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

Those members of the Hong Kong University staff who are interned in the University compound are sent to Stanley, with the exception of Professor Gordon King and Professor R. C. Robertson, who are allowed to remain outside Camp to fulfil medical commitments.

The Camp Temporary Committee sends a memorandum to the Japanese on food deficiency.

The Maryknoll Diary reports the opening of a canteen on the 'Hill': it's to be the distribution centre for camp supplies, and canned milk is for sale to those who can afford it. Paul Malone is elected Representative for Block A.

The Japanese issue four instructions to the internees: not to look down into the prison, not to pick flowers, not to leave camp, and not to use the football pitch below St. Stephen's.

Edith Hansom comments:

Internees had been forbidden to look into prison grounds; however this rule was impossible to enforce.

Sources:

Hong Kong University staff: Lindsay Ride, in Clifford Matthews and Oswald Cheung, Hong Kong University: Dispersal and Renewal, 1998, 66.

Temporary Committee and instructions: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 89 (memo); 52 (instructions)

Maryknoll: The Maryknoll Diary,  31, 194

Internees forbidden: Allana Corbin, Prisoners Of The East, 2002, 135 (enforcement)

January 31: A Bird’s Eye View

With most 'white' Allied civilians now in Camp, who was left outside Stanley? Some of the people mentioned in the list below - which is by no means complete - were to be sent into camp over the next few months, but others stayed out for a longer period and the history of Stanley can't be understood without reference to these 'stay-outs' (Tony Banham's phrase). For an account of the 'rules' that governed internment in camp, see http://gwulo.com/node/14063.

Some people kept out by pretending to be  'third nationals' (roughly = neutrals). Ellen Field, both wife and daughter of Volunteers in Shamshuipo, was still living in Kowloon  with her children, posing as Irish. Phyllis Harrop was using German (divorce!) papers and plotting her escape. None of these women ever entered Stanley. Also claiming Irish status were George Kennedy-Skipton, a senior Government official, whose refusal to obey Gimson's February order to cease his work was to lead to much controversy, and Thomas Christopher Monaghan, the manager of Canadian Pacific, who was to become an important agent for the British Army Aid Group after it made contact with Hong Kong in June/July 1942. John and Mary Power were both interned, but released because John was Irish. He too became an agent, and died of mistreatment in prison in 1944. Unique as always, Emily Hahn was avoiding internment on the basis of a 'marriage' to a Chinese national.

It seems that some women running orphanages were allowed to stay out for part or all of the war: Dorothy Brazier and Doris Lemmon of the Salvation Army Home in Kowloon and Miss Jennings, an elderly missionary who walked twenty miles each way every month to collect the rice ration, of the Taipo Orphanage in the new Territories. Muriel Dibden and Ruth Little were allowed to continue running a home in Fanling and stayed out for the duration.

The Colliers, twoissionar Canadian missionaries, were effectively under house arrest in their Kowloon flat due to a mix-up.

Gwen Dew, captured on December 23, was being kept out of Stanley by the efforts of a Japanese fellow journalist. She'll soon be sent into Camp and experience a feeling of 'release' even a parodoxical sense of freedom at being away from the constant pressures and dangers of contact with the Japanese.

There were some families still on the Peak (or in nearby roads) who would soon end up in Camp, but were 'out' at this point, probably through some kind of indulgence on the part of Japanese officers. William Sewell, a Quaker missionary, and his wife and children were in a house on Bowen Rd. with some Americans (a Japanese Major had told them ‘the internment camp is not well ordered yet; it is too soon to take the children’). When they were sent to Stanley in the second week of February they got a frosty welcome, as those already in occupation of Block 1, Flat 15 resented giving up the room needed by five people.

Colonial secretary Franklin Gimson and some of his staff were still in Hong Kong, living in the Princes Building and helping in the transfer of power. An advance party under John Fraser had gone in (probably on January 26) to prepare work and living space.

A few engineers connected with public utilities were kept out because their expertise was needed by the occupiers to help repair the war damage. Some Dairy Farm employees were kept out to look after the part of the herd that wasn't shipped to Japan.

Mr. Gibson, an American oil company executive, was allowed to stay in Hong Kong to represent the American internees.

C. M. Faure was not interned. Along with a number of other former SCMP journalists, he worked for the Japanese propaganda sheet, the Hong Kong News. He had been asked to keep an eye on the interests of the South China Morning Post, whose plant was being used by the Japanese, but how he got them to agree to his   staying uninterned is not known.

Some nurses stayed in Hong Kong hospitals until later in 1942, most arriving in Stanley in August (see, for example, the Chronology entry for August 10).

A number of elderly patients at the French Hospital were allowed to stay uninterned.

But there were only two really important groups of long term ‘stay-outs’: the first were bankers (British, American, Dutch and Belgian) kept out to provide services to non-Japanese nationals and to help the Japanese seize as much of their banks’ wealth as possible, and the second were medical staff, working under Dr. Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Hong Kong’s former Director of  Medical Services, who was allowed to keep something like his former role because the Japanese wanted his help in preventing outbreaks of epidemic disease. The bankers lived in the Sun Wah Hotel and other of the waterfront ‘hotel-brothels’, while about twenty medical staff (including doctors, bakers making bread for the hospitals, drivers and, later,  public health officials) lived either at St. Paul’s (‘the French’) Hospital or elsewhere in Hong Kong. In both cases, a number of wives and children were also present.

When it became obvious that the POWs in Shamshuipo Camp and the internees in Stanley faced a dire future, these two groups - bankers and health workers - co-operated, at heavy cost to themselves,  to improve the situation. The bankers, under the leadership of Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, raised money which was smuggled into the Camps, loaned to individuals remaining in Hong Kong, or given to Selwyn-Clarke. With his share the DMS bought vitamins, medicines and hospital equipment which were smuggled into the Camps (and hospitals) or, in the case of Shamshuipo, sent in through a mythical ‘Kowloon Welfare Society’ (a front involving Ellen Field).

This system worked well for a year. In early 1943 the Kempeitai (‘the Japanese Gestapo’) began a counter-strike that was to destroy it. There were probably just over 100 'white' British men left out of Stanley at that time. A year later, about ten per cent were in prison, and half a dozen were dead.

Sources:

Ellen Field, Twilight in Hong Kong, 1960, 65

Emily Hahn, China For Me, 1986 ed, 337

Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1944, 129-130 (German papers); 126 (advanced party)

Brazier and Lemmon: Susanna Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong, 1991, 275-276

Jennings: Dorothy Lee, in S. Blyth and I. Wotherspoon (eds.), Hong Kong Remembers, 1996, 30.

Dew: Gwen Dew, Prisoner Of The Japs, 1944, 132

Sewell: William Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 41-48

Engineers: Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 138

Gibson: Emily Hahn, China For Me, 1986 ed., 307

Faure (wrongly spelt Foure): George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 98

Elderly patients: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stanley_camp/message/1601

Bankers: G. A. Leiper, A Yen For My Thoughts, 1982, passim

Health workers: Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 77-80

 See also:

http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/in-praise-of-bankers/

http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/the-reign-of-terror-2-fear-in-the-french-hospital/

Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen, a Stanley internee who's a general in the Chinese Army, is  taken by the Kempeitai to a prison at the old Magistrate's Court in Kowloon. They want to know about his Chinese Nationalist activities and contacts.

He's left there for two nights and then taken and put in a room with Alfred Reginald Seymour Major, who was formerly in charge of the Special Branch of the C.I.D. The room fills up over the next few days until there are 8 men imprisoned there, including three more Special Branch officers - (A. H.) Elston, (F.) Shaftain and Rex Davis.

A meeting of the Temporary Committee considers a motion proposed by L. R. Nielson and seconded by Atholl MacGregor: it calls on John Fraser - at this stage the senior Government officila in camp - to petition the Japanese to allow the Chinese wives to stay in Stanley unless they wish to leave. It's agreed unanimously.

It is reported that arrangements are being made to move some of the aged and infirm to St. Paul's Hospital in Causeway Bay and that 9 people had already gone.

The meeting also hears a letter from Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke suggesting the setting up of an International Relief Fund. He's asked to attend a Committee meeting to provide more detail. (see February 4).

Sources:

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times Of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 29 (See also the entry for Feb. 10, 1942)

TC Meeting: John Stericker, Captive Colony, 1945, Chapter IV, 7, 10.

At a Temporary Committee meeting, Lancelot Forster reads out a memorandum regarding the establishment of a school in Camp. Professor Forster subsequently chairs an Education Committee which meets weekly during internment. 

Sources:

Forster: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 18

Bird's Eye View: Stanley and 'Old Hong Kong'

By general consent, the Americans made a much better job of setting up their part of Stanley than the British, who seemed mired in shock, selfishness and squabbling. (1) But the British soon realised that they were there to stay (for a period at least – the hope of a speedy reconquest took a long time to disappear) and began to get themselves organised – the Japanese were generally content to set the rules, send in the rations and leave the internees to sort out most other things themselves. One of the most remarkable things about the way they set up Stanley was the fact that within a couple of months many of the most apparently ingrained features of 'old Hong Kong' had been swept away. The internees realised that the new conditions demanded new structures, so they created them. 'People make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing': Marx's dictum could hardly have a better exemplification.

Old Hong Kong was a dictatorship run by the Governor – true, there were some democratic elements, the most powerful of which was the simple fact that His Excellency came under pressure from so many different angles (the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, the British ex-pats, the other 'Europeans', the ordinary Chinese, the elite Chinese and so on) but at the end of the day, his word was law. Within three days of arriving in Stanley, a Camp Temporary Committee was elected. (2) No doubt the democratic example of the Americans had its influence, even though in some accounts their own elections led to effective but authoritarian and corrupt government! (3) Another factor was the unpopularity of the previous Hong Kong Government, already tarnished by pre-war scandals and now blamed, no doubt unjustly, for what was seen as the failure to provide effective military resistance.(4) It was also significant that the Colonial Secretary, the newly arrived Franklin Gimson, and most of his senior officials weren't sent into the camp with the other internees, so an alternative administration had to be devised anyway. Only two Government officials were elected to the Camp Temporary Committee. (5)

The Temporary Committee - which we see in action today - did its job of getting things started, extended its life to deal with the crisis created by the Chinese Supervisor, and then abolished itself. New elections in February saw eight members elected to represent the various 'blocks' of the camp; later six members were elected from the camp as a whole, but this experiment was not repeated. (6)

While this was going on, Gimson and some of the former Government personnel were being held in the Prince's Building in Victoria (Central), and he either came into meetings himself or was represented by Defence Secretary, John Fraser. When he arrived in Stanley, believing that as His Majesty's representative in Hong Kong (the Governor Mark Young was never in play after the surrender and was soon sent out of Hong Kong), he should take over the running of the camp, he met huge resistance and had to manoeuvre to assert his authority. On March 28 he was forced to accept a 'power- sharing' compromise. (7) He did eventually succeed in gaining a strong grip on the camp's administration, but Stanley retained strong democratic elements in its government, with regular elections and a vigorous public opinion that couldn't be ignored completely. Those elections could produce surprising results: one of them saw, in defiance of both the old sexism and the arrogant dismissal of 'colonials', an Australian woman chosen as 'head' of one of the administrative blocks the camp was divided into. (8)

It wasn't just in its relative democracy that Stanley Camp differed from the Hong Kong that gave it birth.

In the years before the war, an influential element in the Government had been moving towards the idea of greater welfare provision for the poor, (9) but it would be fair to say very limited progress had been made by December 1941 in a Colony that had failed to introduce an income tax. But welfare was provided on a fairly wide scale in camp, although obviously in circumstances of great difficulty.

Universal free primary education was not introduced in Hong Kong until 25 years after the war. It became a reality in Stanley at an early stage – in fact, as today's Chronology entry signals, before the end of February 1942 classes from kindergarten to senior had started to run. (10) An International Welfare Committee, chaired by Margaret Watson, was set up 'almost immediately' to try to help those who had come into the camp with nothing. (11) In fact, Stanley for the first couple of years operated pretty much as a communist society: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. (12)

People were expected to do whatever they could ('from each...'), and as many of the skills needed to run a peace-time society were no longer necessary, they had to develop previously neglected talents, like our diarist R. E. Jones who starts to write music and adorn people's few possessions with pleasing lettering. Every family was rationed according to the number of its members not its position in the rigid pre-war hierarchies ('to each...'). Children were specially looked after, as were the sick and the ailing – either in Tweed Bay Hospital or through the specially prepared food in Laura Ziegler's Diet Clinic. (13) Extra food for the sick was funded from canteen profits. The IWC which paid for the food, also used this money to buy sewing thread and glasses and to repair shoes. (14) The crown of this welfare activism was the provision of excellent medical services under extremely difficult conditions at Tweed Bay Hospital.

It's easy to miss an important fact: Stanley was extremely egalitarian. Old Hong Kong was, in the words of Philip Snow, a society in which everybody tried to look down on everybody else (15) and this all-pervasive sense of hierarchy was reflected in the gradation of material rewards and the (generally) unofficial 'zoning' of residential areas according to status and race. No doubt much of the imagination of superiority continued in camp - perhaps it even intensified in a place where people had so little other than their illusions about themselves - but it wasn't reflected in camp provision. According to one source, Franklin Gimson had a valet, (16) otherwise position in the old hierarchies mattered little. Defence Secretary John Fraser queued for his rations with everyone else, and his state of health in 1942 or early 1943 doesn't suggest he was getting anything extra. (17) It seems that the old elites received few favours with regard to accommodation – having a friend on the Billetting Committee was another way to improve your lot in camp, but having once lived on the Peak cut no ice. Bungalow D, re-opened in May 1943, saw Lady Grayburn, Mrs Pearce and Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, all of whose husbands had been on the Executive or Legislative Councils, living side by side with ordinary bakers, public health workers and their wives. (18)

Philip Snow sums up the situation of the old elites in the new order:

Social standing now counted for less than physical stamina and the resourcefulness necessary to procure additional food supplies. (19).

True, those who had been wealthy sometimes managed to cling on to a little of their privilege - the first supervisor C. L. Cheng is said to have taken bribes for special treatment - but soon new elites arose, on a basis which had little to do with pre-war status. The nouveaux riches were those with Chinese or neutral friends outside camp who were able to send them food parcels and willing to take the risk of being branded a British sympathiser by doing so. Some of the old elite got parcels, certainly; but so did ordinary Hong Kongers like diarist George Gerrard, a man of obviously high personal qualities who regularly received gifts (which he shared with others) from his former Chinese work colleagues. (20) But the super-rich of Stanley were the black marketeers. A well-connected man who became one of postwar Hong Kong's wealthiest citizens has been claimed as one of them, but the best documented case is of an ordinary prison officer who was said to have bundles of bank notes in his room. A former butcher also did well.

The notorious racism of old Hong Kong, which was slackening its pernicious grip in the immediate pre-war years, was weakened still further by conditions in Stanley, where it became obvious to some people at least that resilience and generosity bear no relation to skin colour or country of origin. Historian Gerard Horne, who rarely misses a chance to exaggerate 'white' racism in Hong Kong, reports that some internees complained that if Eurasians were kept out of camp, there would be more food for everyone else. Horne rightly points out that the Japanese sent in rations according to the number of internees, so fewer would have simply meant less food. (21) However, he leaves out two important things. Firstly, exactly that point about lower rations being supplied if the Eurasians were expelled was made in camp, by a Eurasian internee responding, to the sound of 'cheers from the many prisoners standing in line', to a racist in a food queue. (22, italics mine) Secondly, there was a perfectly reasonable objection to the presence of Eurasians in Stanley: the camp was dreadfully crowded before the American repatriation, and Eurasians were allowed to choose whether or not they entered, and, if they left, there would have been more room for everyone else. This was discussed by the camp committee, which, quite rightly in my opinion, allowed the Eurasians to stay. (23) Still, Henry Ching, who was present during the war years, reports that some Eurasians voluntarily left Stanley because of racism, (24) so it's important not to go to the other extreme and underplay the continuing bigotry.

In summary: Stanley in these early days was run by the British insofar as they had power in a largely democratic way, and later combined authoritarian government with strong democratic elements. It was highly egalitarian in its provision of goods and services, extra benefits generally being awarded on the basis of need rather than social standing. The elites that did arise were not the same as those that had existed pre-war, although there was some cross-over.

However, racism, although less widepsread than before, persisted in both official and unofficial forms, and never came anywhere near vanishing. In other ways the old ideological order continued – women were by no means allowed an equal role in the running of the camp, for example, and the men elected to positions of authority tended to be those who had had some status before the war.

No doubt most of the changes were the result of circumstances rather than ideological commitment, but it's instructive to note how quickly people can abandon old ideas when the situation demands it. Or, more pessimistically because some things didn't change, how stubborn certain forms of group arrogance can be even when faced with evidence that amounts to incontrovertible refutation. (25)

Sources:

1. See e.g. George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 89.

2. G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 207.

3. There's a balanced assessment of Bill Hunt, the American leader and the most influential figure in the early months of the camp, in Norman Briggs, Taken In Hong Kong (Briggs calls Hunt 'the Brain').

4. For the unpopularity of the Government, see e.g. Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 135.

5. Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, Kindle Edition Location 459. According to Endacott and Birch there was only one Government official in the first 13 elected – 207.

6. Endacott and Birch, 1978, 208.

7. Snow, 136.

8. Dorothy Jenner – see http://gwulo.com/node/12323

9. See Leo F. Goodstadt, ”The Rise and fall of social, political and economic reforms in Hong Kong, 1930-1955′, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 44, 2004.

10. Emerson, Location 2985

11. Endacott and Birch, 209.

12. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part 1, 1875.

13. See e.g. Gwen Dew, Prisoner of the Japs, 1943, 128.
14. Emerson, Location 2149, 1923.
15. Snow, 2.
16. Emerson, Location 529.
17. Fraser queuing: Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 143; health problems: Li Shu-fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, 1964, 142.
18. For a brief discussion of the class composition of Bungalow D, see http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/bungalow-d-dwellers/
19. Snow, 135.
20. Gerrard's diary can be read by members of the Yahoo Stanley Camp Group - http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/messages
21. Gerald Horne, Race War!, 2004, 91.
22. Allana Corbin Prisoners of the East, 2002, 165.
23. For the source and a general discussion of Horne's analysis of anti-Eurasian racism before and during the war, see http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/gerald-hornes-race-war-1-the-eurasians/
24. http://www.rhkrnsw.org/publictn.htm ('Internment of Civilians').
25. For Maltby's praise of the 'superb gallantry' of the Eurasian Volunteers see http://www.britain-at-war.org.uk/WW2/London_Gazette/hong_kong/ And for the activities of one Japanese-German woman in Stanley, see  http://gwulo.com/node/18501. It wasn't just the Eurasians of course: all ethnic and national groups had provided ample evidence of the worthlessness of stereotypes (particularly negative ones) long before the war came to an end.

The Japanese-sponsored Hongkong News reports on conditions at Stanley:

The enemy aliens at Stanley are receiving good treatment, and all extol the kindness and consideration of the Japanese authorities.

American internee Norman Briggs mocked the British for drawing down the wrath of the Japanese by responding to a newspaper claim that conditions in Stanley were good by pointing out that they weren't - it was perhaps today's report that gave rise to this incident!

The Red Cross truck that's been bringing 'odds and ends of goods and supplies for individuals and the American community' is hijacked on the road.

Sources:

Hong Kong News: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 171

Hijack: The Maryknoll Diary, February 5, 1942

Note: At this time there were two teams of drivers bringing in items - both approved and illegal -  from Hong Kong, and it's not known which was involved in the hijacking. The first was based at St. Paul's (the French) Hospital: Owen Evans, Dr. Robert  Henry and Charles 'Chuck' Winter. The second was living in May Road: Eugene Pawley, Charles Shafer, John Morton and Albert Fitch.  It's possible that Carl Neprud was living with this group until he was moved to St. Paul's for medical treatment.

All the drivers were American except for Owen Evans, who was Welsh.

For more details see:

http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/thomass-work-6-more-on-the-delivery-drivers/

All bodies left around Camp after the fighting are finally buried.

A group of men, women and children living in Bowen Road are finally forced to enter Camp. One of them, Sally Refo, tells their story:

Even though it had often been unpleasant outside we did not want to give up what freedom we had. We had read of concentration camps and feared them. We also knew a good deal about the lives of Hong Kong civilians in the hotels. Most of all I feared starvation for the children and that proved to be the best founded fear I had during the whole war. On February 7th sitting on the tops of trucks piled high we trembled as we went around Hong Kong precipices, giving right of way to military cars. I shall never forget our arrival. We saw unshaven, carelessly dressed men, moving slowly because they were hungry, depressed women and pale children, crying or playing around in the camp. The one cheerful thing was to meet old friends. However, the camp never again seemed so unbearable as on the first day.

Sources:

Bodies: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 52.

Refo: Sally Refo's Letter can be read in full by members of the Yahoo Stanley Camp Discussion Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stanley_camp/messages

Today the first term of schooling in Camp begins.

The Temporary Committee meeting hears a letter from Dr. Selwyn-Clarke expressing grave concern at the appearance of early signs of malnutrition amongst the internees and recommending a universal medical examination.

The American community meets at 2 p.m. in the Club House Rooms and various reports are read. The Japanese have offered everyone with a bank account in Hong Kong $50 for food, but this is declined.

The newly-built American kitchen is opened.

It's the most nervous day in Jan Marsman's life. Tomorrow he begins his escape.

Sources:

Schooling: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 189

Temporary Committee: John Stericker, Captive Colony, 1945, Chapter IV, page 12

Meeting, kitchen: Maryknoll Diary, February 9, 1942

Marsman: Jan Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 191

Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen is taken to an interrogation room. Already there are an officer, an interpreter and 'two ugly-looking customers'.

Cohen realises that, although they seem to have a lot of information about him, much of it is jumbled and inaccurate, so when they ask him for details of his wartime activities with the Chinese and British, he denies everything. The two 'ugly-looking customers' start to mistreat him:

One of them slashed me across the shoulders with a bamboo. That was too much. I got to my feet and socked him on the jaw. It was a good sock too....but it was the end for me. The officer joined in, and the three of them let me have it with fists, boots and bamboo till they were tired.

Franklin Gimson sacks George Kennedy-Skipton from his post in the Hong Kong Government after the latter refuses to obey Gimson's order to cease his work in Hong Kong. Kennedy-Skipton will remain uninterned by asserting Irish nationality until his escape from Hong Kong on January 24, 1943.

Sources:

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times Of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 292-293

Kennedy-Skipton: http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/accusations-of-collaboration-1-george-stacy-kennedy-skipton-2/

Note:

I've summarised Cohen's own account, which is accepted by his biographer Daniel Levy, even though Levy recognises that some of Cohen's stories are 'fabrications'. 

Death of Henry 'Kid' Marriott of the Dockyard Police.

Source and more information:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/topics/2987

Today Jean Gittins enters Stanley.

Gittins, the daughter of Sir Robert and Lady Clara Ho Tung, is Eurasian and in a position to claim either British or Chinese nationality. So far she's stayed out of Camp, living alongside Gordon King and Arthur Bentley, in Hong Kong University.

She's coming to feel that she'll be better off with her sister Mabel in Stanley - more secure and more likely to be part of any any exchange of prisoners -  but meets opposition from the Director of Medical Services, Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, who thinks she'll be more useful outside.

King escapes on February 10 (see that day's entry), asking Gittins to give him a two day start before informing the Japanese. She waits three days and tells some students, who are worried about her safety, and urge her to inform the Japanese immediately.  She goes to Dr. Selwyn-Clarke the next morning, who at first tries to dissuade her from entering Stanley, but when he hears of King's escape, immediately changes his mind.

The next morning Arthur Bentley, University Pharmacy lecturer, brings her a farewell breakfast of porridge, and Selwyn-Clarke gives her a large jar of malt and cod liver oil. The latter has arranged for her to enter Stanley by way of a period as a patient in Tweed Bay Hospital.

Later today Arthur Bentley escapes from Hong Kong.

Sources:

Gittins: Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 38-40

Bentley: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entry for February 10, 1942 (Banham gives the date of Bentley's escape as Chinese New Year, which was February 15 in 1942).