting of Fathers Tackney, Madison, Moore, McKeirnan, Gaiero and O'Connell, and most of our baggage, left.

 

Father Donald Hessler and Father Bernard Meyer stay behind. With the help of the Canadian Father Murphy and two Maryknoll Sisters, Mary Christella and Mary Eucharista, they will minister to the Catholics left in Stanley. The Sisters, who also run the library, will leave sometime before January 1943.

 

Also leaving today is Australian Doris Cuthberston, private secretary to Jardine Mattheson managing director J. J. Paterson. She's been 'guaranteed out' by Raoul de Sercey, a friend of Mr. Paterson's.

This is the last time anyone will be allowed to leave camp on the 'guaranteeing out' system whereby people could return to Hong Kong if they had a neutral sponsor who would promise they'd be supported there.

Usually a promise has also to be made not to work against Japanese interests but in this case it's not exacted. It wouldn't have mattered: Miss Cuthbertson is coming out for a reason, and she immediately throws herself into a courageous programme of relief for Jardine Mattheson employees in Stanley and the POW camps. Mr. de Sercey escapes from Hong Kong in April 1944, but she seems to have managed to carry on her humanitarian work until the end of the war, surviving at least three waves of Kempeitai terror.

Sources:

Maryknoll Diary, September 12, 1942

Hessler etc.: Cindy Yik-yi Chu, The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 2004, 58

Ride Papers, Statement of Raoul de Sercey, June 2, 1944 (kindly supplied by Elizabeth Ride)
14 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

J. H. Middlecoat, a Canadian repatriated with the Americans in June, tells the Winnipeg Tribune (page 13) that lack of food was the main difficulty in Stanley, that he saw no internee being mistreated and had no first hand knowledge of Japanese atrocities. He also says that he'd learnt from the doctors who visited the camp that the POWs in Kowloon were getting roughly the same treatment as the civilians.

Note:

J. H. Middlecoat was one of the 'European' drivers who in the SCMP for December 23, 1941 were requested to either present themselves for duty with the Auxillary Transport Service HQ at the Stock Exchange Building or ring in to say they were already driving for a civil defence organisation.

My guess is that he was careful with his comments to the press for fear that harsh criticism of the Japanese would bring about retaliation against the remaining internees, as had been threatened.

Some Canadians were repatriated with the Americans in late June 1942. Middlecoat had been an agent with the Canadian National Railways, and it seems that it was largely commercial staff who were allowed to board the Asama Maru. Gwen Dew notes that he was one of the internees who was chosen to be on the American-Japanese exchange even at the stage when it was not planned to include all Americans. She mentions another Canadian as part of this earlier plan, a Colonel Doughty 'who had done extraordinary work as Food Control Chief during the war' (http://archive.org/stream/prisonerofthejap007029mbp/prisonerofthejap0070...). Although I don't doubt Doughty's contribution, he's one of a number of people who are named by one source or another as in charge of Food Control. The official head was the banker A. C. Meredith.
20 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Since coming into Stanley, Matron E.M. Dyson has arranged to receive smuggled messages keeping her in touch with conditions at Bowen Road Military Hospital. Today she gets one telling her that after a long 'lean' period, things are improving. They'd been short of drugs but now they have a supply - Dyson thinks this is due to Rudolf Zindel of the Swiss Red Cross.

Source:

Report by Miss Anna May Waters Nurse with the Canadian Forces at Hong Kong, as given on board the MS Gripsholm, November 1943,  point 63.
21 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Dorothy Jenner notes in her diary that there's been a strike of vegetable cutters and wood cutters, who came out when their extra rations were cut due to camp shortages. In spite of the ringing slogan 'A matter of principle' the strikers meet with little sympathy, and section leader ('blockhead') Jenner soon fills their places with willing workers.

Source:

Jenner: Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 64

 
23 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Death of A. E. Bush, aged 48. Before being sent to Stanley he was held in room 127 of the Tung Fong Hotel.

Sourcs:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, page 271

http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367486
24 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Dorothy Jenner ('Andrea') writes in her diary that there's been 'the most awful thieving and racketeerring among ladies' working in the kitchen.

Source:

Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 72
25 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The Japanese are sending a second 'draft' of POWs from Shamshuipo to work in Japan:

At four in the morning of 25 September, with the weather still warm and humid, the draftees hastily swallowed a rushed breakfast of rice and fish, and were issued with two small sugarloaves as emergency rations. Then they made their way to the Jubilee parade ground of Sham Shui Po camp for assembly.

After a long wait, about 1,865 men are marched to Bamboo Pier, sprayed with disinfectation and ferried out to the Lisbon Maru, a 'rusty old freighter' moored off Stonecutter's Island.

Source:

Tony Banham, The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, 2010, Kindle Location 858-870
26 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The labour drafts have created enough room in Shamshuipo (most of the 2,500 men sent to Japan have been from this camp) to accommodate the POWs left in North Point.

They move to Kowloon today, and North Point POW camp is closed.

Source:

Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, September 1942 (Location 1368)
27 Sep 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The Lisbon Maru has been waiting for 778 Japanese soldiers who are to be carried back to Japan. They're on board and at 8 a.m. the ship finally leaves Hong Kong.

The POWs are crammed into three filthy and unhygienic holds, but they're allowed on deck for an hour as the ship steams away.

Robert Wright, of the Middlesex Regiment, recalls:

It was a hot, sunny afternoon, and I found myself beside a Mr Gorston ((probably Thomas Gorman - Tony Banham's note)), who had served with the Hong Kong Police. Neither of us spoke at first, and as we sailed past Stanley Point, where we had made our last stand, I saw tears streaming down the man's cheek.

Source:

Tony Banham, The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, 2010, Kindle Location 986-998
1 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The British want to follow the Americans and 'sail away' from Stanley:

Petition to C. S. started asking him to recommend repatriation.

 

((C.S. = Camp/Colonial Secretary, Franklin Gimson.))

 

At about 7.10 a.m. the Lisbon Maru, which is not bearing any marks to identify it as a ship carrying POWs, comes under torpedo attack from an American submarine, the Grouper. The fourth torpedo strikes home and blows a hole, two and a half metres across, in the ship's hull. There are over 1800 Hong Kong prisoners squashed into three filthy holds. The vessel will not sink for 25 hours.

At first they wait for a Japanese recue mission, when it becomes clear this will never arrive, they ask permission to go to the latrines on deck, but this isn't granted, and they're not even allowed to empty the toilet buckets - many men have dysentery and soon the holds are fouled (lathough a Japanese-speaking Lieutenant in the St John's Ambulance Brigade does persuade the guards to pass two petrol tins and a twwo buckets of unclean water into the second hold.) Breakfast was being prepared when the torpedo struck, so there's no food. After about 12 hours the men stuck in the filthy, dark holds with sea-water rising around them hear hopeful sounds above - but it's the Japanese and only the Japanese being taken off the ship. At about 9 p.m., in spite of the objections of Captain Kyoda, the holds are fastened to prevent escape - the Japanese fear a POW revolt:

From this time on the air became absloutely foul and together with cries and mnas from the sick all night the situation became unbearable.

The Japanese are towing the ship westwards, but at some point the POWs become aware that it;s starting to list. It seems likely it will sink, and they're locked in the holds. Meanwhile, the first deaths have occurred and the survivors are living a nightmare:

The air had now become very thick and even the fittest of us were sweating and panting, while several of the sick who had been sent to our hold were raving mad and were screaming out for air and water alternately.

Sources:

Petition: Diary of M. L. Bevan: IWM, 523.1 (Bevan)

Lisbon Maru: Tony Banham, The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, 2010, Kindle Location 1352, 1439, 1483, 1556

Notes:

1)  C. S. = Colonial/Camp Secretary Franklin Gimson

2) See also entry for September 10, 1942
2 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

At a Council meeting today Franklin Gimson speaks in opposition to a Camp petition calling on the British Government to arrange for repatriation from Hong Kong.

He states that those involved must be prepared to answer a charge of 'disloyalty'. His words cause a sensation in Camp and Gimson is eventually forced to explain himself at length to try to dampen the outrage.

 

At the same time, a message Gimson's smuggled out of camp on the same subject is being passed on to London by the British Consul in the Carribean colony of St. Vincent - it's got to him via Shanghai. He was worried that if the entire British community was repatriated - as was being rumoured when he got the message out of Stanley - the British claim to sovreignty over Hong Kong would disappear. He therefore urged the Government to leave him behind with a 'nucleus of administration to take control of colony as soon as the Japanese withdraw'.

Whatever people feel about his powers of tact, or about his determination to keep Hong Kong British, no-one can doubt his courage and commitment.

 

Captain Kyoda makes an unsuccessful attempt to go down with his ship, the Lisbon Maru. At 9 a.m. Lieutenant-Colonel 'Monkey' Stewart of the Middlesex Regiment, convinced the ship is about to go down, gives the order to break out of number 2 hold. A small party succeeds in getting on the deck, and frees some men from the upper section of number 3 hold. But the Japanese have let six 'suicide' guards on board, and they are ordered to begin shooting. Some of the original escapers are allowed to return to their hold without being shot at, but others are continuing to come on deck and the firing continues until the guards are thrown into the sea.

All the holds are open, and anyone who can escapes. After having climbed upto the deck, Captain Cuthbertson of the Royal Scots goes back into the hull of number 2 hold to comfort the sick and dying. He's eventually swept out of the hold by a surge of water as the ship goes under at about 10.30 a.m.

About 1,750 POWs are in the water, some trying to swim to some nearby islands. Four Japanese auxillary transport boats are circling the Lisbon Maru, and as the swimmers approach, some on board shoot at them. For the firts hour or so they fire at anyone coming near and kick back into the water the few who get to the boats.

Tony Banham sums up the situation soon after noon:

At this point, the experiences of those who would survive took three different paths. The stronger swimmers would reach (the) islands under their own power, while those still at sea would either be picked up by Chinese fishermen from the islands, or - possibly because the Japanese now realized there would be survivors - by the Japanese patrol boats.

By sunset today the rescue is largely over - only a handful of men will be recovered from the sea later. About 820 men died during the sinking, others succumbed to conditions in the Japanese work camps where the survivors were sent. 748 men returned home after the war.

Sources:

Gimson in Council: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 67

Smuggled Message: Nicholas Tarling ed., Studying Singapore's Past, 2012, 190, 204.

Lisbon Maru: Tony Banham, The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, 2010, Kindle Location 1601-1900
04 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The Kamakura Maru delivers 32,940 Red Cross parcels to Hong Kong.

The ships is carrying people involved in a primarily diplomatic exchange of prisoners. It also bears the ashes of midget submariners who died during a raid on Sydney Harbour on May 31, 1942. After these reach Japan in October and are returned to the families, Radio Tokyo calls their return by the Australians a chivalrous act that greatly impresses Japan.

Source:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/Kamakura_t.htm
7 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Estella Teresa Cullen marries William Arthur ('Rex') Reice, a clerk with the HKVDC.

Source:

Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 622.
8 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Two Canadian missionaries who have been effectively confined to a flat in Kowloon's Taam Kung Road since the surrender are finally allowed some freedom of movement.

Harold Fetherstonhaugh Collier and his wife Frances Dorothy Collier missed internment in January by chance - a letter they sent to the Japanese authorities asking to be transported to the Island to join those destined for Stanley was not delivered. They stayed in Kowloon, keeping a low profile and being fed from a ration card arranged by a sympathetic Chinese functionary (who'd grown up in Trinidad) and with the general help of a Chinese Christian, Jimmy. In June they were discovered by the Kempeitai, who believed at first Mr. Collier was an escaper from Shamshuipo; after questioning at the Kowloon Gendarmerie, they were allowed to go, but told they would be shot if they left home. In September a Norwegian missionary sent them food and told them about Dr. Selwyn-Clarke. They made contact and Miss L. - almost certainly Dorothy Lee - was sent to assess their situation. In early October they went to the doctor's office, first meeting his assistant (almost certainly Frank Angus) and then the 'kind and solicitous' doctor himself; through him put in an application for a pass.

The passes arrive today and each contains the information that the bearer is 'an enemy (but) of good behaviour and therefore permitted to go about on the streets'.

Source:

F. D. and H. F. Collier, Covered Up in Kowloon, 1947:

undelivered letter: 43

ration card: 44

Kempeitai: 47-49

Selwyn-Clarke: 67-70

Note:

The Colliers are eventually given permission to move to a flat in Homuntin. They are late to register their names with the Swiss Consul for the September 1943 Canadian repatriation, and told that there are no places for them. Nevertheless, after a chance meeting with an Austrian friend of the Colliers, the Consul decides to add them after all, and they duly sail home.
9 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Extract from letter:

Morale here is excellent. The Chinese have no doubt of the ultimate result. The only thing we wait longingly for is the advent of some American planes on a bombing trip. Despite the risk, the more the merrier. I have an odd bottle in reserve to celebrate...

Source:

The Hong Kong Fellowship Newsletter, No. 2, June 1943, 7-8

Note:

Understandably the Newsletter does not say anything about the provenance of this letter. It obviously wasn't sent through official channels, and I suspect it was smuggled out either by a repatriated American or through one of the BAAG routes that began to be established in July 1942. See the entry for July 2.

The writer didn't have to wait long - the bottle was probably drunk on October 25, 1942 when the internees saw the first American raid.
10 Oct 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Eric MacNider summarises a 'long letter' from Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, sent through his town-based Informal Welfare Committee, and received today. The doctor explains that, working with the Informal Welfare Committee, he arranged for families with small children to receive a parcel in June. At the same time he 'farmed out' others, especially single men, to those wiling to 'adopt' them. This explains why a few people have receeived parcels from unknown sources. Selwyn-Clarke believes many more would have been sent if it hadn't been for the depreciation of the dollar which led to price rises.

The IWC had arranged a second distribution on October 8th. It had believed that those who'd been 'adopted' were receiving parcels, but  now the whole matter would be revised.

The doctor asks those who have been 'left out in the cold' to accept his apologies for having 'failed them'.

 

MacNider comments, in Selwyn-Clarke's defence, that since he's not been able to visit the camp there has been no opportunity to discuss such matters and this is the first time the camp authorities had heard of the 'adoption' scheme and its probable breakdown.

Source:

MacNider Papers, '1942, Informal Welfare Parcels'

Notes:

It seems that the ban on Dr. Selwyn-Clarke's visits to Stanley - imposed because of R. E. Stott's escape from the French Hospital - was about to come to an end.

The dollar depreciation referred to is probably the switch from a rate of two HK$ to one Military Yen to four for a MY that was announced in the Hong Kong News on July 24.

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