Engineers, Customs, harbour, docks men went to C.S.O. and asked how long been in firm before war and how long in HK.
B.M. Wongtong ￥280, matches ￥20 box
E Read (SS) arrested – sugar (what sold, customers asked to return). Toihan ((sp.? Looks like Toihan but maybe Tollan?)), Bendall, Trevor Edwards also. Read slept in C.S.O
Humid, showery SW wind.
Finished off Lep. window.
Col. came in.
Engineers etc. checked up by Japs. Much conjecture re reason.
Flower vase from ½ “ U.S.A.F. cartridge to G.
Outside roll-call due to Reid being absent. (Some trouble re sugar stolen from go-down) ∴
St Catherine's meeting in a.m.
Bridge at noon.
Eileen Grant still very sick.
Bought 1 lb wong tong between us (Redwoods).
Pacifist meeting.
Just after 8 this evening, all sorts of whistles went, meaning an outside roll call. Edward Reed (a youth) had escaped while under arrest at Jap HQ for selling white Military (Jap) sugar; the roll call was supposed to be to find him. We were there till about 9.15 - quite dark, fishing lights out in bay.
Edward Reed escapes from arrest - he's accused of stealing 300 lbs of sugar from the godown ration store to sell on the black market - and creates a furore in camp that lasts until tomorrow.
While he's being beaten by Formosan guards - his screams can be heard throughout the camp - it begins to rain, the guards go inside and Reed siezes his chance and runs off in the direction of Bungalow C. Leon Blumenthal finds him hiding nearby and tells him to give himself up; while he goes to alert the guards, Reed runs again. The entire camp has to parade for an emergency roll call which lasts for 90 minutes. Reed is eventually found in No 10 Block, sheltering with his mother and younger brother.
Reed is taken to Japanese headquarters ('up the hill'), brutally questioned about the sugar, but manages to escape again at about midnight. The camp is searched again but it's several hours before Reed is found 'crouching in a garden close to the prison walls'. He's questioned again, this time by the Gendarmes in Stanley Village. He survives and ends up in hospital. The full truth about the sugar theft, which almost certainly involved some of the guards, is never known. Wright-Nooth sums up:
Reed was a young man of astonishing physical stamina.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 235
Note:
Reed or Manwaring - see http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/topics/1318))