Diary pages from this date

Up early and got Scriven moving about sanitation of the dysentery cases.  Brit Hosp has 21 cases, Brit Isolation 36 cases, Indian 130 cases. 

Rice for bkfst and what was left over fried with sardines and raisins for lunch.  Jap Lt General came this a.m. but did not want to go near the hospitals.  Apparently our General got nothing out of him at all.  He simply said we must have patience. 

Camp a bit cleaner today.  Sappers fixed up water and lavatories in our quarters in the hospital.  Washed shirt, underpants, vest and socks. 

In afternoon Chinese were segregated, rumour had it that they were being disbanded but they were just removed to another part of the camp and wired in.  Lee got out again and I managed to get his kit out.  Decided to wait until tomorrow and then try. 

At night thought that best thing would be to walk along breakwater wall at low tide and swim the rest putting pack etc on a raft.  Will try and contact the Lance Bombadier to see if he would be willing to swim for it.

Wenzell Brown and his fellows have the 'rules and regulations which were to govern us' read by two Japanese, who also lecture them about the bad treatment of Japanese nationals in the USA. But there's a happier development:

The first batch of food came in on the third day - rice and ducks. The ducks had come from the storage rooms of the Dairy Farm where the refrigeration system had broken down two weeks before. The meat had turned blue, and it gave forth a most unpleasant odor.

Attorney-General C. G. Alabaster forwards a set of documents relating to the finances of the Hong Kong Goverment and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to Swiss Consul Harry Keller in the Alexander Building for safe-keeping, Tomorrow Franklin Gimson (see below) will send more documents to Keller. They will be returned to Gimson on September 4, 1945..

Soon after 9p.m. Franklin Gimson, who had been held at Central Police Station, is released. He'd not been treated badly, although Japanese officials kept walking past his cell (number 9) waving a letter he'd written to them which they deemed offensively forthright, and an Indian guard had made so much noise that he'd been unable to sleep. At 9 p.m. he was taken from his cell and he expected to be executed, but found the Japanese Consul-General waiting in his car to return him to the Prince's Building. He has a stiff drink and some food and retires to bed.

Sources:

Food: Wenzell Brown, Hong Kong Aftermath, 1943, 57, 61

Alabaster and Gimson: Letters of January 7 and 8 in E2200.10.01 (1941-1945) (Swiss Federal Archives, Berne)

Gimson: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 107

Two years ago today Marj & I arrived here.

Japanese taking over the Prison.