18 Aug 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

The inaugural meeting of the (first) British Community Council takes place.

'Community' has been chosen because it seems less democratic than 'Communal'. There are ten elected representatives, and a number of individuals are appointed by Gimson to serve as administrative officers. In fact, the Committee's role, in theory at least, is to advise him - he's won the 'constitutional conflict' and is the effective governor of the camp, except when the Japanese decide to get involved.

David McFerran, a former employee of the Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Co., dies in St. Paul's Hospital. Most of his possessions are in poor condition, but the Red Cross uses money from their 'British Fund' to to buy part of them for the use of 'needy internees' in the Hospital who expect to be repatriated soon and are in desperate need of clothing.

The Gripsholm is now a week's sailing away from the United States. Charles Winter, who'd worked as a bread delivery driver and lived at the French Hospital alongside the bakers, writes to the family of Thomas Edgar. The Edgars learn, perhaps for the first time, that their son is alive and well - and that he was due to be married on the afternoon of June 29, soon after Charles Winter began his journey home.

And the ship's passengers see some of the destruction caused by the war at sea:

At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon we passed a bit of wreckage, big enough for several men to have been on it. We passed it at extremely slow speed, no doubt to avoid striking any partly submerged wreckage and partly to make sure that we discovered any possible survivors. There was nothing alive on the wreckage. So many of our passengers crowded the rail to see, that the ship took on a decided list. Between 6 and 7, we came to a proper wreck. This time it was the forward half of a ship, floating on an even keel. It was apparently an oil tanker which had been torpedoed. The superstructure was a black mass of wreckage. Flames were still licking the edge of a hold. Our passengers crowded the rail and every vantage point, even climbing into some of our lifeboats which were swung out at deck level, everybody straining his eyes in the dusk to see if there was anybody on the wreck.

Sources:

BCC: G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 356, 208-209

McFerran: Rudolf Zindel to the International Committee of the Red Cross, General Letter No. 3/44 in Archives of the ICRC (Geneva)

Edgars: Letter from Charles Winter viewable at: http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-some-documentation/

Wreck: Diary of J. B. Sawyer, quoted in Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 289