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

Things have been moving slowly with regard to the British taking over control from the Japanese, but that changes today.

Franklin Gimson refuses Selwyn-Clarke's request to set up an administration, saying he needs the permission of the London Government to take such a decisive step. He sends Arthur May to Macao with a message for London - if they agree to an immediate British take-over they should broadcast the phrase 'Hongkong go ahead' over the radio. However, May first has to find a boat and then to wait out the typhoon of August 24th-25th before its safe to set sail and he won't leave until August 26th. Nevertheless, Gimson uses the fact of his mission to get the camp council to allow him to swear the oath making him Officer Administering the Government (OAG), arguing that London will soon hear he's ready to take over so this crucial step is now urgent.

He now has the legal authority to govern Hong Kong but that's a long way from having the power to do so in reality. The message sent through Arthur May is optimistic, offering to take immediate control, but this mood doesn't last long. Later today a British Army Aid Group (BAAG) mission arrives from Macao: although May is still in Hong Kong, it coincidentally bears the answer to Gimson's question.

The BAAG team is headed by Y. C. Liang (code name 'PL'), and comprises Dr. Eddie Gosano ('Phoenix'), Rogiero Lobo and the radio operator Fung Bei. Gosano contacts Selwyn-Clarke and is eventually sent to Kowloon to help Dr. Newton restore medical services there. Liang makes a dramatic appearance in Gimson's room and passes on a message from the British Government - received by Lindsay Ride ('Blue') on August 13th -  telling Gimson to leave camp and set up a civilian administration. Liang briefs Gimson and other senior civil servants on conditions in Hong Kong and gives him gold sovereigns to cover immediate expenses. 

Liang urges Gimson strongly to act immediately, but this pressure - reminiscent of Selwyn-Clarke's - pushes Gimson in the opposite direction. He gives Liang a reply for London that amounts to a refusal to set up an administration that would not be able to maintain law and order. He does, however, decide that he should move into an office in town as soon as possible and send a message over the radio telling the world he has done so. In other words, his policy is to take symbolic control of Hong Kong before the Chinese or Americans arrive, but without pushing the Japanese authorities to stand down - only they can hold off the armed Triads, the desparate looters, the Nationalists, the Communists, renegade Japanese soldiers out to avenge their defeat....

The Allied prisoners who were sent to a prison in Canton on June 22 were brought back to Hong Kong yesterday. Today those who were arrested in Stanley are brought back into the camp. One of them, William Anderson, will spend the next five days in Tweed Bay Hospital. Banker Andrew Leiper, who returns to Bungalow 'E', will soon join him:

Still half asleep and confused by my surroundings I rose, and in the dim light I saw a Japanese soldier standing in the doorway looking at me.

Possibly the man was hungry and was hoping that he could get some food, But the effect on me of his visitation was immediate and devastating.

I have no recollection of what happened after I felt as though my racing and violently-thumping heart would burst through my chest. However (,) I was subsequently told that I waked the others by screaming hysterically that it was all a dream, the war was not finished, and the Japanese had come to arrest me again.

He is sedated for two weeks and spends a week in hospital being medically examined.

Stanley, Bungalow E today.jpg, by brianwindsoredgar

Other returnees today: James Anderson, Reginald Camidge (arrested 6/2/44),William Cruickshank and  Hugo Foy, 

Dr. Frederick Bunje and his wife Margaret Lucy are also brought to Stanley - as far as I know, this is the doctor's first visit, and I've seen no evidence that Mrs. Bunje was sent to the Camp after her husband's arrest on May 2, 1943, so it might be hers too. Mary Selwyn-Clarke is also sent in from Ma Tau-wai, presumably because her parents think she'll be safer than in the uncertainties of Kowloon.

Hong Kong's on the agenda at the House of Commons today, and it attracts multi-party interest. The Leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill (Conservative), asks Prime Minister Attlee (Labour) if the Government is making any plans to restore British administration in Hong Kong as soon as the Japanese surrender is received. Attlee assures him that such plans are 'fully prepared', but a suspicious Churchill reminds him of his own (Churchill's) clear commitment to allowing no change in administration. Attlee remembers that commitment. Mr Maxton (Independent Labour) wants the P. M. to bear in mind that the senior civil servants in Hong Kong have been imprisoned and will need a period of 'rest and relaxation' before they take up their duties again. The P. M. agrees. Mr Gallacher (Communist), returning to the question of sovereignty, hopes it won't be settled 'with the atomic bomb in the background'.

Under the headline 'Save the Prisoners' Order Goes Out', the Daily Express reports on page 1:

BRITISH WARSHIPS AND C A R R I E R S ARE  TONIGHT

TAKING ON STRONG FORCES OF SPECIALLY TRAINED

TROOPS TO RACE TO  THE RESCUE OF PRISONERS OF

WAR IN JAPANESE HANDS.

The Australian Army and Navy are joining in and within days two powerful fleets in full battle trim will steam from this South-West Pacific base for the prison camps of Hongkong, Shanghai and Formosa….

The  carriers have fighting planes too. Commandos and paratroops are sailing in the warships. Our commanders half expect that we may have to shoot our way into Hongkong, although MacArthur’s surrender orders to the Japs stipulate that we shall go to the aid of our men without interference.

The family and friends of the Hong Kong prisoners must be on tenterhooks. 

Sources:

May: Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 99; Arthur May Papers, Hong Kong University Library Special Collections, A4

BAAG Mission and Gimson's response: Ride Papers (British National Archive online) and documents in Selwyn-Clarke Papers and Hong Kong Public Records Office

Prisoners: Stanley Camp Log (IWM); China Mail, October 17, 1945, page 2

Leiper: Andrew Leiper: A Yen For My Thoughts, 1982, 224

Commons: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/aug/23/hong-kong-british-administration#S5CV0413P0_19450823_HOC_249

Note 1:

James Maxton was the Independent Labour Party M.P. for a Glasgow seat. The only other trace of an interest in Hong Kong I can find was a question he asked in the House in 1933  about the detention there of a Malayan political refugee. He doesn't come from the kind of political background that would make one expect him to be particularly concerned for the welfare of senior British colonial civil servants (and I doubt that the fact that he almost certainly knew Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, who had stood as an ILP candidate, had any influence on him!)

On the same day he asked a question about U Saw, the former Burmese Prime Minister, who'd been held by the British for four years in Uganda after they discovered he'd been in touch with the Japanese. I have a hunch that Maxton, a long-standing anti-imperialist, was trying to put a tiny spoke in the wheel of the British resumption of sovereignty in Hong Kong.

Death of Muriel Hassard, the former matron of the Diocesan Boys' School, aged 59.

During the hostilities she had looked after the younger boys with the help of an old boy of the school, P. A. Waller. She and her charges were evacuated from Kowloon on December 11, and some of the  boys were interned with her in Stanley.

Readers back home are given re-assuring news of the Japanese Camps as a whole - 'Prison-Camp gates have been thrown open, Tokyo announced last night' - and learn a little about Hong Kong:

In Hongkong the 3,000 British prisoners have been told of the surrender and have agreed to stay put until the Allies arrive. They are allowed to use buses and ferries to go into the city and to nearby Kowloon.

Sources:

Hassard:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=98-miRI2yAwC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=kan+yuet-keung+hong+kong+war&source=bl&ots=sEOGakAvlC&sig=WmNIBq43ChmoKJ1vQSwj1CIsQ5o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XdFcU6KpG8rtObjbgcgI&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=kan%20yuet-keung%20hong%20kong%20war&f=false

Report: Daily Express, August 25, 1945, page 1

Notes:

1) The source cited misdates the death to August 26 when Mrs Hassard was buried - see Barbara Anslow's diary for that date.

2) I'm not sure of the source of this report. The general point - prisoners staying put - is accurate, but the estimate of numbers and the claim (which was repeated in a sub-headline) that buses were running should be treated with suspicion.

Franklin Gimson broadcasts from a restaurant with a link to the old Z.B.W. radio station on the top of the Gloucester Building

As the chief representative of the British Government now resident in Hong Kong, I have already established an office in the City of Victoria, with the concurrence of the Japanese, and have in preparation the essential steps towards resuming the British administration on the arrival - which I trust will not be much longer deferred - of the British Forces to take the surrender of the Colony.

Notice the careful wording: he is not claiming to have set up an administration, only to be 'in preparation' for one. Nevertheless, the broadcast as a whole, with its congratulations to the British crown on victory in the war and its survey of conditions in Hong Kong, manages to subtly convey British authority. The transmission is a triumph for Gimson's policy of staking a British claim to continued rule over without provoking the Japanese into handing over immediate power, which Gimson knew he was unable to exercise. In fact, no claim will be necessary: the Chinese, in the absence of whole-hearted American support, have reluctantly backed down, and Admiral Harcourt is not far from Hong Kong waters.

Source:

The text of Gimson's broadcast is in the South China Morning Post for September 1st, 1945; see also G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 230

The sky was clear and clean. There was no wind - just the faintest dawn breeze. The sun was storming up out of the China Sea in a roar of colour.

It's the day the Colony's been waiting for since December 25, 1941, and, as it unfolds, the weather is perfect:

(A) brilliant sun is scorching its way across a blue sky dotted with white clouds. A breeze from the east makes it cool in the shade...

Early in the morning the internees spot Rear-Admiral Cecil Harcourt's fleet about 20 miles from Hong Kong. Larry Andrewes, former Supreme Court Registrar, makes an attempt to reach it in a Chinese fishing boat. He's picked up by a picket-boat that's on its way to Stanley to ask about conditions in Hong Kong, and taken aboard H. M. S. Maidstone. He tells Captain Shadwell that Gimson's already established a British administration in town. He then takes a bath and is given fresh clothes. He sends a huge sandwich loaf into Stanley - the recipients are moved to tears by the sight.

At 11 a.m. the Hong Kong Government issues its first communique since December 25, 1941:

Rear-Admiral Harcourt is lying outside Hong Kong with a very strong fleet...

At about noon Harcourt lands to repossess Hong Kong and assure the safety of the population. He is ready for trouble, but in fact, there is little resistance.

Rear-Admiral  Harcourt's first official duty is to visit Stanley. At 5 p.m. a truck full of marines draws up in Camp followed by three cars:

The cheering was something you hear only once in your life - if you are lucky enough to hear it once.

Prisoner Officer William Hudson begins to write to his wife Peg and son Peter who had been evacuated to Australia:

My Darlings,

            I don’t know how to start this letter, I have so much to say – and I want to say it all at once.  Well my Sweethearts – thank the Lord we have pulled through successfully.  I never for one moment thought we would lose the War, but I had a horrid feeling they would do something to us.  

He breaks off to attend the flag-raising ceremony and then resumes:

6.30 pm same day.  I have just returned from the Flag hoisting ceremony.  Admiral Harcourt came out here himself, although he landing at 12 the Japs asked 24 hours to decide, he gave them ½ hour to get out of the Dockyard, he then landed troops with tanks and after firing a few shots took command, I believe the Chinks waiting outside the Yard Gate with bamboos and knocking lumps off them.  Anyway he got here by 5.15 pm, and believe me Peg it was heartbreaking.  The bugle call - hoisting all Allied flags - lowering to half mast for the dead - the hoisting again - yes tears rolled down my cheeks - as it did to hundreds of others.  Later in the evening a Naval {officer} Shadwell of HMS Maidstone i/c of submarines gave us a thrilling talk of the doings of his submarines saying the Navy had often watched us through their periscopes.  

One internee has a rare experience:

FATHER GREETED BY OWN SON

When Mr. L. R. Brown was liberated from Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, first of his rescuers to greet him was his own son, Harold . 

Harold Brown, a stoker on the depot supply ship Maidstone, had gone ashore with the first landing party

Mr Brown was former managing director of the China Constitution Company. His wife who lives in Bannerman Street, Cremorne received word of his release.

Not quite the one described though - the liberator was in fact his older brother.

George Wright-Nooth brings his diary to an end after forty-two months. The last words:

We are all celebrating!

Back in the UK they read about Gick's flight (see yesterday) and learn what's going on from Gimson's own lips:

As chief representative of the British Government now resident in Hongkong I have already established an office in the city of Victoria with the concurrence of the Japanese authorities.

Spouses, friends and relatives of those in Hong Kong can be fairly sure that the general situation is under control. But the agonising wait for letters or telegrams from their loved-ones still goes on.

Sources:

Sky clear/Cheering: Russell Clark, An End To Tears, 1946, 25;35

Brilliant sun: Les Fisher, I Will Remember, 1996, 238

Andrewes: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 227-228

Communique: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 228

Hudson letter:

http://blunderingblindlybackwards.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/amanuensis-monday-letter-from-bill_15.html

Wright-Nooth: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 250

Brown: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17952818?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-publictag=Stanley+Prison+Camp

Gick, Gimson: Daily Express, August 30, 1945, page 1

Note:

Something of the family history of Mr. Brown is given at

https://griffithreview.com/edition-29-prosper-or-perish/where-is-home

The author, his grandson, tells us that his name was Lord (not a title) Roberts Brown. He'd left Hong Kong because of the Japanese threat but was caught there on business on December 8, 1941. He fought with the Volunteers, but was advised by a Catholic priest to discard his uniform during the final hours of fighting, hence ending up in Stanley. He was so emaciated when he arrived in Australia after liberation that his wife walked straight passed his outstetched arms.

The Yorkshire Post finds a county angle to the great events currently unfolding on the other side of the world:

A Welcome Broadcast

One of the people who must have been most pleased at the British entry into Hong Kong to-day is Mrs. Gimson, of Pickering. Her husband, Mr. Franklin Charles Gimson, Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong, released from an internees' camp, broadcast a message over Hong Kong radio today. He had the misfortune to arrive to take up his post on the island only a day before it fell to the Japanese in December 1941.

 Source:

Yorkshire Post, August 31, 1945, page 2

Note:

Was Mrs. Gimson the first person in the UK to know for certain that her husband had survived internment/imprisonment in Hong Kong?

The formal surrender of Japan takes place aboard the USS Missouri (thanks to Laura Ziegler Darnell for the link):

Franklin Gimson writes his first letter to his wife Dorothy and tells her the most debilitating thing about internment;

(It was) not the boredom, not the uncertainty but the nervous inter-play of personality on personality, the selfishness, the malicious trend given to any scandal, the deliberate misinterpretation of any statement and many signs of extreme nervous tension & lack of mental balance.

Telephone engineer James Anderson is brought in from Stanley to help with the rebuilding of Hong Kong's infrastructure. He's billeted in a mess in Hankow Rd. along with other technicians.

Sources:

Gimson: cited in Nicholas Tarling ed., Studying Singapore';s Past, 2012, 183

Les Fisher, I Will Remember, 1996, 245

Note: Of course all of what Franklin Gimson says is true, but the 'big picture' is rather different: in three years and eight months of more than 2,000 people constantly hungry and living in crowded accomodation there were no major crimes, no successful suicide attempts and, although I've never seen statistics to bear this out,my guess is that those given special care as 'lunatics' numbered not many more than would be expected in normal times. For more on this topic see http://gwulo.com/node/26812

My guess is the constant display of unreasonable behaviour described by Gimson helped ward off major pathologies.

What is perhaps the longest period spent under Japanese control of any 'European' civilians comes to an end today.

Missionaries Mildred Dibden and Ruth Little (an Australian with some nursing skills) were amongst the first civilians to encounter Japanese troops as their Fanling Babies Home is close to the border (see December 8, 1941). Through hard work, courage, dedicaton and good luck, they managed to keep the Home going throughout the occupation.

The Japanese were still responsible for the administration of the New Territories after the surrender, and in late August the Home was granted five months supply of rice.

Today two Allied planes salute the Home and soon after a car with a large Union Jack spread over the bonnet pulls up. It contains British officers who have come to escort the exhausted women to the Peninsula Hotel where they will spend the night before boarding the Empress of Australia for repatriation.

Today's South China Morning Post (page 2) gives a comprehensive list of the personnel and working location of the new administration. Franklin Gimson, now the Lieutenant Governor, is on the first floor of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building (north side), as is the Colonial Secretariat under R. A. C. North. Selwyn-Clarke is heading up Medical Services from the south side of the same building. F. C. Barry of Lane, Crawford  has returned to his post as Rice Controller, but there's a new overall Food Controller - Eric Himsworth - they're based at the Mercantile Bank Buidling. Director of Information is University Vice-Chancellor Duncan Sloss at the Gloucester Building. W. J. Anderson, not long returned from his ordeal in a prison on Canton, is the Stores Controller working at the Hong Kong Cricket Club.

A number of accounts suggest that the ex-internees - including these senior ones - are often marked by mental uncertainty and lassitude. But the full list of 'departments' and offices is impressive and it suggests that the will to work is stil there. Nevertheless, the days of this determined team are coming to an end.

The advance guard of the Civil Affairs Organisation, which is to take over the tasks Gimson's administration, arrives in Hong Kong. It's headed by David MacDougall, a former Hong Kong Cadet, who at the end of the hostilities took part in the dramatic Christmas Day escape led by Admiral Chan Chak. 

Sources:

Dibden: Jill Doggett, The Yip Family of Amah Rock, 1982 ed, 196

McDougall: Nicholas Tarling ed., Studying Singapore's Past, 2012, 186

Note: Doggett gives the date of these events as September 7, and her source is clearly Miss Dibden herself. She also had access to her wartime diary. However, she only mentions one night at the Peninsula and the Empress of Australia didn't sail until September 12 due to delays. It's possible the period the missionaries spent under Japanese control was a little longer still.

T. J. J. Fenwick, who escaped from Hong Kong in October 1942 with the help of the British Army Aid Group, arrives back in the colony. He's been sent by the Chief Manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Arthur Morse, to report on the situation there.

The battle of ideas going on during the re-occupation is reflected on the front page of this morning's South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Telegraph. An editorial headed 'The New Hong Kong' begins:

The upheaval through which humanity has lately passed shook our civilization to its foundation and brought crashing to the ground a great many outworn ideas. The brave new world is about to be built. It is most necessary that the people of Hongkong, whose minds have always been more or less isolated, insular and insulated, should realise fully that the old order has gone and can never return.

To re-inforce this point, one of the headlines reads:

NO DISCRIMINATION

Relieving Forces Caring For All Communities

Official Assurance

Whether this is happening is a matter of debate; but the fact that such assurances are given at all has its own signifance.

The first service since liberation is held in St John's Cathedral.

Sources:

Fenwick: Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 234

Service: http://www.stjohnscathedral.org.hk/history.html

Note:

See also September 16, 1945