Cholera inoc.
Fried bread in peanut oil in a sardine tin - delicious. Staff in Hospital Office to be increased. ((A daily report of patients in camp hospital, and of births and deaths, required by Japanese.))
Egg ration today - Mum and I boiled ours.
Gwen Priestwood and Walter Thompson leave behind Stanley Mound as soon as it gets dark on March 20. They find the taps are working in a deserted bungalow and this solves the water problem for the moment. They proceed cautiously northwards up the Tai Tam Road.
As dawn approaches they take shelter in another abandoned bungalow. Priestwood sleeps but is woken by a white-looking Thompson, who tells her that three Japanese soldiers are approaching. They hide in an alcove just off the kitchen, covering themselves in old newspapers. Eventually they emerge, as the soldiers seem to have left:
A window near us opened, and a Japanese apparently left behind stuck in his head within four feet of us. He started to climb in - and then, in the nick of time, there came another shout from below. He stopped, turned, yelled something, and ran down the path.
That night they find a junkmaster, who, after an initial refusal, agrees to take them to the mainland. They end up at the fishermen's Tin Hau temple at Joss House Bay, a favourite meeting place for Chinese guerillas.
From there they will be taken into China, eventually arriving in the wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing).
The Epstein party board a junk that will take them from Lantau to Macao.
Sources:
Priestwood: Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed-Wire, 1944, 77; George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 111-112
Epstein: My China Eye, 2005, 149
Torches, typewriters to be handed in within 3 days.
New labour reorganisation posted.
Roll call 8.30 p.m.
Russia has all Ukraine. Total war declared on Germany & occupied France. Counter-attack by Allies in Burma. Three Jap big ships sunk?
All this news makes us very optimistic.