ALFS VALUE SIX HUNDRED IN NAVE SOLE ORIENTEM NOCTE TRES OR QUATRE STOP FURTHER VALUE ONE THOUSAND BEING ARANGED FOR MONTH END STOP
Dr. Selwyn-Clarke sends a coded, multi-language telegram to try to alert the Allied authorities to the transfer of POWs to Japan by ship.
Translation:
600 POWs will be sent to the East in ships on the night of the third or fourth. Arrangements are being made to send 1000 more at the end of the month.
In his autobiography Selwyn-Clarke wrote:
Once before, when passing a message through Macao in order to get the International Red Cross to press for representation in Hong Kong, I had made use of secret communications. I now made a second, and my last attempt, to use the same route, and it was tragically unsuccessful.
The message doesn't get throuigh. The ship leaving at the end of the month is the Lisbon Maru.
Sources:
Telegram: The Ride Papers (kindly supplied by Elizabeth Ride)
Autobiography: Footprints, 1975, 81
Note: see entry for October 1.