Habade

Submitted by brian edgar on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 23:22

Barbara Anslow's diary entry today records the arrival of some of the '$75 dollar parcels' in Stanley.

These were packages of food and useful items bought for each internee with money provided by the Japanese (or according to some accounts the Red Cross) as announced in April. In May Chester Bennett was allowed out of Camp to make the purchases and the first parcels seem to have arrived at the start of June.

I'm looking at a copy of an invoice for what must have been one of the last ones (dated August 7, 1942). It was sent out by HABADE in the French Bank Building. The items include soap, shoes and needles and thread as well as cheese, chocolates and honey, so it was presumably a department store, and the location, name and continued operation suggest it might well have been French owned.

Any information on HABADE would be welcomed.

No mentions of them in Google Books or the online newspapers.

There are a couple of mentions in HKGRO, one in the 1934 jurors list, and a note that they were struck off the register (of listed companies I guess) in 1939.

Regards, David

Mabel Redwood mentions the Habade parcels in her account 'It was like this....'  (p164)

In 1942 as the weather warmed up, morale in Stanley Internment Camp improved and was boosted further by the rumour that internees would receive a food parcel of their own selection to the value of $75.  This seemed impossible to believe but internees duly made their lists and waited.  Excitement peaked some weeks later in June when the parcels started arriving, and the Japanese did not go back on their word as some had feared.  'For a while the quarters reeked with the delectable smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing, and other lovely cooking smells almost forgotten.'

Most people ordered nothing but food, but some included medicines, toilet articles or sewing aids.  Mabel ordered a bottle of Owbridge's Lung Tonic as a precaution against coughs, but it didn't last long as she and her daughter Mabel enjoyed it as a spread on their rice bread.  One woman ordered an entire parcel of cosmetics.

The most sensible request was made by the man who asked for two live chickens.  Although he was hard put to keep them fed, they did provide him with the occasional egg and ultimately a few tasty meals.  Mabel muses that a pair of rabbits would have been another wise request, and it would have solved the meat problems.

'After this,' she says, 'life really became worth living again.'