Vaughn Meisling, former Associated Press Correspondent in Hong Kong, and Stanley repatriate, has an article in the Billings Gazette (page 2) today. It’s about the bad treatment meted out to the American bankers.
Meisling lists the bankers, and describes their squalid home (the Sun Wah Hotel) – ‘a fire trap well-stocked with vermin’. He says that the30 or so women and children weren’t allowed out of the hotel until late May, when they received a pass that allowed them an hour’s walk morning and afternoon. Many of them needed treatment for dysentery, malnutrition and insect bites.
The bankers were paid $100 (US) from late February on and had to buy their own ‘meagre supplies’. They were marched a mile and a half to their work every day.
They were often slapped and humiliated by their captors, the worst of whom they called ‘Slaphappy Joe’ because he was never happy except when hitting someone. At afternoon roll call he would box their ears until they learnt to answer in Japanese.
There were also a few slappings inside the National City Bank, as the Gendarmes had taken over the ground floor and resented the Americans on the floor above looking down on them.
The bankers often felt they were being sniped at as bullets hit or entered the hotel.