Bread delivered 8 a.m. to rooms
15th wet day
Anti-cholera injections
Issue of 1 lb. flour
Diary pages from this date
Tried to make bread ((by growing yeast from rice, and wrapping it up when mixed with flour to keep it warm. Mrs G cooked it in Married Quarters kitchen where she worked))) Turned out fine.
Mum had all stitches taken out.
From today a weekly dose of thiamin, supplied by Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, is added to the internees' soup. This halts an epidemic of wet beri beri: there were 84 cases in May, 65 in June, 8 in July and none in August.
Starting in June the thiamin is adminstered in a daily dose of 3 milligrams, which proved to be more effective.
Source:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 150
A chess tournament begins. Some Maryknollers send ten word telegrams and wonder if they and the previous postcards will ever arrive.
A 'handful' of Stanleyites are included in the first of three repatritions to Shanghai. Most of those on board the Tainan Maru are third-national sailors and Hong Kong residents, including some members of the wealthy Kadoorie family. The Belgian Consul and his family also leave, and there are both White Russians and the crew of a Soviet cargo ship trapped by the fighting - the NKVD (Russian secret police) put a stop to some incipient romances and other forms of fraternisation between the two politically opposed groups.
Sources:
Chess: Maryknoll Diary, May 5, 1942
Repatriation: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, May 5, 1942
Note: John Stericker, who dates these telegrams to May 10, says that they were routed throughTokyo and that all were delayed and some never arrived:
John Stericker, A Tear For The Dragon, 1958, 173
Canton and Sha Tau Kok bombed?
C. K. Shek warned Kowloon Chinese to leave in ten days as he was going to bomb the place?
Air raid practice in town.
Drizzly all day.
Walked around camp with Steve.