Diary pages from this date

Notes:

21/8/43 "Newspaper  .10"  This would have been the Hongkong News, as the family could not read Chinese.

Supporting information:

• List of translations and abbreviations
• List of foods

Sir Vandeleur Grayburn is serving the second half of his three month sentence in Stanley Prison. He's been in poor health, suffering from fever and outbreaks of boils, but has received no treatment from the Japanese.

In the morning, Sir Vandeleur feels better. After the evening meal he talks to Police Sergeant Vincent Morrison about his travels in Norway and his brother's time as a tea planter in India. He interrupts the conversation to try and urinate into a tin, but fails twice to do so. He drops the tin and collapses. Sergeant Morrison, himself weak, helps him to bed as best he can. Grayburn apologises - 'That was very remiss of me' - and sinks into a coma.

Morrison spends the night by his side.

Sources:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 175

Morrison's evidence to war crimes trial, China Mail, April 4, 1947, 2

Note: Wright-Nooth misdates Grayburn's last illness and death to August 6/7, perhaps following Morrison's misdating of Grayburn's transfer to the hospital to 'the first Wednesday in August'. For more information see

http://brianwedgar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/wystan-auden-christopher-isherwood-and_4.html

"Goodness, How Sad" by Robert Morley ((see 19th for details))

Cloudy but fine.

Choir practice at St Stephens 11-noon.

Steve to Play. Mary playing MaJong so was back early.

((G))

No more news re Roumania. Axis make out their evacuation of Sicily as a victory.

Paper all tripe these days.

OBJECTIVE: Bomb Tien Ho airfield at Canton

TIME OVER TARGET: ~2:37 p.m.

AMERICAN UNITS AND AIRCRAFT: Six B-25 medium bombers from the 11^th Bomb Squadron (341^st Medium Bomb Group) and ten P-40s from the 74^th Fighter Squadron (23^rd Fighter Group)

AMERICAN PILOTS AND AIRCREW: 

• P-40s: Colonel Bruce K. Holloway; Major Norval C. Bonawitz; Captain Arthur W. Cruikshank; 1^st Lt. George W. Lee; 1^st Lt. Samuel P.M. Kinsey; 1^st Lt. Fennard Herring; Lt. Hendrickson; Lt. Lawrence W. Smith; Lt. Bennett; Lt. Sinclair
• B-25s: Tech Sgt. George W. Gouldthrite

ORDNANCE EXPENDED: 48 120-pound M-3 fragmentation clusters and 24 100-pound general purpose bombs

RESULTS: Results unobserved due to interception by Japanese fighters

JAPANESE UNITS, AIRCRAFT, AND PILOTS: American pilots report up to 20 intercepting Japanese fighters.  These were likely Ki-44-IIs from the 85^th Sentai.

AIRCRAFT LOSSES:

• Japanese fighter aircraft inflict minor damage on three B-25s.
• American fighter pilots and B-25 gunner Sgt. Gouldthrite claim to shoot down up to seven Japanese fighters, though this is likely an inflated total.

SOURCES:

• Original mission reports and other documents in the Air Force Historical Research Agency archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

• Japanese Army Fighter Aces, 1931-45, by Ikuhiko Hata, Yasuho Izawa, and Christopher Shores.

Information compiled by Steven K. Bailey, author of Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942-1945 (Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2019).