72 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

31 Jan 1942: RE Jones Diary
31 Jan 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp
31 Jan 1942, The Hongkong News

31 Jan 1942: RE Jones Diary

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 10:10 PM PST

Book / Document:

Date of events described:

Sat, 1942-01-31

Barber's shop opened & the same Chinese started to run a Canteen but it is a flop. Our own will be ready next week sometime & it seems that it will be a good one, $20,000 subscribed already. Some people arrived from the University. No home news today.

31 Jan 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Posted: 10 Jan 2012 11:12 PM PST

Book / Document:

Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Date of events described:

Sat, 1942-01-31

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 mentined 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, while American writer Emily Hahn was claiming Chinese nationality on the basis of a dubious marriage. 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. It's possible he was briefly in Stanley, but this is not certain.

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 oiut for the duration.

The Colliers, two Kowloon missionaries, were effectively under house arrest in their 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 pressues 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, 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 that part of the herd that wasn't shipped to Japan.

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

C. M. Faure was not interned, perhaps because he was wrongly believed to be anti-British. Along with a number of other former SCMP journalists, he worled for the Japanese propaganda sheet, the Hong Kong News. (For his future fate, see the entry for February 18, 1943; he was eventually sent to Stanley.)

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 Medical Office, 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) were eventually interned at St. Paul's ('the French') Hospital. In both cases, a small 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 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 Medical Officer bought vitamins, medicines and hospital equipment which were muggled 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 February 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.

Gwen Dew, Prisoner Of The Japs, 1944, 132

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