Overcast.
No work today but rations OK.
Coffee & pancake with Steve.
Lorry with wood 3pm.
Task force W of Luzon. ((Allied forces would start landing on Luzon, the largest island in the Phillipines, tomorrow morning, starting the Battle of Luzon.)) Turkey severed dip. rels. with Japan 3rd. Kyushu raided 6th. Some guff re Soviet trouble with US & British re Poland.
Salt in town 7d per oz. (10Y per catty)
To St.Agnes (older girls) meeting in morning, very few there.
Then confabbed with Pat Cullinan re Merchant of Venice play outside Leprosarium (Pat's billet).
Very lean meals.
Matriculation exams on. ((organised by teachers in camp for students of right age)).
News of landing of task force in West Luzon; rumours of repatriation; of men being sent to Formosa, and of bread supply at weekend.
Mr. de Martin's lecture on Words in our room very good. I was in bed for it. ((Thus made more room for others attending.))
Hong Kong University holds the second of two sets of Matriculation Examinations.
Among those who pass is health inspector Leslie Macey, who wasn't in Stanley when the first exams were held on May 5, 1943. Mr. Macey was one of the health workers who stayed uninterned to help Selwyn-Clarke carry out public health measures in town. Selwyn-Clarke and a number of others were arrested on suspicion of spying on May 2, 1943, and on May 5 those left from this group were waiting to be transferred to Stanley (see May 7, 1943).
According to University historian Peter Cunich, one of today's exams is held during an air raid.
A passage in today's talk by G. P. de Martin on 'Words' gives us another glimpse of intellectual life in the Camp:
I have been reading some Niet(z)sche lately and in one of his pungent passages he writes 'Insanity among individuals is rare but with parties and nations it is the rule.'
Sources:
Matriculation: Peter Cunich, A History of the University of Hong Kong, Volume 1, 2012, 409, 540.
Macey: http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/?s=macey
Talk: G. P. de Martin, Told in the Dark, undated but perhaps 1946, 35-36
Note:
For today's lecture see Barbara Anslow's diary entry.