Jacobus Van der Laan, a Dutch banker living at the Sun Wah Hotel, sends a message to his parents-in-law (who are looking after his young daughter):
Since September 1941 no news telegraphed different times. Hope you can manage otherwise apply Headoffice. We both good health no reply Sourabaya.
lovekisses
(punctuation and spacing sic; Van der Laan had been trying unsuccessfully to contact relatives in another camp, Soerabaja)
Source:
David Tett, Captives in Cathay, 2007, 318
Issue 1/4 lb. margarine
I told Bush I would be glad to help and we had a chat, during which I endeavoured to find out what experience he had of acting and what plays he had in mind. I gathered that his experience was limited to a few amateur theatrics with which he had been associated at a Japanese University. His choice of one act plays (which I read) I considered unsuitable for this camp - one was about the danger zone at sea during the last war - and gave him my opinion. Then I suggested that we should ask John Robertson to produce - not a very tasteful suggestion, as I then gathered he himself wanted to produce. However, he said: get Robertson by all means if you can. So I asked John and he said he would be quite glad to do a one act play.
When I told Bush he said that he had decided to put on a full length play called ‘Springtime for Henry’ and that he did not think there was a suitable part for me. So he got together his cast: Mr & Mrs Mills, Mr Dalziel, Gordon Stopani-Thompson, and they went into rehearsal. So Sheila Mackinlay and I set about trying to find 3 suitable one act plays to put on for one evening. We found a duologue: ‘A Marriage has been arranged,’ by Sutro, ‘A Villa for Sale’ and ‘Banqour Chair’, a short story that I had dramatised. Richard Mills had intended to put on ‘A Marriage has been arranged,’ but when he was asked to take a part in ‘Springtime for Henry’, he handed it over to us. By this time it was after Xmas and in addition Bill Colledge (who used to produce for the YMCA) had asked me to take the part of Sebastian in his cut production of ‘Twelfth Night’, which was due to be presented on Twelfth Night – January 6th.