American internee Norman Briggs describes today's main event:
(T)he order came at 7.45 AM that the entire camp should assemble on the vacant lot by the side of the prison. Everyone had to go....Going down to the field, someone made the bright suggestion that it was going to be a massacre...I don't think he was serious, but in our frame of mind, it sounded entirely within the realm of possibility.
Two women faint. One man eats his diary of the fighting. But when the search comes it isn't too bad. The internees return to their quarters to find that the real object of the exercise is to go through their rooms looking for radios and other fobidden items. They arrive back at noon, hungry because they've missed breakfast, but it takes two hours to get the fires going and prepare lunch.
Source:
Carol Briggs Waite, Taken In Hong Kong, 2006, Kindle Edition, Location 2802 onwards.