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

Sir Vandeleur Grayburn and his deputy E. P. Streatfield go to the head of Foreign Affairs Mr. Oda and confess their role in the attempt to smuggle money into Stanley (see February 20). They keep the name of Charles Hyde - who'd also given Dr. Talbot money - out of it, probably because Hyde is the most active BAAG agent amongst the bankers. Oda tells them this is a serious matter. But they have to wait to find out what action, if any, will be taken against them.

Source:

Frank King, History of the HKSBC, Volume 3, 1988, page 622

The Daily Mirror publishes an account on page 4 of yesterday’s inaugural meeting of the Hong Kong Fellowship. The paper describes speakers having to go out into the streets to address an overflow of ‘hundreds’ of people from all over the country. Six hundred had been invited but over a thousand formed ‘a long, anxious queue before the doors’.

Mrs. M. Knight of Leyton asked Phyllis Harrop if she knew anything of her daughter Marjorie Madgwick and her husband: Harrop did know them and told her they were both alive and together.

Note:

It seems that Sergeant C. S. Madgwick’s first wife, Dora, was the victim of a shooting at Lok Ma Chau Police Station on July 21, 1930.

Diarist Frank H. Fisher cynically notes that many 'Pseudo Canadians getting quite frantic to get on the list ((for repatriation - see yesterday's entry)).

Source:

Fisher: Daniel S, Levy, Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography, 1997, Kindle Edition, Location 5505

At Shamshuipo the entire camp attends a play written by one of the prisoners. The Golden Road is set soon after a time everyone's yearning for: the end of the war. A POW rushes home to be re-united with his fiancee but discovers she's married someone else:

Her explanation that 'two years is a long time' was greeted by the audience with the tense silence of men who recognized in it a horrible truth.

Source:

Andro LInklater, The Code of Love, 2000, 120

Death of Christine (or Christina) Cameron, aged 45.

Sources:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 186

http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html

Vandeleur Grayburn is interrogated for a couple of hours this morning. Then it's Edward Streatfield's turn: his interrogator points to lengths of cord and baseball bats and advises him to tell the truth. The questions last for two hours, and the unpleasantness is compounded by poor interpretation, but there's no torture and the banker is never to suffer physical mistreatment.

Not surprisingly, the Japanese seem to regard Grayburn as the main culprit and he's taken for questioning again. Streatfield hears a lot of abuse followed by a crash and later learns that his boss was made to stand on a chair with his wrists tied behind and above him to a ring bolt and then had the chair kicked away leaving him hanging for some minutes. Contrary to some lurid accounts elsewhere, this is the only torture he ever experiences.

Grayburn doesn't seem distressed afterwards and later characterises the manoeuvre as 'very elementary third degree stuff.'

Luckily the interrogators never find out he's a British Army Aid Group agent (code name: Night) or things would be much, much worse for the courageous banker.

Source:

Account of E. P. Streatfield, Hong Kong PRO, HKMS, 100-1-6, pages 3-4

A petition, signed by 1594 internees, is presented to the camp authorities complaining about the rations. They mention the cut of 75% in the flour ration, the absence of meat, and the inadequate supply of 'proper food' - they stress that for them, rice is not a proper food and no substitute for flour.

Grayburn and Streatfield are moved.

They are taken to Happy Valley Gendarmerie (on the site of the former Italian Convent) where they are seen by C. M. Faure, who later testifies they are held in a cage-like cell in filthy and noxious conditions. On the left are a row of three cages and on the right one big one taking up the same area. Streatfield is assigned to cell two on the left, Grayburn to the large cell on the right, where he finds himself next to Henry Ching, the courageous editor of the South China Morning Post. Grayburn was later to share food parcels sent to him by his wife with Ching.

Streatfield too describes the cells as 'literally cages' and says the smell is like 'a menagerie'. There are between 40-45 people in Grayburn's cell, just over a dozen in Streatfield's. There is not enough room for all the prisoners to lie on their backs at the same time. They are given two bowls of rice a day, soemtimes with a piece of cabbage stalk; they need to eat quickly, as the same bowls are used for tea.

In the British House of Commons John Wardlaw-Milne, M. P. for Kidderminster asks a question to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:

(Are you) aware that private reports received regarding the Stanley camp, Hong Kong, indicate unsatisfactory conditions in regard to overcrowding, rations, shortage of drugs and instruments, books, bedding and clothing....?

Mr. Richard Law replies that he is aware that 'very disquieting' reports have been received in the past, but claims that the Red Cross report of January 25 shows a 'steady improvement'. 

Sources:

Petition: MacNider Papers, 'Stanley 1/3/43'

Grayburn and Streatfield:  E. P. Streatfield, Account, page 4, in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-6; Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 226; Evidence of E. P. Streatfield at trial of Sato Choichi, reported in China Mail, April 2, 1947, page 3; Evidence of C. M. Faure, at trial of Noma Kennosuke, reported in China Mail, January 3, 1947

Ching: http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/

House of Commons: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1943-03-24a.1600.3

Lewis Bush, a Japanese-speaking Volunteer Naval Officer, leaves Camp for Shamshuipo after repeated protests that, as a uniformed Volunteer, he is in the wrong camp:

Lieut. Bush sent in from Stanley, Alan Barwell very fit. But there is some friction there with the families, only to be expected.

Bush's own account:

One morning...I was told to pack my kit. At the camp office a host of friends saw me off escorted by a Japanese major. I was sorry in many ways to leave the many good friends I had made at Stanley, but was eager to join my comrades, and looked forward to hearing how they had fared and being able to relay the tidings from Stanley to husbands, fathers, brothers, sweethearts and friends.

Sources:

Bush and Barwell: Diary of Staff-Sergeant James O'Toole: http://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/James_OToole/html/dairy_1943.htm

Bush: Lewis Bush, The Road To Inamura, 1972, 162

Note:

Writing in the early 1970s, Lewis Bush dates his transfer to 'one morning, in April'. James O' Toole's wartime diary is almost certainly correct, and is supported by Bush's own post-war statement.

For the circumstances of his assignment to Stanley, see http://gwulo.com/node/9858

Death of Paul Ewart F. Cressall.

Before the war he was Puisne Judge and was in charge of the enquiry into allegations of corruption in the building of air-raid shelters. He took the unpublished report with him into Stanley, but it disappeared after his death.

Red Cross Delegate Rudolf Zindel makes a full-day visit to Stanley and talks to 84 internees. Not surprisingly he finds 'rations' still the main focus of interest, although he is able to report a 'doubling' of the flour issue: the basis will now be 8 ozs. of rice and 4 ozs. of flour per day. He notes another piece of good news - the bathing-beach will be open from May 2.

However, he also notes the internees' disappointment that he wasn't able to pay any 'pocket money' during April as the necessary funds have been held up in Tokyo since March. 

Cressall gravestone.jpg, by brianwindsoredgar

Sources:

Cressall: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271

Zindel: 'Delegation Report for April 1943' p. 1 attached to General Letter No. 45/43, 7 May 1943 in Archives of the International Red Cross (Geneva)

Note:

By the time of the May report Zindel is in a 'desperate' financial situation because the funds still haven't reached Hong Kong. This is presumably the period referred to by Emily Hahn when for more than two months the Japanese closed down the activities of the Tokyo Delegation because they caught them 'juggling' with Red Cross funds to profit from the exchange rates (Hahn, China To Me, 384). However, it shouldn't be assumed that this was for private profit - as Hahn implies it was. It might have been, but it could also have been to make their money go farther in the relief of distress. From the autumn of 1944 Rudolf Zindel would be forced to pay for his own family's upkeep and to make sure he had enough money to fulfil his Red Cross commitments by raising black market loans against the promise of repayment in Swiss Francs when the war was over. After April 1945 Zindel received no more remittances from Tokyo so he financed the entire Hong Kong operation by borrowing against his personal Swiss bank accounts. Hahn's inaccurate and biased treatment of Red Cross activities is sadly not untypical of the thanks he got!