Diary pages from this date
39 today & cold & miserable it is. Temp 50’. ((10 degrees C))
Air-raid by low-flying dive bombers at 9.30am & another one at 4pm. The am raid no doubt messed up the Jap Rescript reading & the crowd that attended the Sports ground to hear it.
Tiffin with Mrs Brown & she gave me a rice bowl. ((MW Brown?))
Lorry very late with veg 7pm. No wood or paper.
Temp 50’.
Suk yin issued. 1 box matches.
Went to Mr Dann's funeral during which there was an air raid alarm. ((As soon as the funeral was over, we mourners flew from the cemetry to Block 10 - the nearest building; we were pursued by a Formosan or Jap soldier, who objected because we had been out during a raid. He caught us up outside Block 10, and hit Father Donald Hessler across the back with the wooden end of his rifle, and slapped his face. I was next to Father, and expected to get it too, and trembled for my glasses, but he just glared at me.))
After the raid was over, went to the end of Annie Van Der Lely's engagement party to R. N. Rennie (Police) in Dutch Block.
Dr. Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and former Hong Kong Daily Press journalist Neil Esmond Hunter are released from prison in an amnesty to celebrate the start of the Pacific War.
Selwyn-Clarke is sent to Ma Tau-wai Camp to join his wife Hilda and his daughter Mary who had already been sent there from Stanley.
Sources:
Russell S. Clark, An End to Tears, 1946, 146
Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 93