Sergeant James Hammond was an RASC baker who, alongside Patrick Sheridan, was sent in the last days of the hostilities to help civilian Deputy Supply Officer (Bakeries) Thomas Edgar. The RASC Field Bakery at Deep Water Bay and the Lane Crawford Bakery in Stubbs Road had both been abandoned as too close to the advancing enemy, so the bakers were tasked with opening up small Chinese bakeries in Wanchai to make bread for both the civilian and military populations.
After the surrender he was held in the Exchange Building in Des Voeux Road, and before he was transferred to the French Hospital (Causeway Bay) he and Sheridan were instructed by a Japanese officer to pass as civilians to cover his own mistake in not previously sending them to Shamshuipo.
He was sent to Stanley Camp, probably in the group of May 7, 1943, and continued to bake there.
Note: He appears on a Camp list as John Peckham Hammond, but Sheridan, who knew him for many years consistently calls him James.
Source:
Patrick John Sheridan, Memoir (unpublished)
Comments
J. P. Hammond
I've corrected his name and given his dob from his POW liberation questionnaire, which also tells us that he was living in Skegness after repatriation.
I think it likely that he gave his name as "John Peckham" in Stanley because as a soldier he shouldn't have been there (the circumstances of his taking on civilian status are described in Patrick Sheridan's diary).
He married in the Grimsby District in summer 1947 (this and death details from Ancestry.com documents).