Showery, E wind, a little cooler.
Posted A/m to mother.
Franks took photograph as I hoisted colours this am.
G to town. Not going E of A.
Duty 3-6pm. All pris’s dis.
G to Concert.
Apple & orange, ¼ lb butter, 3 tins milk, ½ tin tongue, 1 tin jam. 8oz bread issued.
Saw Daisy for 5 mins. 12 years ago.
Name on list for E of A.
Arranged roof but fell asleep, rained so turned in.
Went to Stanley on lorry. Olive came for a quick visit. I stayed overnight. Camp seemed very changed. Empty hooch bottles stacked up in yard. Many people have changed billets ((due to vacances caused by internees going into town to work)). There were even some camp additions.
Mum & Mabel had issues of bread, 3 tins milk, tin lambs' tongues, fresh butter, oats etc. - wallowing in food.
Mrs Large (Clifton's mother) gave me a dress - nice of her.
Mum, Mabel & I went to P.O. Club where men of 'Kempenfelt' ((HMS Kempenfelt, one of the ships that came in with the Fleet)) gave a cinema show - 'Shine on Harvest Moon' - our first films since December 1941 (apart from a short Jap propaganda one in 1942). ((The show was held in the Central Recreation Club, also called the Prisoner Officers' Club, in Stanley.))
Slept on Olive's camp bed.
Russell Clark writes:
By September 6 things {in town} were settling down... {back on the Prince Robert} They were hotly debating the Stanley internees.
It seems that the internees have made a bad impression on some of those who came in with Harcourt's fleet:
'(I)t strikes me they're squandering too much of their own sympathy on themselves.'..
'Some of those bloody internees...are screaming their spoiled heads off - when are they going home; why isn't the Red Cross doing more for them; surely the food could be better; when are they going to be allowed to leave Stanley; how they've suffered; how they're still suffering. Frankly I think a lot of them need a good kick on the stern.'
Another correspondent, Reg Harris, tells Australian readers of the quick action of Dr. Newton, who heard that the Japanese were destroying and looting medical equipment and data from Kowloon Hospital. He alerted three officers, who gathered together a squad of ten Indian soldiers who were still in a Japanese internment camp, and took them straight to the Hospital. They found the operating theatre in appalling condition - 'dry blood staining the floor, which was quarter of an inch thick in dirt and slime'. Fourteen armed Japanese were eventually forced to leave with only their personal belongings.
Sources:
Russell S. Clark, An End To Tears, 1946, 76-78
The (Melbourne) Argus, September 6, 1945, page 3