In Kowloon some of the civilians are still in hiding, but most are prisoners.

Arthur Hamson writes to his wife Edith at 4.10 p.m.:

Beloved mine,

I understand young Barton will probably be shifted up to the hospital as he is unwell. I'm giving him this note to deliver it to you if possible. Where we are quartered is past the Police Training School at the junction of the Shalin ((sic - presumably Shatin)) and Castle Peak Rd.

I'm wondering if you have received my two letters I sent to you yesterday. One note was by Dr. Newton who is here with us, but who took young Osborne to the hospital last night....

We are having a little more food now. 2 cups of tea per day, some rice and cabbage and this morning we had a slice of bread butter and cheese. It all depends what the soldiers give us, but as there are 55 of us it needs a lot to feed us....

The imprisonment here is monotonous. All we do is to read, talk and play cards and hear guns.

On the Island the Central Police Station is hit by bombs for the second day in a row.

Jorgen Jorgensen, a Norwegian ship's captain, dies after being admitted to St. Paul's casualty clearing station with injuries sustained when his ship the Halldor is bombed. Second Engineer Gosta Nyborg died in the bombing, and the four surviving Norwegians will be taken prisoner. One, Olaf Daniel Pedersen, will die in Stanley on August 15, 1945.

The Daily Express carries a thoughtful page 1 article:

Hongkong, besieged and under shellfire/last night, sent this radio to London:

WE INTEND TO DO/OUR BEST

Express Military Reporter MORLEY RICHARDS

FROM besieged Hongkong, shelled all day from short range and bombed without respite, this message was flashed last night: " We all thank you most sincerely for your heartening message. We intend to do our best."

The message came from Hongkong's Governor, 54-year-old Sir Mark Young . In reply to Mr Churchill’s message ‘We are all with you’.

Tokyo radio yesterday predicted that the fate of Hongkong would be "decided in a matter of days"

The Express is realistic about the prospects of relief from the Chinese Army:

Marshal Chiang Kai-shek's offensive in the Canton area, though gaining ground, is still a long way from directly affecting Hongkong's besiegers. It is directed more to harassing the enemy’s flanks.

The paper reports that the Japanese are occupying Kowloon and predicts (wrongly of course) that they’ll try to take Hong Kong by siege and bombardment rather than direct assault:

The enemy can draw on heavy reserves free from interruption and may decide that his best plan is to blast the garrison into submission while attempting a strict blockade to produce eventual starvation. Frontal assault would inevitably mean staggering losses to the Japs, and not necessarily success.

There is an optimistic assessment of the Colony’s water supply now that the reservoirs have been captured. It seems to me that the Express is doing well at trying to be both informative and upbeat. This is going to be an increasingly difficult task.

Sources:

Hamson: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 102

Central Police Station: Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003, 85

Norwegians: Banham, op. cit. 89; and

http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/halldor.html

Note:

It has not yet been established which members of the Barton and Osborne families are referred to.

Tony Banham sets the scene:

It is Hong Kong's last morning of siege. The defences are in place, waiting for the inevitable invasion, as the artillery and aerial bombardment reaches a new intensity.

In Central Market the Jesuit Father Ryan is helping with the distribution of rice to the poor. It's about 13.15:

There was an appalling crash and a thunderous roar and a shivering of glass, and in an instant everyone was flat on the ground. The chance in a million had occurred: a bomb had fallen in the central space in the very heart of the market.

Yet even that was not the end. The plane evidently dropped three bombs, for two other explosions were heard in the street outside, and after the sound of their thunder there was still heard the noise of crashing walls and the piercing wail of screams.

Father Ryan is unharmed, but six people inside are killed and many others outside; hundreds are injured.

During the twelve or so daylight hours, more than 200 shells fall in and around the French Hospital (St. Paul's) in Causeway Bay and the associated buildings - probably because there were British guns in the playing fields at the back of the hospital.

One shell hits the Hospital direct, and Dr. Dean A. Smith, who's in charge, has arrived to inspect the damaged wards when a second shell explodes at his feet causing him multiple injuries and seriously wounding the nurses accompanying him. Franklin Gimson and Dr. Selwyn-Clarke are summoned by phone, and they decide that another doctor must take over and that no new casualties will be received at the hospital, while as many patients as possible will be transferred elsewhere.

When Dr. Philip Court, the new head, arrives he decides to abandon the main building and convert the large church in the middle of the grounds into a hospital, as it's the strongest and most spacious of the compound buildings. The work of moving the patients, under continuing shellfire, will carry on until tomorrow.

An entry from the Police War Diary:

1930 hrs ex-sergeant Jessop, watchman at the Tai Koo docks, reported Japanese landings.

The first wave of the Japanese 228th. Regiment has begun the assault on the Island. Landings will continue throughout the evening and all the first wave troops are over by midnight. The land assault on the Island has begun.

Hong Kong is back on the front page of The Daily Mirror. The theme for the day is the Governor’s ‘no surrender’ stance:

TOLD THE JAPS (POLITELY) TO GO TO HELL

SIR MARK YOUNG, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Hong Kong, sent this telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies yesterday:

“After some further bombardment, I have received another letter signed by Japanese military and naval commanders-in-chief, asking me to confer about surrender on considerations of humanity.

The following is the text of my reply:

‘ ‘ ‘The Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Hong Kong declines most absolutely to enter into any negotiations for the surrender of Hong Kong, and he takes this opportunity of notifying Lieutenant-General Takaishi Sakai and Vice-Admiral Masaichi Niimi that he is not prepared to receive any further communication from them on the subject.‘ “

The Secretary of State ((Lord Moyne)) replied:

“Your refusal to consider the Japanese commanders’ request to negotiate terms of surrender of Hong Kong commands the respect and approval of his Majesty’s Government.

“Your resolute leadership, and the stirring conduct of all defenders of the fortress, are being watched with admiration and confidence by the whole Empire and by our Allies throughout the world.”

Sources:

Last morning: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 95

Ryan: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege of Hong Kong, 1944, 135

Time, casualty figures: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 99-100

French Hospital: Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 67; Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege of Hong Kong, 1944, 76, 132-133

Diary: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 55

Japanese landings: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 108

Tony Banham gives a concise explanation of the military developments that are going to unfold from now until the surrender:

As they remove the defenders from the north-south road, the Japanese, are simultaneously pushing westwards towards Central {then Victoria}, and south towards Stanley.

Stanley Fort, of course, is a major British strong point. Nevertheless, Banham tells us clearly that the main objective was Central/Victoria, capture of which would lead to almost immediate surrender, while 'Stanley was simply a sideshow'. But it's in the southern part of the island that a group are about to undergo what was to become one of the best-known civilian experiences of the Hong Kong fighting.

At 9.30 a.m. the troops and civilians in the Repulse Bay Hotel come under attack. Second Lieutnant P. Grounds (Middlesex) is in command, and his orders are to hold the hotel at all costs, as it guards the coast road. Later in the day Grounds is killed leading an attack to free five prisoners in a garage opposite.

It's a large and varied bunch of civilians who are inside the hotel:

And inside the hotel, too, were a hundred and fifty civilians - young mothers with babies and young children, their husbands fighting with the volunteers, the dowager duchesses of Crown Colony society and Gwen Dew, free-lance American girl photographer from Detroit; the wealthiest Chinese merchants of the Far East and their families; a few Chinese houseboys who had followed their British masters to refuge; eighty-three-year-old Dr. L. C. Arlington, the famous author and authority on Chinese culture; courageous Americans employed by the British-American Tobacco Company who wanted to fight, and retired European rentiers who didn't.

At the other end of the island, Joan Crawford and the survivors of yesterday's siege of the North Point Power station are taken out of the garage in which they've spent the night:

Next day we were lined up once more, the men in uniform separated from the civilians. We were marched down to Ming Yuen to the refugee huts {built for refugees from the Sino-Japanese War}....

Once more we were sorted out, questioned and allocated to huts which were filthy dirty. Some of the bunk beds had been used as lavatories, and we were ordered to clean up as best we could, using our hands and whatever rubbish had been left behind. As we finished, we were ordered out to even flithier huts and the whole process of cleaning again.

Strangely enough, all through the previous two days, having been in the front line so to speak, I had no feeling of fear, as though completely detached from the whole thing. But the cleaning up of this filth finished me off....

We were joined by other civilians, and the mysterious process of organizing life began to stir. Beds were allocated, latrines dug - one for the ladies being modestly screened.

The Daily Mirror's page 1 headline:

Hong Kong Defenders Hold Out - Our Penang Garrison Goes

But the report admits the situation is 'serious' and describes Japanese landings on the north-east of the Island on the night of 17/18. That's a little early, and the report of Japanese successes on the back page is exaggerated:

By 11 a.m. most of the island was in Japanese hands...The remainder of the British withdrew to Victoria Peak while Victoria city was occupied intact by the Japanese.

The whole of Victoria was never to be occupied, but only because surrender came first. The front page of The Daily Express carries a similar story:

Hongkong, fighting to the death with swarms of Japanese who landed yesterday at many points on the island, rejected with scorn a third offer of surrender terms and then came silence.

Citing Japanese sources, the paper claims that British troops had withdrawn to the Peak, where a last stand was expected.

Sources:

Military developments: Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003,  165-166

At 9.30 a.m.: Banham, op. cit., 175.

Civilians: Jan Henrik Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 36-37

Crawford: Austin Coates, A Mountain Of Light, 1977, 148-149

Note:

For Bennie Proulx's arrival at the Hotel, see yesterday's entry.

The ordeal of those captured in Kowloon continues.

Arthur Hamson and most of his fellow prisoners at the Hing Wah/Ying Wah College are up at  6 a.m. - they've been told they are to be moved today. They are taken by lorry to the Kowloon Hotel, arriving at about 2 p.m.. At 5.30 p.m. he writes to his wife Edith - 'life seems blacker now than it has ever been. We're 4 of us in a small room'.

Robin Boris Levkovich is also one of the party that is moved from the School to the Hotel. He lists some of the people he found already there:

Mr. Gale, ('American Red Cross Representative') / Mrs Lee ('who went on the peace mision') / Mr. Von Ness / Mr. and Mrs. Massber ('American') / Mr. Gingles and party ('the owner of the Palace Hotel').

George and Helen Kennedy-Skipton have generously opened their home to those in need. Tonight the group is told to move: the troops holding nearby Mt. Cameron are withdrawing, and they tell them to leave too. One of the party, Sally Refo, tells the story:

He {an officer of the Royal Scots} told us to get ready and they would have a truck there for us in a few minutes. Just as we went out with the children to get into the truck a shell hit the tennis court not more than twenty feet away but fortunately on higher ground and when the rest of us got up Harriet still lay there and I thought sure she was dead. She was only frightened. It was so dangerous that we decided we would stay in our house and take our chances. But the officer commanded us so strongly that we dared not disobey. While we hesitated the truck left. Ours was a wild flight, children, servants and excited adults all mixed in with the soldiers who were retreating in confusion. We feared the soldiers would be shelled or fired upon. We could not get away from them. The children were slow. We ran into barbed wire entanglements in the utter darkness. Mr. Skipton brought up the rear in his car and when we were able to turn from the soldiers' line of march he overtook us and picked up the children. At last we found a place to stop. We lay on the cold floor and rested in a house that the men from the billeting office knew was a good place. Why we did not take pneumonia I do not know. At day light we got up and found a place to live in. That was a dark moment. We had no food, no water, no bedding and only the clothing that we had on.

The tensest moments of the Repulse Bay Hotel siege arrive. It's been decided the soldiers at the Hotel will leave in the hope that this will save the civilians from massacre. The first attempt is through a drain, but this is so noisy that Major Templer decides to lead the rest to Stanley Fort along the road.

The soldiers line up and begin to slip out of the hotel in stockinged feet.  A Swiss man, a neutral, feels impelled to share their fate; he asks for and is given a Volunteer uniform.

Many of these soldiers are to be killed, some after torture.

After the soldiers are gone, the Japanese enter the Hotel. One member of staff, 'the number one Boy' is bayoneted. The soldiers then approach the wounded with fixed bayonets, but Australian nurse Elizabeth Mosey blocks their way and they back down.

The front page of the Daily Mirror carries the headline:

Hong Kong Battle On Racecourse

The Express agrees:

Battle Raging For Hongkong Racecourse

The Mirror's story is based on a Japanese report, and it also mentions that the Japanese people have been told to refrain from 'excessive jubilation' when the fall of Hong Kong is announced.

The Chinese army is now described as fighting ten miles north of the border town of Shumchun. But even the most optimistic person with a loved one in Hong Kong must realise that the game's up and that there's nothing to hope for but capture and imprisonment rather than death.

In fact, on page 2 the columnist Cassandra is drawing conclusions from the 'swift and ominous fate' of Hong Kong and Penang as if it's already over for both places.

Sources:

Hamson: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 105

Levkovich: Statement, pages 4-5 (in the Ride Papers, held at the Hong Kong Heritage project and kindly sent to me Elizabeth Ride)

Kennedy-Skiptons: Sally Refo's Letter, available to members of the Yahoo Stanley Discussion Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stanley_camp/messages

Repulse Bay: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 207; Jan Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 68-73

Notes:

1) Levkovich gives the date of his move as 'about the 25th' and also lists Major Manners as already there: as Manners was still in the Repulse Bay Hotel on the 22 (see above), Levkovich was either transferred a little later than Hamson or was wrong to think Manners was in the Hotel before him. See also the entry for December 12.

'Von Ness' is Parker Van Ness, a Kai Tak mechanic and eventual escaper: http://gwulo.com/node/11296/backlinks

For more about E. F. Gingle: http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/edward-gingle-at-war/

The Middlesex are living up to their regimental nickname - the Die-hards - stubbornly holding up the Japanese advance to Victoria.

Down on the Stanley Peninsula the Canadians and members of the HKVDC spend the evening in a bitter firefight with the invading troops. Today and tomorrow parts of what will soon become the Stanley Internment Camp are engulfed in violence, something the internees will never quite forget.

Bill Hudson and his fellow Stanley Platoon (prison officers) were involved in some of this fighting. They were called up on December 19 and have had a relatively peaceful time until today:

Then the nightmare came at 8.50 p.m. on Christmas Eve. They attacked the Village ((Stanley Village)) with small tanks and thousands of troops, it was hell let loose, machine guns every, {sic} some of the Volunteers defended the left of the Village and the Mary Knoll, but the attack came direct for us from the Beach and the Lower Beach Road, for three and  half hours we fought so, with lulls between, then they would come on again screaming their heads off, just to be mowed down....

Bill Hudson survives, and, like some of the other Prison Officers, is sent to Stanley in spite of being captured in uniform. {See tomorrow's entry.}

Conditions in town are deteriorating, as leading surgeon Li Shu-Fan testifies:

Towards the end of the eighteen days, most of the doctors had been in the city where the appalling health conditions frightened us. Malignant malaria, cholera, and other diseases were breaking out, and the hospital was getting its first quota of these. One had only to glance at the Hong Kong streets to see the reason for the epidemics. Stagnant pools of water, filthy tin cans, broken vessels and cesspools – all these, everywhere, were excellent breeding places for mosquitoes. The Sanitary Department had ceased to function and the coolies refused to work since the streets were unsafe during battle; so, too, anti-malarial squads stopped work and the scavenging coolies abandoned their rounds. Garbage and filth, accumulated in heaps everywhere, bred an unprecedented number of flies; and the thousands of decaying bodies scattered on the hillsides were additional breeding grounds….The swarms {of flies} brought on a wave of the four major bowel complaints – cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and diarrhoea.

Andrew Leiper and his fellow HKSBC Essential Workers open the Bank but very few customers appear.  Leiper goes shopping:

Lane Crawford was one of the few shops still open, and I went there through an almost deserted street to buy some tins of food, toilet articles, a few odds and ends of clothing, and a small canvas bag to hold all that remained of my worldly belongings. The Portuguese assistant who served me said that he regretted he could not charge the purchase to my account as usual, and I would have to pay cash as all credit sales had been suspended.

George Kennedy-Skipton and Henry Refo go into work and then try to get back to the house they were forced to abandon on the night of December 22. They're after supplies for their large group:

Christmas Eve the men went back to work {at the Billetting Office}. After work Henry and Mr. Skipton decided to go back to Mt. Cameron in the big car. Planes sighting it and supposing it to be an officer's car dived and bombed it. Hearing the roar as the plane dived down, Henry and Mr. Skipton attempted to stop and get out. The first bomb landed some fifteen feet to the rear but struck the embankment above the car. Had it struck the road it would have been really serious. As it was, only one piece of shrapnel hit the car. It went through the rear window and embedded itself in the front seat a half inch from Henry's back. The plane returned and dropped one or two more small bombs that went wide of the car and of the men who by this time were far down the road. A little later they returned to the car, anxiously looked it over, got in, turned around and returned home as fast as they could.

Gwen Priestwood, who's been driving a truck delivering food all through the fighting, realises that the great and the small intertwine to create the experience of war:

I drove the gray truck all Christmas Eve and got home that night tired and dirty. There was a small package on the table. Wearily I opened it up.

Six pairs of sheer American silk stockings!

I almost cried. Well, I suppose any woman would have. Here I was, at a great moment of tragedy in the history of the British Empire, a city in flaming ruin around me, surrender to the Japanese a few hours away - and to me the silk stockings seemed the most beautiful things in the world.

The civilians captured at the Repulse Bay Hotel are given five minutes to pack. Mathilde ('Mimi') Compton has to leave her 'paralytic' husband Albert Henry  ('Harry', the head of Sassoons since 1918) behind, and they are not to be re-united for months; some Chinese men are frantic at having to leave their wives and children in Japanese hands. The party is not told where they're going, but ordered to start marching.  They're taken on a long, hard walk, up past the dead bodies in the Wong Nei Chong Gap:

Near the top of the peak Mr Needa I think it was, commandeered a passing truck being driven by a Jap soldier and managed to get it turned around in the direction we were going. Into it were loaded the mothers and children, the sick and the aged, a few of the bags. I suppose that some of our group would have died along the road without the help of this truck.

They continue downward through Happy Valley, close to No Man's Land. A short halt gives them hope they might be allowed to pass through to British lines:

But that hope died quickly; we were kicked into motion again, and descended the hillside to the Tai Koo light plant at the east end of Victoria City. From the weakest to the strongest, all of us were done in...

Just before dark they are taken into the filthy, looted Duro paint factory on the waterfront to spend the night.

But at the Hong Kong Hotel regulars are still allowed to sign chits for their bar drinks.

And back in Britain - well, hope springs eternal:

Hong Kong Hammered, Hits Back

Though facing new onslaughts from freshly-landed Jap troops, and having suffered 'very heavy casualties,' the weary defenders of Hong Kong are striking back at the enemy with tigerish ferocity.

The page 1 report goes on to suggest that the Japanese have fallen into a clever trap: they were allowed to march almost unopposed 'across the Tytam Reservoir dams' down to Stanley. The dams 'form a causeway' which was then blown up and the Japanese, cut-off from their bases, were subjected to withering fire.

Although it reports the death of two senior Canadian officers, the paper's also upbeat about the problems the Japanese will face in wresting the western half of the island from the defenders. And the back page continuation of the article stresses Hong Kong's strategic importance and quotes sources in London to the effect that if the Colony is captured there will be a counter-attack.

The Daily Express story on page one also claims success on the southern front with the 'town' of Stanley being retaken by the defenders.

Sources:

Bill Hudson: http://blunderingblindlybackwards.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/amanuensis-monday-letter-from-bill_22.html

Conditions in town: Li Shu-Fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, 1964, 103-104.

Leiper: G. A. Leiper, A Yen For My Thoughts, 1982, 86

Kennedy-Skipton and Refo: Sally Refo's Letter, available to members of the Yahoo Stanley Group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stanley_camp/messages

Priestwood: Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed Wire, 1943, 25

Repulse Bay - 'Five minutes to pack', the Comptons, Chinese men, 'Near the top': Gwen Dew, Prisoner of the Japs, 1943, 63-64

Repulse Bay - 'But that hope': Jan Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 95

Chits: Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 62

In the Kowloon Hotel they don't need to be told about the surrender; Arthur Hansom writes to Edith:

Beloved all is quiet. There has been no guns firing since yesterday evening and we are all of the opinion that it must be because HK has surrendered. We had about 100 people brought over here from HK last night most of them were from Stanley way and they had very depressing news with them. {This was presumably the group from the Repulse Bay Hotel.}

At Argyle Street Camp, Dr. Newton writes in his diary reflections that probably many would have echoed:

The surrender is probably for the best as it saves more slaughter, but goodness knows it means a prettty grim prospect for us until this war is over.

Marie Paterson ('Pat'), the nurse who slipped out of the Jockey Club yesterday night, has alerted Dr. Selwyn-Clarke:

In rushed one of the girls who had been raped during the night, crying 'Hide me quickly!' Before we could do so, a dishevelled soldier ran in and grabbed her, saying 'Go Jap.' She tried to cling to me, crying piteously. I motioned to the soldier to release her, saying 'No can, plenty work to do.' But he dragged her away, and they were halfway down the ward when there was a sudden shout from the entrance. He let go of the girl and dashed away. Released, she ran back to us. Then we saw why - a group of officials were {coming} into the ward. We recognised, with overwhelming relief, our Director of Medical Services, Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, with another European and two Japanese offficers.

It's agreed that the Jockey Club post will be evacuated with the nurses going to Queen Mary Hospital and the patients being distributed between two other hospitals. Marie Paterson's courageous escape has brought help just in time.

The Maryknoll Fathers and a few other Catholic ecclesiastics - thirty four in all - have been locked in a garage with their hands tied behind their backs. Two men, considered neutrals, are not tied up, and they help some to loosen their bonds, while others manage to do so themselves. But some spend the whole night tied in this increasingly painful way. Two have dysentery and no-one's had anything to eat. They start trying to get food from the sentry at 10 a.m. and eventually Father Toomey trades a valuable watch for a half-full water canteen. Later another canteen is handed in and at 4.30 they get their first meal since 11 a.m. on the 25th. - hardtack biscuit and evaporated milk.

For many of Hong Kong's civilians today will be the day when they encounter the conquerors for the first time. Even the Chinese-army general and hard-bitten adventurer Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen feels 'more frightened than I'd ever been in my life'. He's in his favourite haunt, the Hong Kong Hotel, and he and the others there are dozing on chairs or on the floor of the hotel lobby. At about midnight there's a rattling and a banging on the doors and a Japanese officer with a pistol followed by two soldiers with rifles at the ready enter and ask for Cohen. T. B. Wilson, who's in charge this evening, hesitates to answer, so Cohen reveals himself. He's taken to a temporary HQ in a near-by office block and politely asked for the whereabouts of a number of prominent Chinese Nationalists. He replies that he doesn't know, and is released. Realising that he's been set free in the hope that he'll lead the Japanese to his associates, he gets messages to everyone to keep away from him. He returns to the Hong Kong Hotel and stays there, growing more and more 'frantic', until  the January 5 assembly on the Murray Parade Ground.

Bill Ream is at Queen Mary Hospital:

On 26 December my grave-diggers failed to turn up. Two of us had the very unpleasant task of burying five Canadians who had been blown up by a hand-grenade tossed into a pillbox.

Soldier's wife Jean Mather is with her mother at the Gloucester Hotel. They watch the large dining room fill up with Japanese soldiers - 'a stunned and somewhat bedraggled looking set of "guests"'.

The bakers - Patrick Sheridan, James Hammond, Thomas Edgar and Serge Peacock -  are in the Exchange Building. Captain Tanaka, the Japanese officer in charge of communications, takes control of the building. Nobody is allowed to enter or leave, but Tanaka treats his prisoners humanely, providing them with good food and eventually arranging English-language film shows in the Café Wiseman.

Frederick Ivan Hall of Lane, Crawford manages to get out a cable to his family back in England:

Quite well: home soon.

Alex Summers of MI6 sends his last radio message out of Hong Kong. He will go to Stanley Camp where he will succesfully maintain his cover as a local businessman throughout the war. He later noted that the Japanese displayed a definite interest in the wherabouts of the former MI6 head Charles Drage (see  below).

Sources:

Kowloon Hotel: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 113

Dr. Newton: Oliver Lindsay, The Lasting Honour, 1980 ed., 164

Jockey Club: Mabel Winifred Anslow, It Was Like This, 2001, 97-98

Maryknoll Fathers: Maryknoll Diary, December 25-26

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 287-288

Ream: Bill Ream, Too Hot for Comfort, 31

Mathers: Jean Mathers, Twisting the Tail of the Dragon, 1994, 18

Bakers: Thomas Edgar, article in The British Baker, September 13, 1946 (see also today's entry in Sheridan's hostilities Diary)

Hall: Derbyshire TImes and Chesterfield Herald, 14 September 1945, 5

Summers: Keith Jeffrey, MI6, Chapter 17.

Note:

Charles Drage's book on Cohen quotes its subject to the effect that 'On Boxing Day we knew it was all over. In the afternoon the news of our surrender was broadcast'. This chronology is followed by Cohen's later biographer Daniel S. Levy, and if it is correct the events described above took place on the night of December 26/27. However, I think it's probable that Cohen's memory was deceiving him and that they really took place on the night of December 25/26.

The Japanese Victory Parade is held. Streets are cleared and Europeans forbidden to look on pain of death, although some risk a glimpse or two.

On a visit to Dina House, Phyllis Harrop meets Dr. Valentine, who tells her they had been trying to find her too. He takes her to see Colonel Eguchi (or Iguchi), the Japanese Director of Medical Services, and they discuss the question of prostitutes and the brothel system. She explains that there are no 'licensed houses' in Hong Kong {due to a pre-war attempt by the Government to wipe out prostitution.} Eguchi says he knows there are many 'girls' in Hong Kong and that he wants to introduce a licensed quarter as quickly as possible - the 'girls' would be medically examined and paid. He says that the new year is approaching and that there are 40,000 victorious troops in Hong Kong and that without such a system he cannot be responsible for the safety of any woman. At 5 p.m. Harrop goes with him to Wanchai and points out the brothels she's aware of  - 'I know them personally and have often raided them'.

The Japanese, under the orders of the former manager of the Yokohama Specie Bank, enter the HKSBC building and assemble the staff. Sir Vandeleur Grayburn is questioned at length and all keys are surrendered and the safes and treasuries sealed.

Policeman George Wright-Nooth is taken to Gendarmerie HQ. He's questioned by a Gendarmerie Major as to the districts where 'bad men' are to be found. He points to areas with many opium dens and gives vague names and addresses to avoid admitting that the main records have been destroyed. Wright-Nooth tells him that being confined to quarters makes it difficult for him to feed his Chinese and Indian policemen (he doesn't mention the Europeans): the Major immediately gives him a pass which reads in translation 'This officer can go anywhere. Do not stop him.'

The worst period in the ordeal of the Maryknoll Fathers comes to an end. Their bonds are removed and they are allowed to leave the garage for meals. They are back in the garage when the Japanese-speaking Major Kerr arrives. He's acting as an interpreter, and he manages to get some food to them and to the British soldiers who are being held in the room next to them. He also persuades a Japanese officer to allow them out of the garage and into a room in the House - at least this has a wooden floor not a cement one. They are allowed to spend the night in their lower chapel but there are still Japanese soldiers in Maryknoll House itself.

Sources:

Grayburn: Frank King, History of the HKSBC, Volume 3, 1988, 572-573

Harrop: Phyliis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 91-92

Wright-Nooth: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 71-72 

Maryknoll: Maryknoll Diary, December 28, 1941

Notes:

1. One of the Europeans who claims to have watched the Victory Parade is George Wright-Nooth, but he dates it to December 29, which is undoubtedly wrong, assigning the events in the text to today. Wright-Nooth was on a visit to the Police HQ at the Gloucester Hotel from which he was able to see the part of the route that went along Des Voeux Road:

Nowhere was there any rejoicing. Everywhere was quiet except for marching feet and occasional military commands. Overhead three flights of planes flew up and down the route several times. Then the parade came in sight headed by a bugle band, a large part of which seemed composed of officers. They were followed by the general and other high ranking naval and military officers, all of whom were mounted. Following them on foot came a large party of Japanese soldiers carrying little white boxes on their chests. These contained the ashes of those Japanse killed in action. (page 75)

2. More of the story of the setting up of a Japanese brothel area can be read in Li Shu-Fan Hong Kong Surgeon, 1964, 113-115. Valentine and Eguchi  seem to have consulted Dr Li before Harrop, as Li claims that he suggested that Eguchi ask for five hundred 'prostitutes'  to be sent from Canton, which the Japanese had been occupying for three years, but the Colonel rejected the idea because it would have made him look ineffective. He says he showed Eguchi the brothels on a map of Wanchai, and like Harrop, that he stressed not all houses in that area were used for that purpose.

3. There is some confusion in the sources as to who was the British Deputy Director of Medical Services at this point, Dr. Valentine or Dr. MacLeod. 

The last Japanese soldiers leave Maryknoll House in the early hours of this morning. The Fathers report that the city water goes on again today - it was working in Victoria yesterday, but they're down in Stanley. They need plenty of it as they're cleaning up.

George Wright-Nooth and the rest of his police station, acting under orders given yesterday, leave for the Gloucester Hotel. While there, an 'informal mess' system evolves between him and five other officers: everything but sentimental possessions is shared. There are changes of personnel - for example, one of the original half dozen, W. P. Thompson escapes -  but the principle is kept throughout internment - 'we became practical communists and in our case it worked'

John Stericker, factory manager of the British Cigarette Company, is walking up to the Peak in the middle of the afternoon. Close to the Peak Tram Terminus in Garden Road he sees two groups of Chinese roped together to a tree. He'll see them again tomorrow at the same time, some of them having collapsed to the ground and dragged the others as far as the ropes would allow.

About 7,000 prisoners of war from West Brigade (and the navy) assemble in Victoria in the early morning. They are taken by ferry to Kowloon and then to the former barracks at Shamshuipo, which is now their prison camp. Two thousand men from East Brigade are still at Stanley - they're told they'll be taken to their new camp tomorrow.

Doctors Newton and Gosano are busy in Argyle Street Camp:

Doctor Newton did great work among the wounded also Dr. Casano (sic). They scrounged some ether and did operations by the score, one after the other with practically no kit.

Under the headline Hongkong British Fight Way Out In Launches page one of The Daily Express reports Chan Chak’s ‘great escape’:

EIGHTY-TWO Britons and Chinese made a fighting escape from Hongkong on Christmas Eve, the day the island garrison gave in, Chungking radio disclosed last night.

Led by one-legged Admiral Chang, ((sic)) Chinese liaison officer in Hongkong, the escaping party manned six launches. ((The escape and surrender were of course on Christmas Day.))

As far as the coverage of Hong Kong in The Daily Mirror and The Daily Express goes, this report – a left-over from the fighting – is pretty much it for the next 9 weeks or so - understandably, as reliable news of any kind will be hard to come by. The next time Hong Kong makes the headlines will be March 10/11, and the news will be deeply upsetting to all those with loved ones there:

http://gwulo.com/node/11079

http://gwulo.com/node/9924

Sources:

Maryknoll: Maryknoll Diary, December 30, 1941

Wright-Nooth: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 2004, 76-77

Stericker: China Mail, December 28, 1946, page 2

Shamshuipo: Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003, 285

Doctors: Diary of Staff-Segeant James O'Toole, R. A. O. C.:

http://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/James_OToole/html/dairy_1941.htm

Phyllis Harrop reports:

New Year's Day – everything seems to be quiet. I have been out for breakfast and there are very few troops to be seen. All cars on the streets have been rounded up....

Bird's Eye View: the first week of the occupation

This is undoubtedly the most anxious New Year's day in Hong Kong's history. But those who are to become residents of Stanley Camp before the month is out might well feel that, bad as things are, they could have been a lot worse.

The atrocities – rape, torture and murder – that were inflicted on all of Hong Kong's ethnic groups during the fighting obviously led to a huge amount of fear at the first encounter with Japanese troops, which for many future internees was on December 26. Most 'Europeans' survived this with little more than unwelcome and unfriendly attention and robbery, particularly of watches and other desirable items.

There is some disagreement as to the timing of what, in contrast, ensued for the Chinese majority: leading surgeon Li Shu-fan states that he looked into a Japanese party on the night of December 26:

Parties like this swelled to orgies throughout Hong Kong. It seemed as though the soldiers had been specifically given license to commit any act they wished. Their first thought was to put wine in their bellies; then they set out for excitement and mischief. Under pretext of searching for arms or suspects, they broke into house after house at the point of a gun. Once in, they slapped, kicked, murdered, stole, and raped. Throughout the night we heard people wailing and crying in the distance: 'Save life! Save life!' and the desperate beating of hundreds of gongs, tins and pans. The whole of Happy Valley rang from end to end with these pleas for help.

Historian Philip Snow, on the other hand dates the start of the 'sack' to the victory parade of December 28, at the end of which the troops were given a three day 'holiday'. Snow continues:

At this juncture however an interesting distinction began to make itself felt. In the three days which elapsed between the British surrender and the start of the sack the 23^rd Army officers had apparently reimposed some discipline in respect of the treatment of Europeans. (emphasis in original).

In other words, in the last half dozen or so days of the fighting, there had been a widespread (although by no means universal) breakdown of Japanese army discipline, and atrocities were meted out to people of all races; but in the aftermath of the surrender, the 'whites' largely escaped physical violence, although not looting.

This is one of the first indications of what will become a grim reality of the occupation: for all the talk of 'Asia for the Asiatics', the Chinese will suffer much more  than the British

As they look apprehensively towards the coming year, most of Hong Kong's 'white' civilians have survived the fighting and the aftermath relatively unscathed. But they've lost most of their possessions and been driven from their homes and they are left wondering what is to become of them. Anything seems possible, from a quick Allied recovery of the colony to mass slaughter by the conquerors - and even when the outcome is very different, both the dream and the nightmare will continue to haunt the minds of the internees.

Sources:

'Everything seems to be quiet': Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 97

Li: Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, 1964, 109-110

Snow: Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 81