Diary pages from this date

At the beginning of September, we were again warned that a further draft would be leaving in the near future. Many who had come nearly to the end of their tether, with the monotony of the present camp, eagerly volunteered for the chance of new surroundings, as popular feeling held the view that any change would be for the better than the existence we were leading at present. We should certainly have not been so enthusiastic had we been able to foresee the events to come.

When the draft was formed, we were given a medical check, which included a glass tube being inserted in one's rear, as the Japanese were scared of dysentery being spread in Japan. We were also given some extra clothing.

Mary's name is down for a chest x-ray and the threat of chest trouble looms again.  She gets 2 bottles of milk a day at hospital and that will help.

Rumour is (a) the Russians are retreating round Stalingrad, and (b) the Russians have counter-attacked on various fronts.  Also, that Canada has invited us in the Far East to go to Canada, all our expenses paid.

Mr Bendall gave Mabel a lovely cake of good soap for her birthday - Agafuroffs sent him in a parcel.  ((Pre-war we often played tennis with Jimmy Bendall and the Agafuroff brothers at the Civil Service Club, Happy Valley. The Agafuroff brothers were not interned, I think they were Indian and probably both worked in the HK Government.   I never heard anything of them after the war.))

Well-known Australian journalist Dorothy Jenner ('Andrea') has recently been elected representative of her camp area (such people were generally called 'blockheads'). It's not an easy job and today she confides to her diary, 'committee a hellish one - I am automatically everybody's enemy'.

Source:

Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 61

(Brown)

No news of importance. High wind, rain.