Today sees the first case of wet beri beri (caused by Vitamin B1 deficiency) in Camp. There are to be many cases over the next four months until a weekly dose of thiamin is added to the internees' soup.
Sources:
Beri Beri: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 150 (See also entry for May 5, 1942)
The night of March 19 is one of the most dramatic in the history of Stanley: seven people in two separate groups begin their successful escapes from a Camp in which security is still relatively lax.
Gwen Priestwood, who drove a food supply lorry during the fighting, and the policeman W. P. Thompson wriggle through the barbed wire and strike north by land up the Tai Tam Gap Road. After many adventures, including almost being caught by a Japanese patrol while resting in an empty house, they fall in with communist guerrillas. Priestwood continues to Chungking (Chongqing), wartime capital of Free China, while Thompson decides to stay in the New Territories to help organise guerilla warfare. (Priestwood describes his arrival in Chungking just before she leaves, but this may be to deceive the Japanese).
Priestwood carries with her a full list of the British internees (but not the Dutch or American).
A few hours later an Anglo-American party of five cut their way through the barbed-wire. The leader is Israel Epstein, a Marxist journalist who's been living in Stanley under an alias because of his anti-Japanese writing, and is desperate to escape before he's uncovered. With him are the English radical Elsie Fairfax-Cholmondeley (later his wife), F. W. Wright (also English, a fluent Cantonese speaker with knowledge of the local waters), and the Americans Parker Van Ness (a seaman working as a mechanic at Kai Tak airport) and Ray O' Neil (who also had nautical experience).
This party commandeer an upturned boat on the beach - Van Ness had previously judged it seaworthy and hidden supplies nearby. Unable to steer, they head towards Lamma Island, but find its shores too rocky to land. They nearly nearly collide with a large junk without any lights, and spot Japanese pillboxes as they're about to make a dawn landing on Cheung Chau. The appearance of a Japanese patrol boat eventually forces them to land on Lantau Island. They pull the boat into some bushes and collapse into an exhausted sleep.
They wake to find themselves surrounded by a ring of fishermen. They are brought the only food these people have - sweet potatoes boiled in water. There is a reward for handing-over of escapees to the Japanese, but the fishermen hide them for two nights in a small gully while planning their escape.
Sources:
Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed Wire, 1944, 62 onwards
Israel Epstein, My China Eye, 2005, 146-149
Note: Priestwood and Elsie Fairfax-Cholmondeley had been part of a group which planned but failed to escape before actual internment took place.
After a night of intense effort, Priestwood and Thompson are disappointed to find they've only covered a couple of miles and are on the upper slopes of Stanley Mound. Through binoculars they pick out their old home, Bungalow 'C'. Priestwood spends the hours of daylight hiding her list of internee names, while Thompson mends his shoes.
Back in Stanley, Bill Hunt, Franklin Gimson and the head of the Dutch internees are summoned at 5 p.m. to discuss the escapes with Mr. Maejima {from the Foreign Affairs Department}. The head of the Kempeitai Colonel Noma is present and demands that Hunt, the leader of the Americans, tell him what happened. Maejima says that Hunt is only there in an advisory capacity, and he accepts the suggestion that the three leaders leave.
They return at 9 p.m. and talk to Mr. Yamashita and Mr. Nakazawa {Camp Commandants; the second name is sometimes spelt Nagasawa}, explaining that the escapes were caused by the bad conditions in the camp. They add that the escapers will inform their governments of these conditions. The Japanese demand details of the escape routes and the leaders reply it's unreasonable to expect them to facilitate the recapture of their own nationals. Yamashita tells them he quite understands. Nevertheless, he must take disciplinary action.
Later today ((see comment below which relates to an earlier version of this entry)) it's announced that there will be two roll calls each day (8 a.m. and 10 p.m.), all lights must be off at 11 p.m. and all internees must be in the region of their buildings at 8 p.m. (later when it gets lighter) No one is to be billetted in the room from which the Americans escaped. Gendarmes are to patrol the camp at night. Internee chairmen are to be held responsible for those in their areas - this point is disputed by the internee leaders.
Sources:
Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed-Wire, 1944, 69-70; 72
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 109, 113-114
Gwen Priestwood and Walter Thompson leave behind Stanley Mound as soon as it gets dark on March 20. They find the taps are working in a deserted bungalow and this solves the water problem for the moment. They proceed cautiously northwards up the Tai Tam Road.
As dawn approaches they take shelter in another abandoned bungalow. Priestwood sleeps but is woken by a white-looking Thompson, who tells her that three Japanese soldiers are approaching. They hide in an alcove just off the kitchen, covering themselves in old newspapers. Eventually they emerge, as the soldiers seem to have left:
A window near us opened, and a Japanese apparently left behind stuck in his head within four feet of us. He started to climb in - and then, in the nick of time, there came another shout from below. He stopped, turned, yelled something, and ran down the path.
That night they find a junkmaster, who, after an initial refusal, agrees to take them to the mainland. They end up at the fishermen's Tin Hau temple at Joss House Bay, a favourite meeting place for Chinese guerillas.
From there they will be taken into China, eventually arriving in the wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing).
The Epstein party board a junk that will take them from Lantau to Macao.
Sources:
Priestwood: Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed-Wire, 1944, 77; George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 111-112
Epstein: My China Eye, 2005, 149
Birth of Oriana Elizabeth Barrow to Kathleen Eleanor Barrow, a Government nursing sister.
The Epstein escape party arrive at the Macao fishing harbour at 4 a.m. They hear the church bells ringing for Sunday service. They wait for a policeman to pass, and then scramble ashore. A 'small, dark round man' looks them over and asks, 'Hey, are you folks from Hong Kong?'. It's Father Paulus from the American Maryknoll Mission. He takes them to John Reeves' British Consulate, by way of the Carmelite Convent, where he says mass.
Source:
Epstein: My China Eye, 2005, 150
Note:
In 1947 the people of Tong Fuk Village, Lantau Island, were awarded, HK$1500 for having helped the escapers.
Note:
R. E. Jones’s reference to the beach being searched for mines seems to refer to this incident, described in Midge Gillies’ book The Barbed-Wire University. Gillies’s source dates it to sometime after the Argyle Street Camp was opened for officers in April 1942, but it’s hard to believe that Wakefield tried the same trick again on another of the beaches close to the Camp. And the earlier 'delivery' referred to seems to be a solo effort, while Jones's reference to three Royal Engineers and a Japanese escort seems exactly right. If I’m correct, Wakefield was delivering letters from Shamshuipo, where he’d been sent after the surrender.
Some of the women in Stanley had husbands or relatives who’d joined the Volunteers and been interned in one of the Hong Kong POW camps. Communication between Stanley and these men was hard, much to the distress of all concerned.
Royal Engineer James Wakefield was instructed by his officers, following Japanese orders, to clear up some mines he’d previously been responsible for laying. He did so, while hiding pieces of their mechanism and smuggling them back to camp.
Wakefield managed to convince the Japanese he’d laid mines at Stanley Fort, and, as he drove through Stanley Camp, he dropped several letters from POWs to loved ones at the feet of a group of internees (he was sitting at the back of a Japanese covered wagon). On his return from the operation, he was able to take back some replies to these letters.
He decided to repeat this procedure by claiming to have laid mines at ‘the beach near the old prison officers’ quarters’. He took two ‘sappers’ (privates in the Royal Engineers) with him. When they and their Japanese guards arrived at the beach they were confronted by a group of internees, led by Franklin Gimson.
Gimson insisted that, ‘There are no mines here, never have been mines here’. Wakefield tried to convey the message to Gimson with pointed looks, but to no avail – ‘There’s nothing there’.
By this point the Japanese were getting suspicious and Wakefield’s party was in some personal danger, so he said, ‘I’m not going to argue with you’ and went down to the beach. Luckily he’d brought with him the pieces of mechanism he’d kept after his genuine mine clearance, and, although the Japanese were ‘very suspicious’ he managed to get away with it (it’s not recorded if he was also able to make a second delivery of letters).
The British Communal Council puts up a notice promulgating a Japanese decree that in future all business with the authorities is to be handled through the chairmen of the American, British and Dutch communities. The decree was issued by T. Yamashita and the notice is signed by BCC member L. R. Nielson.
Sources:
Midge Gillies, The Barbed-Wire University, 2011, 218-219
Jim Shepherd, Silks, Satins, Gold Braid and Monkey Jackets, 1996, 6
Today George Wright-Nooth finds that 'a great feeling of lassitude' has come over him, and he's generally weak. He's heard from others they have the same 'spells'. He weighs himself and discovers he's lost 10 pounds - others have lost up to 60.
On his walk he meets L. E. Lammert, the head of a large auctioneering house, who tells him that he hopes his son is alive. Wright-Nooth knows he isn't, but doesn't take away his hope.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 94
The Daily Express (page 4) places the headline 'Remember Hongkong!' above a story about a sinking in the Singapore region.
This seems to be the first use of a slogan - repeated in an editorial of April 8, 1942 - that will be turned into a poster and displayed on the walls of some workplaces: http://gwulo.com/node/13783.
It seems that Eden's speech (http://gwulo.com/node/11079) has burnt the atrocities that took place during and shortly after the fighting into the public consciousness. They're one of the first things that come to the mind of family and friends when they think of their loved ones held in Hong Kong.
The military defeat, the pre-war Air Raid Precautions scandal, and no doubt the generally hard time the internees have had since the surrender, have contibuted to making the Government unpopular. Franklin Gimson has found that many people are unwilling to accept his authority as former Colonial Secretary, and today he is forced to accept a compromise whereby he is given a vaguely-defined position as partner of L. R. Nielson, the chair of the British Communal Council (BCC).
Source:
Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 136
F. W. Shaftain, the police force's Director of Criminal Intelligence, is himself accused of a crime.
He's going home about curfew time (8 p.m.) when he's stopped by a guard who takes him at revolver point to the prison, where's he's searched by the Commandant and found to be in possesion of a jar of marmite. His story that he bought it for $55 is not believed and he's threatened and has a gun pointed at his head. After about half an hour, he's released.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 96
A day of torrential rain.
Journalist Gwen Dew and eleven other Americans are summoned to Japanese Headquarters. The group includes four other journalists, three Red Cross representatives and one Canadian.
Head of Foreign Affairs, Oda (Dew calls him Ota) gives them the first official news of the American repatriation. At this stage it's expected soon, and is limited to this small group, but over the next three months it will come to include almost all the Hong Kong Americans.
Source:
Gwen Dew, Prisoner Of The Japs, 1944, 140
The third birth in Camp: Camille Tweed Denton.
Source:
China Mail, September 15, 1945, page 3
See also June 6, 1942 and July 7, 1942.
Birth of Barbara Mary Morris to George H. A. Morris and Ida L. Morris.
United Church Services notice:
Good Friday;
Service of Meditation on the Seven Words from the Cross...12 noon - 3 p.m.
Conducted by the Rev. Dr. P. Beaver.
Speakers:- Revs. Wittenbach, Short, Rankin, Bechtel, Alton, Ady & Richards.
(All Worshippers are not expected to remain during the whole of the Service, but it is requested that they will leave only during the singing of one of the hymns.)
Uninterned banker Andrew Leiper and his wife Helen wake up to the anniversary of their engagement. Instead of celebrating, they have to go to the dentist: Helen fractured a filling on a hard object in her rice a couple of days ago, and the pain is agonising. Mr. Iishi, a civilian supervising the liquidation of the bank, arranges for an armed guard to take them to the office of a Chinese dentist trained in America. While there, they meet a polite naval officer who tells them of his reluctance to fight the British.
Sources:
Birth: China Mail, September 15, 1945, page 3
Church: Jim Shepherd, Silks, Satins, Gold Braid and Monkey Jackets, 1996, 61
Leiper: Andrew Leiper, A Yen For My Thoughts, 1982, 145-146
First Easter Day in Stanley:
The united services were held in the hall of St Stephen's College, which was crowded that Eastertime. The lilies, red and white, were in bloom. The sky, seen through the windows, was very blue. The distant hills were becoming lighter green with new growth. Men and women of different churches or of none were bound in a common act of worship. Some knelt on the bare, brown boards or on straw mats, some sat upon tools or cushions they had brought, the rest stood together at the back of the hall.
Stanley escaper Gwen Priestwood arrives in Kukong {now Shaoguan} where the British Army Aid Group is in the process of being created. As a civilian, she does not acknowledge that a military officer has the right to intrerrogate her and she initially refuses to provide information to anyone but the British Amabssador and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, neither of whom are in Kukong. Nevertheless, Colonel Lindsay Ride does persuade her to at least let him take a look at her complete list of Stanley internees.
Sources:
Easter: William Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1946, 78-79
Priestwood: Lindsay Ride, Unnamed Document, Ride Papers, WO-343-1-212, part 1, p. 42
Chartered Accountant A. A. Bremner and his wife (M. B. S.) have a boy, John Alexander Bremner.
Source:
China Mail, September 15, 1945, page 3
Stanley Camp Roll
Note:
The Roll gives the birth as 1941.
Four men Harold Bidmead, Brian Fay, Vincent Morrison and Victor Randall, escape from Stanley. The first three are police, Randall is with China Power and Light.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 102
Note: Wright-Nooth calls Bidmead 'Kevin Smythe' probably because he makes critical remarks about his character later in the book (204-207).
Yesterday's four escapers spend the day in hiding, and then make their way to Chi Wan village near Lei Mun, arriving at about 2.30 a.m. on the morning of April 10.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 105
The Japanese give permission for short messages to be sent to Hong Kong Prisoners of War - but on April 25 it's learnt they haven't yet been sent.
The four escapers of April 8 are recaptured after approaching a Chinese man named Wong and asking for helping crossing to the mainland. Unfortunately the Lei Mun area is a hotbed of Chinese who sympathise with the occupiers. Wong, a fluent Japanese speaker, informs the Japanese army, and first Morrison and then the others are apprehended. Randall is wounded by a Chinese during his capture.
They are taken to the Happy Valley Gendarmerie and held for five weeks in overcrowded and filthy conditions and fed on two small bowls of rice a day, sometimes accompanied by a little coarse salt and water.
Sources:
Permission: John Stericker, A Tear For The Dragon, 1958, 173
Escapers: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 105, 102, 259
Note:
See also entries for April 8, April 9 and June 20 (all 1942) and June 20, 1944
Rodney Michael Metcalfe is born to Mr. R. O. and Mrs. K. M. Metcalfe, missionaries who have probably been caught in Hong Kong by the outbreak of war, as the family will later be transferred to Shanghai.
A British Women's Group is founded in Stanley. Its aims are to organise women to carry out tasks such as making and mending and to supply women workers for the kitchens and other forms of communal labour. It also arranged to co-operate with women in the American and Dutch communities.
This is clearly not the kind of 'Women's Group' we are used to in the feminist period - nevertheless, it will eventually find itself clashing with the almost entirely male hierarchy of Stanley Camp!
Sources:
Metcalfes: China Mail, September 15, 1945, page 3 and Stanley Roll
Women: HKMS72 1-2 and 1-4
BCC Chairman L. R. Nielsen posts a notice informing the camp that the Japanese authorities have said today that they are making 'certain sums' available for personal and communal requirements.
Source:
MacNider Papers, 'Easter/Loan/14/Dogs/Workers'
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