Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp: View pages

On 12 May this year the Jesuit authorities had agreed to open a new institution on the mainland - Wah Yan College, Kowloon. Today the Superior of that Mission, Father Patrick Joy, reports that 'people are very hopeful here that we have seen the worst of the Japanese menace.'

Hong Kong's Jesuits are Irish, and therefore likely to be neutral if war breaks out; nevertheless, the billeting officer, Julius Ring, will contact Father Joy and by December 1 it's agreed that Father Gerald 'Doc' Kennedy, who had WW1 experience, will take charge of St Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon and 8 other Jesuits are assigned to the branch responsible for the transport of dependants of Essential Service workers to safe places.

Source:

Thomas J. Morrisey, Thomas F. Ryan, S.J.: From Cork to China and Windsor Castle, 2010, 53

In Tokyo there's an important development.

The cabinet has been discussing the Japanese response to the American oil embargo. In early September the army and navy agreed that the state of the oil reserves and seasonal weather conditions meant that any campaign in south-east Asia would have to start not later than December. This requires a political decision in October, and the cabinet is deadlocked. The Foreign Ministry wants one more attempt at compromise, the armed services want the go-ahead.

Today Premier Konoe  is replaced by War Minister Tojo Hideki. This doesn't necessarily mean war, as discussions continue (see November 2), but it does make it more likely.

Source:

W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1987, 232

The Japanese agree to continue a two-track policy: they'll prepare for the use of force, but continue diplomatic discussions to avoid it. But they're clear now that if diplomacy fails, they'll go to war. (See also October 17 and December 1.)

Source:

W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1987, 232

This afternoon Soong Ching-Ling (Madame Sun Yatsen) opens a carnival on the naval recreation ground at Caroline Hill. The purpose of the event, which is scheduled to run for a month, is to raise funds for the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, (Gung Ho) an organisation set up by New Zealander Rewi Alley and others to create a network of small-scale industrial enterprises to contribute to the Chinese war effort.

Madame Soong is received by T. B. Wilson, head of the American President shipping line, and Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen - Wilson's head of the Carnival Organising Committee and Cohen's a member.

The event features an exhibition of Gung Ho products and a Philippine circus group brought over from Manila. Rewi Alley has come in from China to be present and leaves for Chongqing in the nick of time - December 6.

Source:

Rewi Alley, An Autobiography, 1997, 147

Note: George Wright-Nooth considers that the famous 'Stanley Tiger' was 'probably from a circus that had been located at Causeway Bay'. Could this have been that circus? (Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 98).

Note:

For Wilson see also December 6, 1941.

The last meeting of the Legislative Council before the Japanese attack. Governor Sir Mark Young is presiding and also present is Major-General Christopher Maltby, overall commander of the Hong Kong garrison.

Those attending include Director of Medical Services Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Attorney General C. G. Alabaster, Financial Secretary H. R. Butters, Director of Public Works A. B. Purves, Chairman of the Urban Council William James Carrie, the new Police Commissioner John Pennefather-Evans, and Secretary for Chinese Affairs R. A. C. North.

Soon all of 'those attending' except Selwyn-Clarke will be in Stanley.

Leo d'Alamada e Castro Jr. will spend much of the war in Macao, acting as liason officer between the Portuguese and British Governments with respect to refugees. In the final year he will make the difficult journey to Britain to serve in the Hong Kong Planning Unit.

One other member J. J. Paterson, will take part in the heroic defence of North Point Power Station and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, while T. E. Pearce, who fights beside him at North Point will not survive the war. Two members are absent: A. L. Shields will be sent through the lines from the Repulse Bay Hotel to ask Maltby to surrender on Christmas Day, and will die in Stanley on July 24, 1944. Solicitor Edgar Davidson will also end up in camp.

Much of the business is concerned with war preparations - W. J. Anderson, another future internee is appointed Controller of Firewood, with effect from September 27, 1940 (sic - presumably = 1941) - but normal life goes on, and quarantine measures and the training of midwives are also on the agenda. Lo Man-kam, a Eurasian but seen as representing the Chinese majority, is doing his job well, engaging in his usual tough questioning, this time about the actions of F. W. Shaftain of the Hong Kong Police. During the war Mr. Lo was to do everything he could to resist being drawn into the Japanese system, and he became an early contact of the British Army Aid Group.

The meeting ends with discussion of a bill designed to ease the overcrowding in Stanley Prison, and the Governor adjourns the council, sine die.

In Sydney the evacuated wives hold a meeting and elect a committe which will co-operate with ones in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. It's announced that a letter has been sent to Duff Cooper, a British Cabinet member on a 'special mission' to the Far East:

We are bitterly resentful of the unjust treatment meted out to us by the Government of Hong Kong.

We obeyed the evacuation order because we thought we were doing our duty. Actually we were duped by the Goverment.

Certain officials' wives knew beforehand of the impending order and found, and were given, 'urgent' jobs which would exempt them from the order. Some who did leave were permitted to return.

It's pointed out to the meeting that Sir Atholl MacGregor has deemed compulsory evacuation illegal and that there are now 1,080 British-born women and 563 British-born children still in Hong Kong. The wife of the Crown Solicitor who directed the evacuation is one of the women.

Sources:

Minutes, Hong Kong Legislative Council, November 13, 1941

Stanley Camp Roll

Leo d'Almada e Castro Jr.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_d'Almada_e_Castro

Lo: Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 197

Evacuated wives: Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 1941, page 6

Walter Scott, Assistant Commissioner of Police, is hunting in the New Territories with leading surgeon Li Shu-Fan. They hear the sound of a formation of planes: Scott tells Li that they are protecting a transport loaded with Canadian troops.

We climbed to the top of the hill in silence, and looked down upon a huge, three- funnel Canadian Pacific transport steaming toward the entrance of Hong Kong harbor. Walter commented that these would probably be the only reinforcements allotted to us.

Later Scott writes to his wife, an American who's returned to the United States.

Soon after 8 a.m. Kay Christie and Anna May Waters, the two military nurses who've come with the Canadian contingent (just under 2,000 men) are taken to Bowen Road Military Hospital by Matron E. M. Dyson:

All the sisters had a room of their own - quite comfortable. After having breakfast we unpacked what little luggage we had with us.

In the afternoon they're taken for a drive round the island by Miss Thompson {probably Kathleen Thompson}, the senior Sister, and a friend of hers, Colonel Lamb. They're told the island's impregnable.

Sources:

Li Shu-Fan, Hong Kong Surgeon, 1964, 92

Nurses: Report by Miss Anna May Waters Nurse with the Canadian Forces at Hong Kong, as given on board the MS Gripsholm, November 1943,  points 16-17, 19

The Canadian soldiers who arrived yesterday have been confined to barracks for two days but during this period Vince Calder and a friend go 'over the fence' to look around:

Cpl. Jack Burns and I were the first 2 Canadians in Jingles (sic) 'Palace Hotel' and from then on, he couldn't do enough for us (imagine a T-bone steak and all the trimmings for 28 cents).

They can't know that in Tokyo the Imperial Conference confirms formally today that diplomacy has failed. War is now inevitable.

Sources

Canadian: Vince Calder, A Guest of the Emperor

Conference: W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1987, 235

Note: Canadian interest in Gingle's resturant is also noted in the early part of the controversial documentary Savage Christmas.

The Medical Department holds a major exercise designed to test the system for getting food to hospitals and first aid stations in the event of an emergency.

It seems that the general plan is that food will be cooked at a 'supply centre' and sent out hot to each First Aid Post, although some places will cook their own food. The lorry delivering the food will be accompanied by a supervisor and two workers, and also carry two baskets of chopped firewood in case re-heating is needed.

My guess is that this is pretty much the scheme that was put into operation on December 8. It may or not be significant that one place we know the food supply arrangements never worked was the emergency facility at the Peninsula Hotel (Kowloon) which doesn't feature in the surviving record (papers belonging to Auxillary Nursing Service member Florence Robinson).

These papers show that regulations for the ANS made it clear that, whether in an exercise or an 'emergency', its members were only allowed to give first aid when specifically instructed to do so by the Medical Officer in charge of their station.

Source:

Hong Kong PRO, HKMS77-1 - 'St John's Ambulance Brigade Exercise...'

Director of Medical Services Selwyn-Selwyn Clarke makes an appeal:

Recruits are needed for the Auxiliary Medical Corps, including nurses, stretcher-bearers, clerks (male and female), telephonists and those with experience of social work.

Alfred Duff Cooper sends a message from Singapore, where he's 'Resident Cabinet Minister', to Hong Kong's ' Bachelor Husbands': he met the evacuated wives when he was in Australia, he understood their feelings, but it would be wrong for them to return to Hong Kong at the moment.

Source:

John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 12

Readers of The Yorkshire Post might spot this Reuter's report on the first page:

Hong Kong. A Government communiqué urges that persons not required for duty in the colony in event of an outbreak of hostilities, should take any existing opportunity of leaving now. Reuter.

But in Hong Kong itself most people don't seem worried. Jardine, Matheson & Co. make the following announcement:

Owing to insufficient response, the special steamer which was to have been allocated for the purpose of evacuating residents who desired to leave Hong Kong has been withdrawn.

In the evening Chief Justice Sir Atholl MacGregor and Lady MaGregor attend a celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Sir Robert and Lady Ho Tung held at the Gripps (Hong Kong Hotel). Also present are Major-General C. M. Maltby, Governor Sir Mark Young and a host of other dignitaries. It was the largest private function ever held at the Hotel.

Nevertheless, things are going on behind the scenes. Today the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation approves plans to move the Head Office from Hong Kong to Singapore, considered an impregnable fortress. But nothing will happen before the attack, perhaps partly because Governor Mark Young asks Sir Vandeleur Grayburn not to leave the Colony for fears that this would start a panic. Grayburn, who had planned to step down from the chief position, had agreed in 1940 to remain because of the serious position in the Far East; he allows himself to be convinced that the situation in Hong Kong is under control.

Sources:

Jardine, MacGregor: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 12-13

Grayburn: Frank King, The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation,  1988, Volume 3, 205, 568

Observation posts close to the border report a build-up of Japanese troops.

The number one degree of readiness order is issued at Kai Tak airport. All personnel are confined to the station,  the defences are manned and the military planes dispersed.

Sources:

Observation: Charles Barman, Resist to the End, 2009, 1

Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 13

A day of bright sunshine. Many of the HKVDC leave their offices to take part in weekend exercises.

Crowds flock to Happy Valley for the races.

Barbara Redwood is taken to the cinema to see 'My Life With Caroline' by her boyfriend Arthur Alsey a bandsman with the Royal Scots who has a day's leave. They watch a newsreel with comforting images of US planes 'in formidable formation'.

In the evening a Grand Fancy Dress Ball organised by the Hong Kong Chinese Women's Club is held at the Peninsula Hotel. At about noon, as the guests are enjoying a performance of Chinese singing and dancing featuring Mabel Yen, the music suddenly stops and American businessman T. B. Wilson appears on a balcony above the dance floor with a megaphone and announces that all men connected with ships in the harbour must report for duty at once.

Sources:

 HKVDC: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 14

Ball: LOOKING AHEAD, South China Morning Post,  12 Nov 1941, p.  5.; Gwen Priesthood, Through Japanese Barbed Wire, pp. 7-8.

Races, Cinema: Mabel Winifred Redwood, It Was Like This..., 2001, 68-69

Methodist minister Joseph Sandbach is conducting a service in the middle of the defence line in the New Territories. He notices the continual activity of runners carrying messages and realises something's about to happen.

The new Colonial Secretary, Franklin Gimson, arrives. He finds a Colony preparing to be attacked.

A State of Emergency is announced. Troops are ordered into position, and the Volunteers are called up.

An afternoon radio broadcast alerts some civilians to the call up of the troops and of the workers in Essential Services. But some people continue 'the usual social round, unaware or uninterested in the fact that the soldiers were proceeding to their battle stations'.

American oilman Norman Briggs doesn't notice anything unusual in the morning - 'it was just an ordinary Sunday'. But in the afternoon he takes his dog for a walk around Lugard Road 'which encircles the Peak and (gives) an excellent view of the harbor'. He notices that there are fewer ships there than usual, and he remembers a conversation yesterday about ships going to Manila and Singapore; but as Hong Kong is a busy port he still isn't overly concerned. 

Hilda Selwyn-Clarke, wife of the Director of Medical Services, and her friend Margaret Watson are planning to have dinner at Shatin with Dr. Isaac Newton, chief surgeon at the Kowloon Hospital. Watson rings up Newton and says that Hilda had decided she must leave Kowloon for Hong Kong Island. Watson accompanies her. Newton is aware of the Volunteer call up but doesn't feel that the Japanese will act before the result of the Moscow fighting is known.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation employee M. G. 'Mike' Carruthers tells the Chief Manager Sir Vandeleur Grayburn that he, as a Volunteer, has been called up. Sir Vandeleur looks at him in horror and tells him he can't go - 'this is going to blow over'.

Director of Medical Services Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke has told Hong Kong University biologist G. A. C. Herklots to devise a 'siege biscuit' that will provide the population with basic nutrition during a siege of three months or so. Herklots, as part of a broader programme of nutritional preparation, set about his work:

With the enthusiastic co-operation of a master baker ((Thomas Edgar)) and after about thirty trials, it was found possible to make a hard siege-ration biscuit from this meal and whole wheat flour.

The biscuit is thoroughly tested and proves palatable to all sections of the population. Today an improved version is devised, presumably at Lane, Crawford's Bakery in Stubbs Rd:

On the day before the Japanese attacked, a satisfactory biscuit was made which contained added calcium carbonate and shark liver oil.

Production will stop on December 15 when the Bakery has more urgent tasks.

New Zealander James L. Anderson is in charge of the Kowloon radio station. He's living with fellow Hong Kong Telephone Company employee Les Fisher. During the course of the day they realise that war is about to start, so in the evening they go to the Majestic to cheer themselves up:

The picture we saw was 'The Long Journey Home', very good but most depressing.

In the evening New Zealand writer James Bertram returns from Lantau Island where he's been visiting a well known Buddhist businessman, 'Hermit Yen'. With him are Norman France, a lecturer at Hong Kong University, and his neighbour Stephen Balfour:

{Balfour was} one of the few good Chinese scholars the colonial service had produced. France and Balfour between them summed up what was for Hong Kong a rare combination of culture and intellectual interest; both of them were to be casualties of the war.

Missionaries Mr. and Mrs. H. F. Collier have come to Hong Kong to get dental treatment and buy supplies for their station at Yeung Kong. It's getting close to the time of return, and they're spending the day with Chinese Christian friends:

We were a happy party together, and the day passed quickily without our having any thought that it was the last day of quietness and comfort that we should see for many years.

Sources:

Sandbach: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004743

Gimson: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 15

Emergency, Social Round: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 17; John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 14

Afternoon broadcast: Bernard Tohill, 'Some Notes From A Diary Of The Years 1941-1942'

Briggs: Norman Briggs, Taken In Hong Kong, 2006, Kindle Edition, Location 491

Selwyn-Clarke, Watson, Newton: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 5

Grayburn: Frank H. H. King, History of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Volume 111, 1988, 569

Herklots: https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/thomass-work-1/

Fisher: Les Fisher, I Will Remember, 1996, 11

Bertram: James Bertram, Beneath The Shadow, 1947, 69-70

Colliers: F. D. and H. F. Collier, Covered Up In Kowloon, 1947, 16

Notes:

1) M. G. Carruthers was seconded to the Middlesex Regiment to provide local knowledge and ended up being told to carry the white flag around the line after the surrender. He was awarded the Military Cross for 'this and related activities'.

Frank King, History of the HKSBC, Volume 111, 1988, 571

2) See for more on:

death of Balfour: http://gwulo.com/node/11602

death of France: http://gwulo.com/node/13841

the siege biscuits: https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/thomass-work-5-the-si…

In the first hour after midnight the Pacific War begins: the Japanese fleet, which has been making its way towards Malaya since December 4, begins to bombard the beach defences at Khota Bharu at 00.30 a.m. and a quarter of an hour later four lines of landing craft are headed towards the beach. The Japanese air force is still half an hour away from the American base at Pearl Harbour.  An Indian force, the 3/17 Dogras, pours an intense fire on the invaders with both artillery and machine guns. These are the first shots fired against the Axis in the Pacific.

In Hong Kong small bombs - probably planted by Chinese fifth columnists - explode during the first two hours of the morning.

At 1.30 a.m. Japan's 2nd China Fleet and 23rs Army army are ordered to attack Hong Kong

At 4.45 Major Charles Boxer of Military Intelligence monitors a Japanese radio broadcast announcing the attack. This is soon confirmed by a British broadcast from Singapore. The order goes out to demolish roads and bridges in the northern New Territories - Hong Kong's first acts of resistance are carried out by men from the Royal Engineers, the Puinjabis, and the Volunteers. At 5 a.m. work starts on the demolition of the Kowloon to Canton Railway, and by 5.30 the forward bridges are blown.

At 7 a.m. Kai Tak airport is warned of an imminent raid, and the enemy aircraft arrive there at about 8 and destroy a few antiquated planes (most but not quite all of Hong Kong's air force). At 10 a.m. a Japanese ground assault from southern China begins: troops are headed for a number of points, including the defensive 'Gin Drinkers Line'. This means that the first British civilians to encounter the invading army are the relatively few in the New Territories.

Mildred Dibden, a 34 year old missionary, is running the Fanling Babies Home, which she founded in 1936. She receives an early telephone warning and gets the 34 older children into a lorry that's sent for them. The lorry hasn't returned for the remaining 54 infants when Japanese soldiers arrive to confront Miss Dibden, her assistant Ruth Little (aged 27) and 17 Chinese nurses and amahs.

A Japanese soldier strikes her across the face with a rifle butt when she tries to stop the rape of  a young amah. Cots are overturned and a baby is trampled to death.

Dibben and Little are not interned and the orphanage stays open throughout the war.

The first thing most Hong Kong civilians know about the war is that Japanese planes are attacking Kai Tak airport at about 8 o'clock in the morning.

What happens next depends on where you live and what role you will play in the response to the attack. 

In Kowloon, which bears the brunt of the first shelling and air attacks, Aileen Woods and her twin sister Doris are dressing for work when, at about 8 a.m., they hear planes, ack ack guns and the sounds of people running about. At first they think it's a practice, but Aileen eventually picks up a radio broadcast from Singapore saying that there they've been bombed. The sisters make for the ferry but are turned back because they don't have a pass. They return home, and listen to the radio: ZBW (Radio Hong Kong) broadcasts the usual 12.15 prayers and there's dance music between 12.30 and 1.0'clock when the radio goes dead because another raid is starting.

Dr. Isaac Newton has been rung at 6. 25 a.m. and informed that a 'precautionary stage' has been declared, but as he's told that doesn't mean taking any action, he goes back to sleep. He hears the air raid sirens at 8 a.m. and goes quickly to the Kowloon Hospital, arriving at 8.15. The first case is in the operating theatre by 9 a.m. He's hampered by lack of staff for about an hour and a half after that, as no public vehicles are allowed to travel while the raid is on. Over the day the hospital will admit 103 casualties and perform 27 operations.

On Hong Kong Island they're also starting to put emergency plans into operation.

Violet May Witchell is on her way to Bowen Road Military Hospital to start a fortnight's scheduled duty as a volunteer nurse. She's walking along Pok Fu Lam Road to catch the bus when Japanese planes fly over. An army truck pulls up and gives her a lift to the hospital. She doesn't return home until after liberation in 1945.

Thomas Edgar came to Hong Kong in April 1938 as manager of the new Lane, Crawford Bakery in Stubbs Rd, having falsified his birth certificate to seem three years older and more experienced. He's almost certainly already at work by 8 a.m.,  and begins putting into operation plans he's been making since November 1938 when he was told not to join the Volunteers but to get his bakery ready for any 'emergency'. Some time during the day he's officially appointed Deputy Supply Officer Bakeries.

Government employee Phyllis Harrop is woken at 5.30 by the telephone and told that 'the worst had happened':

In the course of the last few weeks I have been taken off my hospital job and told that I was required for more important work, but nothing else had been said to to me except that if and when anything happened I was to report to Police Headquarters immediately.

She's ordered down to the shelters for the first air raid; in the afternoon she takes Andrew Gilmour of the Malayan Colonial staff to the Naval Dockyard and then drives to her Chief's house on the Peak to collect blankets and clean clothes for him - he's decided they're all sleeping in the office that night as they're too busy to go home. The last raid is at about 9.30 p.m., and they turn in on camp beds at about 11.

The Irish Jesuits, although technically neutral and soon to be busy with their religious duties, will show themselves ready to help the defence in non-military ways.  Father O'Mara volunteers to help Billeting Headquarters. They're already having problems because it's hard to get petrol. He's at HQ (the Nippon Building, close to the Naval Dockyard, one of the main targets for shelling), waiting to take some Volunteer dependants to their billets; cars are promised:

The people arrived, women and children and old men, but the cars did not. It was 6.15 ((p.m.)). An hour passed. It was quite dark and no one knew when an air-raid might come. (It turned out fortunately that there was no night bombing, but we did not know that then). The people sat on their luggage and waited; some of the babies cried. At 8.15 the buses arrived.

That was billeting on the first day. It was an inauspicious beginning.

Food Control has its problems too. Under Emergency Powers all food supplies are under government control and institutions with resident inmates - hospitals, children's homes, boarding schools etc. - are supplied from government depots, an allocation being made for each resident after forms are filled in. Members of the auxillary defence services, including Essential Workers, can eat at certain restaurants, including the Cafe Wiseman, in the Exchange Building, the Lane, Crawford headquarters in Des Voeux Rd. The poorer Chinese, many of whom now lose their day-labouring jobs, are to be fed from food kitchens. There's plenty of food in Hong Kong, but, as the civilian transport system breaks down quickly, it's hard to get it to where it's needed, as the next section indicates.

The Redwood family are woken up by a Chinese clerk at 6.30 a.m. Barbara's told to be at the ARP office at 7. Soon after they hear the air raid sirens and are now certain what's happening. Olive hurries off to the Food Control Office and Mabel to her Army job. Mrs. Redwood eventually takes up her post at the emergency hospital in the Happy Valley Jockey Club. Before the end of the day the problems faced right from the start by the wartime administrators have become clear to her:

The Food Control Department had long since made plans for emergency feeding, and godowns (warehouses) all over the Colony were well stocked with food, but the suddenness of the attack and consequent congestion on the roads caused delays in deliveries. Eventually some sacks of rice arrived, but by the time we managed to get it cooked and distributed, the time was seven in the evening.

But not everyone has an assigned role in the defence.

Quaker missionary William Sewell has just been reunited with his wife Mary and their three young children (two girls and a boy). They are with friends at a house at the foot of the Peak, getting ready to fly to Free China. As they are only passing through, they have no role in the long-prepared plans for the defence of the colony. The Sewells' task is to comfort and care for their children.

In the UK the headlines are of course about Pearl Harbour. But The Daily Mirror does offer this snippet on its last page:

The Governor of Hong Kong issued a proclamation calling out volunteers.

That was yesterday. Today those Volunteers have started to go into action.

Sources:

Times of early events in Hong Kong Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003, 26-28; The Battle of Hong Kong 1941: A Spatial History Project at https://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/1941hkbattle/en/map.html

Dibden and Little: Susanna Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong, 1991, 275; see also https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/mildred-dibden/

Woods: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 39

Newton: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 7; 17

Witchell: Lady May Ride, in Sally Blyth and Ian Wotherspoon, Hong Kong Remembers, 1996, 11

Edgar: Article in British Baker, September 13, 1946, viewable at https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-some-doc…

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 67-68

Father O'Mara: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege Of Hong Kong, 1944, 16

Food Control: G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 111; Cafe Wiseman - Wenzell Brown, Hong Kong Aftermath, 1943, 24

Redwood family: Mabel Winifred Redwood, It Was Like This, 2001, 71

Sewell family: William Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 11-14

As British forces withdraw from the northern New Territories to the Gin Drinkers Line, order is already starting to break down on the Mainland.

Edith and Arthur Hamson and their children Mavis and Richard are in a warden's house in Kowloon where they've fled to escape the bombing.

Late in the evening they decide to return home, walking past looters - one 'brazen' pair pushing a grand piano down the street.

They arrive to find that their servants, Ah Moi, Ah Ching and Ah Lee, have just managed to hold off some 'bandits'. Arthur spends an uneasy night constantly having to chase off more would-be looters.

Dr. Isaac Newton, at the Kowloon Hospital, records that yesterday was the 'most hectic 14 hours' of his life. He's sharing a ward with {Dr. J. P.} Fehily and {the Rev. H. A.} Wittenbach at night, and they have taken over {Dr. K. H.} Uttley's house as a mess by day - Uttley is organising a relief hospital at the Peninsula Hotel.

This afternoon Kowloon hospital is visited by the Director of Medical Services (Selwyn-Selwyn-Clarke) and the Governor (Sir Mark Young). Newton shows them round in the intervals between operating. He finishes the last operation at 10.50 p.m.

Twins Aileen and Doris Woods spend the morning packing and arranging for their pet cats to be destroyed. Then they go to withdraw emergency funds from the Kowloon Branch of the HKSBC in the east wing of the Peninsula Hotel. They try to get a pass to cross to Victoria (now Central): Doris is given one because she's a bank worker, while Aileen is refused because her work isn't regarded as important enough.

On Hong Kong Island Phyllis Harrop is up by 6.30 and the first air raid is 15 minutes later. During the course of the morning's work she discovers that she's now 'attached to the Chinese secret police' - her pre-war work involved close contact with Chinese people, and she speaks the language.

Early in the afternoon she realises that she has had no food since breakfast yesterday apart from a cup of tea in the morning, so she goes home, reaching her flat at about 4 p.m., and has a meal. She's soon in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Joseph Alsop, an American writer working with the Flying Tigers, is trapped in Hong Kong while on a supply mission for the aviators. He's in a bungalow in Kowloon, giving up hope of finding a flight out. He rings up fellow American Emily Hahn, who suggests he works for Selwyn-Clarke. He becomes a stretcher bearer - 'he did good work'.

Hahn herself is one of a number of people living in the Selwyn-Clarke's house in a vulnerable position on the Peak:

The first day was child's play, but the second day we had more than air raids; we had shelling from the approaching Jap forces across the bay and from a few of their ships that had stolen up close to the island. It's probably an idiosyncrasy of mine, but I prefer bombs to shells. I'm more used to them. You can see the plane they are coming from, and you can hear the bomb coming down, and you know where you are...(and) once a bomb has popped, it has popped, and the plane can't stay in one place pegging away at you. Shells are different. Shells keep coming and hitting at the same spot. Shells are the devil.

In the UK the situation makes the front page of today's Daily Express (which of course reports yesterday's events):

‘Hongkong blockaded’

HONGKONG, Monday. — Hongkong had two air raids today. The Japs dropped 1,000 pamphlets and a few bombs in the morning, begging the Chinese to attack us, and a few more bombs in the afternoon, causing some damage and casualties.

The raiders—there were about a dozen—scattered as soon as they were fired on. One is reported to have been shot down over Green Island, off the western entrance to the harbour.

At dawn several hundred Japanese approached the frontier, but found we had already blown up the strategic positions.

A Tokyo broadcast picked up here claimed the destruction of 12 planes on the ground. It was also said that the Japanese Navy was blockading Hongkong.

Sources:

Withdrawal: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 33

Hamsons: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 72

Newton: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 17-18.

Woods: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 45

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 68-69

Alsop: Emily Hahn, China To Me, 1986 ed., 280

Hahn: Emily Hahn, China To Me, 1986 ed., 261

The Shing Mun Redoubt, the key to the Gin Drinkers Line, is taken and the Royal Scots fall back to inadequate defensive positions on Golden Hill where they come under heavy attack. Indian regiments are fighting hard, and some of the young Canadians are sent into the battle, but as the fighting approaches urban areas, civilian casualties, mainly Chinese, start to mount.

The food situation in Kowloon's deteriorating. Yesterday the missionary Reiton family bought 'twelve large two and one-half loaves of bread'. Today their son-in-law Robert Hammond, also a missionary, finds that it's impossible to buy any bread at all.

Ellen Field goes to the Recruitment Centre and is told to leave Kowloon for the Island. She refuses:

I had the most fanciful notion of what would happen to me if I did remain where I was. I thought, for instance, that the Japanese would simply come up to me and say, 'We've won or something like that.' I believed they would behave decently towards British people.

After a heavy night of shelling, Arthur and Edith Hamson and their family decide to take refuge in the Kowloon hills for a few days. They head towards Lion Rock, passing other terrified families. Their servants Ah Moi and Ah Lee find them and bring food. Night falls 'and with darkness came the most spectacular light show'. From their elevated position they see Hong Kong Island covered in thick smoke, 'which took on an orange glow from the flickering light created by the bombs'. Lion Rock isn't comfortable, but at least it's safer than the city.

Diary of Dr. Isaac Newton:

Today has been one of the most trying that I have ever experienced. When I got to the hospital after breakfast, I found that there was a general air of tension and the nursing staff, sisters as well as nurses, had decided that in no circumstances would they stay put if the Japanese occupied Kowloon. As they had all agreed previously to do so when asked and our plans about stores etc. were based on that it was something of a blow to me.

Newton decides to cross to the Island and discuss the situation with the Director of Medical Services: on arrival he finds that  Selwyn-Clarke has just seen the Governor, and he tells him that it is his (the Governor's) wish that all the hospital's medical personnel remain in Kowloon:

It was the first time I have ever seen S-C really moved. He obviously felt that he was deserting us and he really minded it, particularly as we have borne the brunt of the whole thing up till now. However, we settled all the details we could and he followed me out and said goodbye. There were tears in his eyes and he couldn't control his face or let the words out and in the end he gave it up and just walked back to his office. I felt really sorry for him. Then {Dr. D. J.} Valentine came up and said goodbye too.

On Hong Kong Island Phyllis Harrop describes the problems faced by Food Control:

Something has gone radically wrong with the organisation. Reports are coming in that men have had no food for forty-eight hours. Office staff have walked out due to lack of supplies and messengers are threatening to follow them. The food is there but transport seems to be the difficulty. Conferences have been held to settle the matter.

But action is being taken to improve the food situation: to alleviate the shortages caused by rice and other food shops shutting down at the start of the fighting, the Government orders every undertaking selling food to keep open from 8 a.m. to sunset. A Food Control official broadcasts an assurance that there's plenty of food in Hong Kong, and to prove it food kitchens are opened.

Jesuit Superior Father Patrick Joy needs to keep his priests moving about the city, as some of them, although Irish and therefore neutral, are volunteering with Essential Services, while others are continuing to carry out spriritual duties - from early on they note an increase in people wanting baptism, confession and communion. But there are new problems:

To move about the city now required police permits, and a large part of Fr. Joy's time on the third day of the war was spent in arranging for these.

One of the Jesuits, Fr. Paul O'Brien, is sent over to Kowloon to open an office of the Billeting Organisation, as so few people have been rehoused in the first two days - only 200-300 on the whole of day 2. He considers the building completely inappropriate as it's made mostly of glass and is the office of a Taxicab Company with an assembly yard outside that's likely to attract bombing as a transport hub. It's rocked for three hours during the day by the explosions from a nearby air raid. No-one comes there anyway, and he finds out later that notices were not issued until after the Japanese had taken Kowloon.

The London press is doing its best to stay positive. These reports seem to give an idealised account of developments on the 8th and 9th:

Japanese trying to cross Hong Kong’s mainland frontier have been halted by our artillery fire, it is announced officially.

The border was manned by British troops at 5.30 a.m. yesterday and we started the demolition of roads and bridges.

Berlin adds that two Japanese Divisions are attacking Hong Kong.

Sources:

Shing Mun etc.: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 40-42

Reiton: Robert B. Hammond, Bondservants of the Japanese, 1957 ed., 16

Field: Ellen Field, Twilight in Hong Kong, 1960, 20-21

Hamsons: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 73-74

Newton: Alan Birch  and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 24-25

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 70

Action is taken: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 23

Joy: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege Of Hong Kong, 1944, 23

O'Brien: Ibid, 25

Press: The Daily Mirror, December 10, 1941, page 1

Germany and Italy declare war on America and Congress and the President respond in kind. Now the war in the Pacific and the war in Europe are one, the two sides are lined up, and the stakes could not be higher.

At midday Major-General Maltby takes the decision to abandon the Mainland. The evacuation begins in the afternoon amid scenes of chaos and terror.

Ellen Field's trying to sleep when her No. 1 Houseboy comes in and tells her the Japanese are at the end of Prince Edward Road, about three miles away. Then a friend, Leslie Coxhill, a Volunteer in the Signals section, arrives:

'My God!' he shouted at me. 'Are you still here?'

By the time she's packed it's 7 p.m.  After an agonising walk in high heels with her three children and their amahs, she arrives at the waterfront to find scenes of chaos. Helped by two Canadian soldiers, she manages to get herself, her children and two amahs on to an already over-loaded motor launch:

Blacked-out Hong Kong came into harsh relief as a succession of Japanese flares, hanging in the sky like garish lanterns, lit up the whole harbour with an eerie brilliance. Every gun on Hong Kong seemed to open up simultaneously. Great spouts of water sprang up around us as bombs started to fall.

The soldiers help her and her party to safety. Later she's to remember them and decide to extend her relief to the Prisoners of War in Shamshuipo beyond her family members.

Doris Woods crosses the harbour and puts in a day's work at the bank. Leaving earlier than usual, she proceeds to the Star Ferry terminal (Victoria/Central), where she's told (wrongly) by some Canadian soldiers that the Japanese are fighting in Nathan Rd. near the Alhambra theatre and advised not to cross. Doris insists that she's going to get her sister, and crosses in an empty ferry. On arrival, she runs through the deserted streets of Tsimshatshui and calmly tells Aileen that the Japanese are close. They find a Chinese worker, one of the few around, to help them with their luggage, but when they arrive at the terminal there's no ferry. They walk along the quay to a crowded police launch, which takes them and their luggage across. Their married sister, Mrs. Winfield, is waiting for them in Victoria, and at the bank is a car which will take them to their billet on the Peak.

Their servant Ah Moi brings the Hamson family the news that many British civilians are leaving Kowloon for Hong Kong Island, while Chinese are coming from the New Territories to loot homes and businesses. They decide to leave Lion Rock and return to their home at dusk, and spend the night preparing to try to cross the harbour the next day.

Kowloon missionary John Hammond reports:

Heavy artillery fire increased late Thursday afternoon. We could see the flashes four miles away at the top of the hill leading away from Lai Chi Kok to Castle Peak.

Hammond says that all electricity is shut off by now, and the looters have already taken over the trucks, taxicabs, cars and all other forms of transport.

A Chinese friend persuades the Hammonds to leave their mission station and take shelter in the nearby home of the Reitons - Mrs. Hammond is their daughter:

So quickly carrying the few things that we had with us we made our exit through the rear door, crossed the small alleyway and went upstairs to our future hideout. Our Chinese helped us and we were transferred in about ten minutes. Closing all of the outside storm shutters, that worked like venetian blinds, we lived in darkness until we were taken to the Japanese concentration camp.

The looters duly arrive:

We heard them coming down the road crying out, shouting, robbing and shooting. We had been through enough already to drive us insane, but to be suddenly thrown into this state of affairs was nearly beyond human endurance.

Nevertheless, somewhat to Robert Hammond's surprise, the women in the two families don't become 'hysterical' and never complain 'during all those long, long months of horror and trouble'.

Robin Boris Levkovich, a naturalised Briton of Russian origin, is a policeman assigned to Food Control. Senior Jardine Mattheson manager D. L. Newbigging sends him on a highly dangerous mission to try to retrieve 4,000 pounds of flour from a store in Kowloon. He manages to get across the harbour by 6 p.m., travelling in a naval launch which returns without waiting for him. While looking for Food Control, he meets Doctors Selwyn-Clarke and Fehily who ask him to deliver supplies to Kowloon hospitals which haven't had any since the start of the fighting. Levkovich sees Selwyn-Clarke depart on 'the last ferry leaving Kowloon' while Fehily stays on.

Levkovich finds a lorry with the ignition key still in it, and manages to locate and load stores at the Tait Wing Company opposite Whitfied Barracks. He drives past dead bodies and through bands of looters armed with revolvers and axes, reaches the Central British School, and delivers the food to the emergency hospital there. His mother and sister are nursing at this hospital, and his mother tells him that the staff have been told they must stay at their posts while they still have patients, but they've been promised evacuation with the rear guard. He has his doubts, but says nothing.

He's out of petrol, so he walks to the nearby Kowloon Hospital and, after talking to Drs. Newton and Fehily, he's driven back to the food store in an ambulance with two members of staff to help him load. He's forced to scare off looters with a revolver he'd previously acquired from a policeman. The trip back is a 'nightmare', in the dark, through spreading fires and the sound of guns.

There's great news for the breakfast tables back in Britain:

Jap attack on Hong Kong fails

Sadly there's more:

The Japanese attacking Hong Kong have suffered a reverse and a Japanese patrol has been wiped out.

“Our land forces have halted a Japanese attack, although fighting is continuing,” stated a communiqué in Hong Kong yesterday.

Chinese forces in Kwangtung Province are attacking Canton from east and west, thus relieving the Japanese pressure on Hong Kong, according to a dispatch to a Chinese language newspaper.

Sources:

Maltby: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 52

Field: Ellen Field, Twilight in Hong Kong, 1960, 22-31

Woods: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 48

Hamsons: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 74-75

Hammonds and Reitons: John B. Hammond, Bondservants of the Japanese, 1957 ed., 21-23

Levkovich: Statement, pages 1-3, (in the Ride Papers, held at the Hong Kong Heritage Project and kindly sent to me Elizabeth Ride)

Jap Attack: Daily Mirror, page 1

Note: Levkovich dates his mission as beginning on December 12. However, Dr. Newton's diary and the general course of events in Kowloon make me confident that this should be December 11.

For most people in Kowloon the night of December 11-12 is one of terror. Ruthless gangs, some of them armed, descend on private houses and anywhere else that offers the prospect of loot or 'protection money'. Six Irish Jesuits were on that side of the harbour and their history of the hostlities describes the situation vividly

All through the night the din and pillage continued....Gangs 'worked' certain streets or districts. They went to shop after shop and house after house, breaking down the doors if they were not open, and going through every floor and every room swiftly and violently. The slightest resistance brought savage attacks that were often fatal. Ear-rings were torn away brutally; fingers were chopped off when rings did not slip off easily; and a blow with an iron bar was the most common reply to any attempt to bar an entrance. Shots were frequent during the night....None will ever know how many people died during that terrible period.

Those in the hospitals are probably the best off - these offer few temptations to looters when so many other buildings are available. Robert Boris Levkovich is sleeping in the emergency hospital at the Central British School close to the Kowloon Hospital:

There was dead silence around the district, and only the far-away shouts of the mobs, in Kowloon City, and occasional shots were heard.

Father Ryan sums up:

In the history of Kowloon no dawn was ever awaited with greater eagerness than that of Friday, December 12th.

Early in the morning Levkovich is summoned to Kowloon Hospital by Dr. Newton. He is told to join the Rev. Wittenbach and Mr. McGowan on a trip to find petrol and to look for the Rev. Wittenbach's wife and two children. They leave about 8 a.m. but don't get far: they're set upon by a bus-load of Japanese soldiers and become part of the incident involving the Hamsons and the Hardwicks ((see below)).

At 8 a.m. the Hamson family are joined by their friend Mrs. Hardwick and her teenage son Ronnie. They leave in their car for the ferry to Hong Kong Island, passing through a Kowloon that's become 'a ghost town'. They arrive on Nathan Road, where most of the shops have been looted, and which is full of people fleeing in cars or on foot - 'hysterical people clambered onto our car and pulled at the locked doors, trying to get in'.

Suddenly they are surrounded by Japanese soldiers. Arthur Hansom and Ronnie Hardwick are taken aside and Arthur is beaten up. The women and children are told to go. In the confusion of the streets they lose contact with Mrs. Hardwick. Edith and her younger sister Leilah decide to try to join their mother at Kowloon Hospital. They pass sometimes limbless corpses on the way. While climbing a hill leading to the Hospital Edith is attacked by Chinese bandits, Leilah managing to get away with the children (Richard and May). Edith is rescued by the sudden appearance of a group of men, and makes it to the hospital. Leilah and the children have found Mrs. Hamson, and she comes rushing out as soon as Edith arrrives.

Meanwhile, Arthur Hamson and young Ronnie Hardwick, now in a group that includes R. B. Levkovich, are saved from further beatings by a Japanese army doctor. The Jesuit Father Gallagher arrives, along with his associate Mr. McAsey: they've been moving around Kowloon trying, without success, to find a Japanese officer who understands Ireland's neutrality. They're taken to the Kowloon Hospital in a decrepit bus driven by an American named Wilkins, but they're told they'd be in too much danger there, so they're loaded back onto the  bus and into some private cars and taken to a building where, they are told, they will spend the night before continuing their journey to a safe place:

The building revealed itself to be an old godown converted into a school.

It turns out to be the Hing Wah College, and, although it's not at all safe, it's where they're going to stay.

In the afternoon, Dorothy Geen, the Matron of Kowloon Hospital, calls the nurses together and tells them the Mainland is being evacuated, but they must stay. ((Miss Geen was to become Matron of Stanley's Tweed Bay Hospital.))

At about 5 p.m. the Japanese begin to occupy the Hospital. That evening Dr. Newton and all the other 'European and American men and women' are told they must leave (Miss Geen and seven sisters seem to remain at the Hospital nevertheless). They are taken to join those at the Hing Wah College in Castle Peak Rd.

Elsewhere in Kowloon, Australian Harold Bateson is shot after surrendering.

There are dramatic events on Hong Kong Island too.

At 2 a.m. F. W. Shaftain, Director of Criminal Intelligence in the police, meets with Triad leaders to try to talk them out of a plan to massacre all the 'whites' in Hong Kong at 3 a.m. on December 13. ((After complex negotiations, involving influential Chinese citizens, a sum of money will be paid and the plan called off. Most people won't know about these events until after the war.))

Air Raid Precautions Warden Noel Croucher comes off duty, and has a snack at the Gloucester Hotel. While he's eating, a yachting friend asks him to take part in a 'secret mission'. He's been on duty all day - it's now past 7 p.m. - so declines on the grounds of tiredness. This decision saves his life.

The mission was to escort the P & O tug Jeanette as it pulled a barge filled with nine tons of dynamite. Through a misunderstanding the dynamite is accidentally exploded in the harbour by shots from men of the Middlesex Regiment and all involved are killed.

That night Aileen Woods is woken by the sound of the explosion of the Jeanette.

So was Noel Croucher:

I had gone along to the Chartered Bank after my meal, pulled two benches together and laid down. About eleven o' clock, I was awakened by a terrific explosion. I thought a bomb had dropped close by, but no further explosions occurred.

The Maryknoll Fathers hear it at their mission in Stanley, which suggests that almost everyone on the island does too.

The situation in Kowloon is dire, but there's good news on the back page of the Daily Mirror:

Chungking radio announced last night that heavy fighting had been in progress for forty-eight hours….The Japanese had suffered heavy casualties, estimated so far at 15,000 with the Chinese forces attacking along the whole front.

Sounds promising. And the Latest News section at the bottom of the page sounds better still:

Chinese Cutting off Japs at Hong Kong

General Chiang Kai Shek is personally directing large Chinese forces coming to the aid of Hong Kong.

Chinese are cutting off the Japanese from rear and flank, and the enemy power is diminishing.

Sources:

Looting: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege Of Hong Kong, 1944, 49

Hamsons: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 76-82

Levkovich - silence and petrol mission: Statement, page 3 (in the Ride Papers, held at the Hong Kong Heritage project and kindly sent to me Elizabeth Ride); some details of the 'petrol mission' taken from Dr. Newton's diary, cited in Captive Christmas, 50 - he calls Levkovich 'a third person'.

Gallagher and McAsey: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege Of Hong Kong, 1944, 65-67

Kowloon Hospital entered, Newton: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 50-51

Bateson: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 64

Geen: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 61

Shaftain: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 2003, 59

Croucher, Woods: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 49-50

Jeanette: Tony Banham, Not The Slightest Chance, 63.

Note 1:

John Luff (and Phyllis Harrop in Hong Kong Incident, 73) dates the Jeanette explosion to the night of December 11, but I have followed Tony Banham's December 12 dating. Wright-Nooth seems to put the 'monstrous explosion that shook the whole of Victoria' on the night of December 14 (Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 53).

Note 2:

Captain Freddie Guest claims that he and others made up a rumour about a Chinese army marching to the relief of Hong Kong in order to cheer people up when 'about December 17' they were forced to finally release news of the sinking of the H. M. S. Repulse and H. M. S. Prince of Wales and thus crush hopes of naval relief from Singapore. However, reports in the UK press prove that the rumour pre-dated the 17th. There was a Chinese army marching towards Hong Kong, although there was never any prospect of it arriving in time to relieve the Colony. The press reports in Britain seem to have been based on real but not always accurate reports from Chungking of the movements of this army. It would, for example, have been correct to say that Chiang Kai-Shek had directed forces to come to Hong Kong's aid, not suggest that he was directing them in action.

See Freddie Guest, Escape From The Bloodied Sun, 1957, 39 and Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 63

Edith Hamson, her children May and Richard, her mother Mrs. Wood and her younger sister Leilah, are all at Kowloon Hospital. As the sun comes up, the first Japanese soldier appears - 'in his wake followed an army of soldiers, who began to tear the place apart':

Screams of terror echoed through the corridors...it was apparent that they were intoxicated with a brutal rage. They set about destroying hospital equipment...I saw doctors and orderlies with bloody faces, and some of the nurses had been beaten and knocked to the floor.

Soon the entire building is in Japanese hands and they are prisoners. The water is off, and they are given only small portions of rice and 'a few extra pieces from the hospital kitchen'. ((See note below))

Military withdrawal from Kowloon is completed by about 8.30 a.m. Half an hour later, the Japanese, now holding the Mainland, send over a 'peace mission' asking Governor Sir Mark Young to surrender to avoid an all-out assault on the Island. Two women, Mrs. C. R. Lee, wife of a senior official, and Mrs. MacDonald, are taken across the harbour with them as hostages. Mrs. Lee brings her two dachshunds. Mrs MacDonald is pregnant and needs to get to hospital - Mrs. Lee made taking her a condition of participation.

American writer Gwen Dew and reporter Vaughn Meisling photograph and interview the participants. They're then taken away for questioning by 'good-looking' policeman and future author George Wright-Nooth.

The peace mission leaving Kowloon:

Gwen Dew's photograph of the mission on Hong Kong island:

Newspaper reports of the peace mission:

The Governor rejects the peace proposals out of hand. The Japanese are not ready to land on the Island yet. While making their preparations, they attack military targets with an intensive campaign of shelling and bombing. This begins immediately with shells falling in the crowded districts of Kennedy Town and West Point. Chinese casualties are heavy, and there are too many fires for the Fire Brigade to extinguish. The devastation of whole areas depresses civilian morale.

Jesuit Father Thomas Cooney goes to minister at the French Hospital (St. Paul's) in Causeway Bay:

(H)e found the whole place transformed from the orderly, smoothly-running hospital which he knew, with a convent and school beside it, to a much more complicated war-time institution. The ordinary patients had been moved away to one of the buildings on the race-course in Happy Valley, and the whole hospital was taken over by the government for Chinese civilian casualties. Provision was made in the hospital proper for 300 patients.

The hospital's under the Government-appointed Dr. Dean Smith.

Father Cooney is welcomed by the sisters, as priests from nearby St. Margaret's haven't been able to get through to say mass for some days. He's given a room on the second floor and he 'realised with a certain amount of dismay that there was only a ceiling and a tiled floor between him and visiting areoplanes'. They don't bother him the first night, but that's the last night's untroubled rest he's to have for some time.

Noel Croucher, passing along the seafront, notices every pane of plate glass has been broken by the Jeanette explosion.

Arthur Morse, based in London, has been looking after the affairs of the HSBC. Today he receives a letter from Sideny Caine of the Colonial Office telling him that Vandeleur Grayburn has wired asking for an Order-in-Council to be prepared transferring the Bank's Head Office from Hong Kong to London with Morse as Acting Chief Manager. Grayburn wants this to be put into effect only if the Bank falls into enemy hands. Morse waits for further instructions, but none come, and on December 15th he will arrange to take control and on the 16th he will wire all branches to say that the Head Office is now in London and no instructions from Hong Kong should be acted on until confirmed from there. Morse has good reason to take these steps: he fears that the Bank's assets will be frozen in the United States if its Head Office falls into enemy hands.

The Daily Mirror does its best to stay positive:

Page 1

In Hong Kong our advanced posts have been withdrawn, but Chinese are attacking the rear flank of the Japanese there.

 Page 8, Continued from page 1:

 Hong Kong Outposts Retired

Japanese pressure on our advanced positions at Hong Kong has caused us to withdraw in the direction of Kowloon, but this movement is from our advanced positions only.

Chinese forces under the direct command of General Chiang Kai Shek are cutting off the Japanese from the rear and back in their attempts to take Hong Kong.

Sources:

Hamson: Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 83-85

Peace Mission: Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003, 69-70

Mrs. Lee, 'good-looking': Gwen Dew, Prisoner of the Japs, 1943, 33-35

The Governor rejects: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 57-58

Cooney: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege of Hong Kong, 1944, 75-76

Croucher: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 50

Arthur Morse: Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 219-220

Note: Kowloon Hospital

Oliver Lindsay (The Lasting Honour, 1978, 61) dates the arrival of Japanese troops in the Hospital as 5 p.m. on December 12. Dr. Newton's diary account (Captive Christmas, 1979, 51 - and see yesterday's entry) is his probable source, although it seems from Newton's account that it was a Japanese doctor who arrived at 5 p.m. and the soldiers with fixed bayonets, mentioned by Lindsay, came a few hours later.

If I have reconstructed the chronology of Allana Corbin's narrative correctly, the troops are said to enter on the fourteenth. As the description clearly begins at dawn, I've placed it on December 13 on the assumption that Mrs. Hamson became aware of the presence of the soldiers at this time because a more complete occupation of the kind she describes was taking place.

But, as this note shows, the fear and uncertainty of the time are reflected in the confusion of the sources. Further research is obvously necessary, but it might not yield a clear and indisputable chronology.

Note: Peace Mission

John Luff's The Hidden Years (1967, page 57) claims that Mrs. MacDonald was 'an invalid' and she was on the launch in order to be taken to hospital. Gwen Dew (my source above) says it was a Russian woman who was pregnant. Again, it's not surprising that descriptions of these events are sometimes confused and contradictory.

The assorted group we've been following around Kowloon are still in the Hing Wah.

It's Gaudete ('rejoice') Sunday, and Father Gallagher preaches a sermon on that theme to his fellow prisoners: 'Rejoice Always!' That's not easy:

The first four days we had nothing to eat, and made a broth out of gold fish, and gold fish water, that the children in the school had left behind them.

Nevertheless, Dr. Newton reports a little food being provided yesterday and in today's diary entry records visits from two Japanese doctors, one of whom brings 'two large tins of army biscuits and two large kettles of boiled water'. He summarises his experiences of the Japanese so far:

Except for the actual rounding-up stage at Kowloon Hospital they've been very polite and pleasant to us.

Japanese shelling of the island begins at daylight and continues late into the night:

And all over Victoria the terrified citizens crouched in corners, waiting for a lull which would enable them to run to a Governnment shelter.

George Wright-Nooth offers a good general description of the experience of the next few days:

Being bombed, shelled or mortared is an extremely frightening experience. You have absolutely no control over the situation. Nothing seems to offer adequate protection; the awful explosions, the unbelievable noise, the violent shock waves and the sickening apprehension as to where the next one will land, can combine to produce terror and inertia in all but the most courageous individuals. A part of the possible solution lies in activity, preferably physical.

Nurse Brenda Morgan is killed by a shell in or close to her station at Rosary Hill. ((See note below.))

Twins Aileen and Doris Woods and their sister Mrs. Winfield are billeted at the house of Sir Vandeleur and Lady Mary Grayburn. The electricity fails so they can't listen to the world news. The strain is getting on their nerves and there are frequent quarrels in the house. In between air raids they look down on the city. They see huge fires at North Point. Food is running short.

Another air raid starts and they run to take shelter in the pantry, where they sit for hours repeating the 91st Psalm.

When the shelling stops, they emerge and inspect the effects: the front of the house has been damaged and the Grayburns' private sitting-room is in ruins.

Sources:

Gaudete: Thomas F. Ryan, Jesuits Under Fire In The Siege of Hong Kong, 1944, 81

Gold fish broth: R. B. Levkovich, Statement, page 5 (from the Ride papers, kindly provided by Elizabeth Ride)

Newton: Alan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Christmas, 1979, 51, 63

Japanese shelling: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 58-59

Wright-Nooth: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 55

Woods: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 136

Morgan: Susanna Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong, 1991, 276 and Oliver Lindsay and John Harris, The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945, 2005,

Note: Brenda Morgan

Susannah Hoe states that she was a Canadian military nurse killed by shelling. According to John Harris she was from Nottingham and was killed by bombing. Harris also says that her fiancee, his flatmate Micky Holliday, a sapper, became 'unhinged' as a result and five days later went charging to his death along Wong Nei Chong Road, brandishing a revolver and in the company of several other Sappers.

See also http://gwulo.com/node/13997

This source seems to establish she was in fact from Leeds, and gives a more detailed account of how she died.

See also Chronology, January 13, 1942.