Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai, by Robert Bickers:
The SMP Special Branch kept an eye on these, and also undertook reports for foreign consulates, from foreign police forces about arrivals from Shanghai and suspects with a Shanghai past, as well as following up tip-offs about suspicious characters. James Barton, an MI6 officer based at the British Consulate-General, put in a request for information about one Darrell Drake, recently arrived in Hong Kong in October 1937 and ‘regarded with suspicion on account of his close association with Japanese and certain undesirable foreigners’. No wonder, was the response, given his twenty-five-year Shanghai record of ‘heavy gambling, fornicating, drunken bouts of whiskey drinking... and associating with many local shady characters’ while serving as a highly respectable (and heavily indebted) teacher in the SMC’s Public School for Boys.
p.224, Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong, by Vaudine England:
Under consideration for trial were men such as Darrell Drake, a teacher in Japan who had married a pro-German Norwegian lady. He was a heavy gambler and drinker and, when he went on leave to Shanghai and then Hong Kong in September 1937, was reported to have business connections with the Japanese, and with a known German arms smuggler; he then worked for a Japanese news agency in Hong Kong and during the war worked on the pro-Japan Hongkong News.
Carl Smith card 95769 says Drake died in Hong Kong in 1970, aged 79. He'd come to Hong Kong from Shanghai with his family in 1947, where he had taught at Thomas Hanbury School with Billy Tingle.
Comments
1890-1970?
Birth and death dates seem to be the wrong way round.
Thanks Jill, fixed now.
Thanks Jill, fixed now.
Darrell Drake Is this him? 1917 - 2003
There is a passenger list London to Shanghai September 1927 showing passengers Elaine Drake 36, Darrell Drake 10 and Andrew Drake 5 Is this your Darrell Drake? He would have been born circa 1917 which does not tie in with your dob.
Passenger List Shanghai to San Francisco arriving 21 January 1947
Darrell M Drake 19 born abt 1917 Married single last place of residence China
Andrews Card 10 August 1951 asking for information about Darell Drake Professor of Languages last heard of in Shanghai in 1946
UK Marriage Index 1990
Darrell M Drake married Olga Routledge in Carlisle UK
US Obituary Records Date 30 October 2003 (conflicts with your date of 1970)
Darrell Michael Drake Male aged 86 born in Shanghai China on 30 May 1917 Spouse Olga Children Elaine, Bill, Linda
re: Darrell Drake Is this him? 1917 - 2003
As both the years of birth and death are very different from the original entry, I think this must be a different Darrell Drake.
Darell Drake (10th May 1891…
Darell Drake (10th May 1891-3rd January 1970) is the correct person.
Darrell Michael ('Mickey') Drake (30th May 1917-11th August 2003) and Andrew Conway Emil Drake (19th October 1921-26th June 1943) were his sons.
Note the correct spellings - Darell for the senior and Darrell for the junior.
re: Darell Drake (10th May 1891…
Thanks, I've updated his details.