8 Mar 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Submitted by brian edgar on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 23:15

Captain A. H. Potts and his companions, who are living in St. Stephen's Preparatory School are ordered to move to the Indian Quarters to make way for the Consular staff of the USA, Holland and Belgium:

We did not enjoy the prospect of joining a community numbering over 500 in those cramped quarters.

Captain Potts was in Stanley because he'd lost his uniform - he explained this to the Japanese, who nevertheless treated him as a civilian.

 

Daisy Sage, a 36 year old biologist with the Hong Kong Education Department, begins work on the embroidered sheet that is now usually known as the Day Joyce Sheet, a coded record of life in Stanley Camp.

 

Jan Marsman flies from Kweilin (Gweilin) to Chungking (Chongqing). He has a 'very long interview' with  the 'military intelligence authorities' and later claims that his account of wartime atroctities was to be the basis for that in Anthony Eden's speech to the House of Commons.

Sources:

Potts: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 181; 165

Sage: Bernice Archer, The Internment of Western Civilians Under the Japanese, 2004, 15

Marsman: Jan Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 246

Note: For Eden's speech, see March 10. In fact a draft had been made on March 5.

Date(s) of events described