80 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

22 Dec 1944, Barbara Anslow's diary

Xmas play The Other Wise Man. Little Fleur Cheape ( 4 ) played the small child. Air raid alarms made performance difficult, had to start late; also, half the would-be audience wasn't there because they thought the play would be cancelled because of alarms. Doreen Leonard played her part very seriously and well.

((Doreen, a Eurasian teenager, was one of the girls in the Girls' Study Group. I gave her shorthand lessons. Her English father, and one of her sisters who was married with small children, were in camp. Doreen and I became great friends. After internment, like we Redwoods, she and her father went to England, and we exchanged frequent letters. She wanted to be a air hostess. I returned to Hong Kong in June 1946, and on arrival was shocked to receive news that Doreen had passed away. When her Dad returned to Hong Kong a few months later, he sought me out where I was working, and handed me a little brooch of Doreen's, saying he thought she loved me best of all her friends.. so touching. She was only 17.))

22 Dec 1944, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Rudolf Zindel, the delegate of the Internantional Red Cross Committee, visits the camp. His report will note an 'increase of restrictions in the early part of 1944' and consequent evidence of avitaminosis (vitamin deficiency problems). Generally he considers the health of the children 'very good', that of the younger and middle-adults 'fair', but that of the old 'somewhat indifferent'. Education is compulsory and the delegate is trying to meet the need for textbooks.

The report's general conclusions when relayed to relatives in the UK though the Red Cross journal, will be, on the whole, reassuring:

The camp authorities are liberal in their treatment of the internees and encourage community work, particularly vegetable cultivation. There is still a need for supplementary food, proteins, fats and vitamins of group B. This need continues to receive the attention of the Hong Kong delegate of the International Red Cross Committee.

Zindel also visits Ma Tau-wai Camp in Kowloon, now led by Dr. Selwyn-Clarke. He considers this and Stanley to be the two sections of what is now the Military Internment Camp - this might well reflect the Japanese classification.

Sources:

Visit to Stanley: The Far East, June 1945, page 5

Ma-Tau-wai (which is called Natauchung): Extract from Revue International de Croix Rouge, 1945, 99-100, in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-8