Mum's 47th birthday. Had note from her ((via some one who'd been at Queen Mary Hospital where Mum now was with the other nurses who had been in the Jockey Club Hospital.))
Saw Amah, she said she had seen Olive in Nanking Hotel.
We have been having bread these last 3 days.
Phyllis Harrop goes to Rosary Hill Military Hospital to see if she can get a note through to the POW Camp (Shamshuipo):
{This hospital} is a large building in a compound of many acres and normally is a Spanish Dominican Monastery, but had been requisitioned as an emergency hospital.
While she's there she's taken to see the grave of her friend Brenda Morgan, 'with whom I'd arranged to spend the Christmas holidays':
She had been killed when the hospital was shelled and had been buried in the Monastery Garden.
Dr. Harry Talbot operates on Sir Arthur Blackburn
Sir Arthur is the Counsellor at the British Embassy in Chungking and he's been caught in Hong Kong after coming to the Colony for medical treatment - he sustained damage to his ear and knee during a Japanese bombing raid on the wartime capital of Free China.
On January 6 he was sent to the 'War Memorial Nursing Home' where the British staff were still at work, and on January 10 he went to the Queen Mary Hospital for X-rays, which confirmed Dr. Talbot's opinion that an immediate operation was necessary. This takes place today - 'he found it necessary to do a radical mastoid operation and make me a new earhole'.
Sources:
Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 112
Talbot: A. D. Blackburn, Hong Kong, December 1941-July 1942
After today 20% gone! I am quite all right again and we are comfortable enough but it is not as we are accustomed to. News from outside is still fairly good and we are as hopeful as ever. B
Later. I went to see the C.S. this morning - his car had to go up with some things to the Peak so I volunteered to go to the Concentration Camp at North Point with Fraser and take some comforts for the troops. G.G.Wood, Harry Penn, Bottomley, Jones and other Volunteers are there and some Canadians.
The Jap Commandant seeing my Public Health armlet asked me to see about a sick Chinese woman in the servants' quarters of the house he has taken as his quarters - so I went to the French Hospital and got Murdo Nicholson to go and see the woman and we eventually persuaded her to go into hospital. Court is there too and Sister Cullinan - Dean Smith was wounded there - a nasty wound - he'll probably lose the use of his left arm. - he's now in Q. M. H. It is still nice weather - bright and sunny - but getting colder - I hope it never gets really cold. Cheero for just now. B
Cigs up to 70cts per pkt. Rumour re Churchill saying he will invade Japan.