Charles Frederick HYDE (aka Ginger) [1900-1943]

Submitted by David on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 17:25
Names
Given
Charles Frederick
Family
Hyde
Alias / nickname
Ginger
Sex
Male
Status
Deceased
Born
Date
(Day & Month are approximate.)
Birthplace (town, state)
Totland, Isle of Wight
Birthplace (country)
England
Died
Date
Cause of death
Executed by Japanese

Brian Edgar has a good account of Hyde's activities in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation:

 ‘Ginger’ Hyde was one of those bankers kept outside Stanley to help liquidate their own banks, and he’d had been taken by the Kempeitai on suspicion of a whole raft of ‘crimes’. He was, to his immense credit, guilty of them all: he’d been raising money to provide extra food and medical supplies to be smuggled into Stanley to help meet the desperate needs of the internees. He’d been listening to an illegal radio with another banker, Mr. L.  Souza, and probably passing the news around the community of uninterned Allied civilians. He’d been ‘running’ Chester Bennett and the Portuguese solicitor Marcus Da Silva, two of the most effective of the British Army Aid Group’s agents in occupied Hong Kong. And he himself had been in contact with the resistance.

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BAAG Roll of Honour

Copies of the Lindsay Ride BAAG papers from the Australian War Museum are held on CDrom in the Special Collections of the HK University library.  Refernces to Hyde's activities are made in the following:

AWM PR82/068 Series 11/section 9/page 63 - Waichow Intelligence Summary (WIS) #7: reports Hyde in touch with Douglas Clague at Waichow.

AWM 11/31/21 - WIS #10 25.10.42: refers to letter from Hyde to Clague of 8.11.42 re possible transfer of POWs to Japan.

AWM 7/5/96 - telegram referring to Hyde's information re transfer of POWs.

AWM 11/6/70 - WIS #19 17.2.43: shipping intelligence from Hyde.  List from Hyde of men in Bowen Rd hospital on 145.2.43.  List from Hyde of POWs arrived safely in Japan.

AWM 11/6/77 -     "               "     :  Hyde reports Indian guards at POW camps. (Later reports Formosan guards).

A reference to Hyde in WIS #31 is restricted by the MOD until 2021.

AWM 10/37/9,10 - WIS #32 30.5.42: Prem Singh reports arrest of Hyde on 21.4.43;  Hyde detained in Supreme Court Building after betrayal by an Indian of a letter from Hyde to Ansari, tortured.

AWM 2/6/37 - report from G.S. Ladd that Hyde's arrest was due to contact with Ansari.

AWM 10/5/24, 26 - KWIZ #18 22.10.43:  reports Hyde undergoing third degree torture, which he could not bear.

AWM 2/57/14 Captured Enemy Document, report of Japanese 'Trial' judgement: refers to Hyde's use of short wave radio with Louis Souza.

These are the only addcitional references to Hyde's activities to which I have access to at the moment.

Charles Frederick Hyde was born in Totland, the Isle of Wight in August/September 1900 (he was 7 months old on the March 31st Census Day in 1901). His father Edward was an English banker, while his mother, Annie was born in Melbourne and had two children from a previous marriage.

A manifest suggest he first went east to work for the HSBC in north China in 1921.

Source: documents on Ancestry.com