Phyllis HARROP [????-????]

Submitted by brian edgar on Wed, 12/04/2013 - 19:47

Names

Given

Phyllis

Family

Harrop

Sex

Female

Status

Deceased

Phyllis Harrop came to Hong Kong from Shanghai in 1937. In January 1938 she ws appointed an Assistant Secretary to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs; her task was to protect Chinese women in the wake of the Government's attempts to end the system of 'mui tsai' (sometimes called domestic slavery).

During the war she was attached to the Nationalist Chinese police and after the surrender lived in the Prince's Building with other Government employees who were not immediately interned in Stanley, while establishing German nationality on the basis of a marriage that had ended in divorce. Using this, she made an escape, beginning on January 28, 1942, which took her to Chungking by way of Macao. She carried some of the first news of wartime atrocities to the outside world and in 1943 published a book about her experiences.

Sources:

Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 40-42; 133-140

Photos that show this Person

1939

Comments

I Was There! ..... Eye Witness Stories of the War

I Saw Terrible Things Happen in Hongkong

Among the few people who escaped from Hongkong following its capture by the Japanese was Miss Phyllis Harrop, an Assistant in the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs, and well known for her work against the dope and vice gangs in the Colony. Here is what she said in interviews given in Chungking.

Three things aided my escape from the Colony at the end of January (Miss Harrop told a Special Correspondent of the Daily Mail in Chungking on March 13):

(1) Previous experience - I had escaped from the Japanese in various parts of China three times before:

(2) I have many Chinese friends and

(3) I have extensive knowledge of the Cantonese dialect.

My Chinese friends were only too willing to help. With their help I was able to penetrate the Japanese Army and Navy cordon surrounding Hong Kong and escape to the mainland.

For six weeks I wandered alone through large areas of South China, daily evading Jap sentries, and always in fear of my life. In the end - though I cannot tell you how - I contacted guerillas and marched through South Kwangtung, sharing the life of these Chinese soldiers who brought me through to safety at Kwelin. From there I flew to Chungking today.

When I got away the Colony was still in a state of chaos. Japanese gendarmerie were supposed to be in control, but looting was rampant. In the streets no woman was safe from Japanese soldiers, no matter what her colour or race.

All foreign civilians have been interned under appalling conditions - men, women and children alike. British, American, and Dutch, including children, are interned on the Stanley Peninsula of the island itself. Prisoners of war have been imprisoned in Samshuipo (sic) and a camp in Argyle Street, Kowloon. So far as I know, the civilian prisoners are made up as follows: British, 3,000; American, 600; Dutch, 70.

Their rations consist of two bowls of rice daily. No foreign food is available, because the Japs collected all foreign food stocks in the island and shipped them to Japan. Dysentery is rife among these civilians. Many have died for lack of medical attention. The Japs let them die. Those who are left bury their dead where they can in corners of the camps. Medical supplies are non-existent. All are seized by the Japanese as soon as they arrived and were wantonly destroyed. The Japanese simply said, contemptuously: "We have our own remedies; we don't want foreign medicines."

Industry on the island have come to a complete standstill. Unemployment among the Chinese population is on a wholesale scale. There is a tremendous shortage of food and the sufferings of the crowded Chinese population are beyond description. This is a situation created by the Japanese themselves. They are trying to ease things now by evacuating as many Chinese and neutral foreigners - mostly Portuguese -as they can. For the rest, they continue their policy of stripping the island bare. Iron railings and metal of every description have been collected for shipment to Japan. Even the ornamental bronze lions at the entrance to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank have been taken away.

The atrocities are not exaggerated. Some I saw with my own eyes - in my own house. My Chinese houseboy was bayoneted in the stomach and killed for no apparent reason. Thirteen other Chinese were murdered in the same house. My amah woman servant was raped by three or four Japanese and was in a serious condition when I last heard of her. Foreign women who were raped included an Englishwoman of my acquaintance who was first slashed in the face with a soldier's belt. Her husband afterwards found her body with bayonet wounds in the stomach. The Japanese shot none of their victims; they bayoneted them all to death.

More details of these atrocious happenings were given by Miss Harrop to the Chungking correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.

Most of the raping of the British and other European women concerned volunteer and professional nurses. None was killed. In one district, apart from many Chinese cases, seven European women were killed with bayonets after being raped.

A British merchant whose wife was my friend told me himself: "I was a wounded A. F. S. volunteer. I was taken to hospital, where my wife was a volunteer nurse. I heard her voice next door on Christmas Day at 3 p.m., the hour when the Colony surrendered. Shooting, Japanese came into the hospital, I heard shouts. After a while, I managed to get out to search for my wife. I found her dead - outraged, her face slashed, and bayoneted wounds in her stomach. Others were also raped and killed. I hid under a bed, pressing against the wall beside my wife's body, trying to escape the Japanese, who stormed all over the place. Coming into the room, the Japanese, without looking under the beds, systematically bayoneted through all the mattresses, again stabbing my wife's body and almost killing me. I, myself, buried my wife near-by."

There were many other similar cases among the foreign community, especially among the Chinese. In my own block of flats, where I was the only foreigner among 40 Chinese, practically all the women were raped and the men bayoneted.

(How did I escape myself? I don't know. I suppose it was my lucky star.)

While the atrocities against foreigners ceased with their internment, those against the Chinese went on. I, myself saw on the waterfront at the end of January a long queue of Chinese standing waiting, when the Japanese, without reason beat up at least a dozen men and women with bamboo poles and threw them into the harbour to drown. I walked along the harbour past the bodies of Chinese who had been killed. A Chinese woman was stopped on the corner of Wyndham Street and stripped by Japanese soldiers. They cursed her and made her stand naked in the middle of the road. She was still standing there when I passed by an hour later.

The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Gimson, who arrived in Hongkong only the day before the outbreak of war, protested in a letter to the Japanese against the atrocities after the surrender. The next day he was arrested and gaoled in Central Prison, where he was kept two days without any charge or even questioning. He was then released and is now interned in the Stanley Camp, where he is the acting head of the British community. The Governor, Sir Mark Young, is completely isolated, apparently in the Peninsular (sic) Hotel in Kowloon, where he went on Christmas Day to surrender. The Medial Director, Doctor Selwyn-Clark, his wife and others received special orders from the Colonial Secretary and are acting as liaison officers, with the Japanese, doing urgent work in the Colony.

The Japanese took off the golden Royal Crown badges from the caps and sleeves of all Hongkong's constables, who continued policing the streets before their internment. Invariably, the Japanese trampled on the badges. I met a constable I knew walking about the centre of the city wearing his badges. I asked him, "How did you keep the crowns ? " He pulled out of his pocket a handful of the badges, saying "As fast as they are pulled off, I put on fresh ones."

This is characteristic of Hongkong's spirit.

(2024 Update - The article is from "The War Illustrated", Vol. 5, No. 126 issued on 17 April 1942. Magazine published fortnightly, edited by Sir John Hammerton. Interview probably conducted in March 1942.)

German nationality on the basis of a marriage?

Did this claim of German nationality on the basis of marriage come from Harrop's book? Unless she was married twice previously, could this have been a ruse to avoid incarceration? According to the Historical Photographs of China website at the University of Bristol:

John Montgomery married Phyllis Harrop in 1929. The couple later divorced. Montgomery resigned from the police force on 22 May 1938 and returned to England. Phyllis Harrop remained in China, later moving to Hong Kong where she worked as a social worker, and in 1943, having escaped from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, published the book Hong Kong Incident.

By the way, I queried ChatGPT for Harrop's biographical details with the following result:

Names
Given: Phyllis Muriel
Family: Harrop

Sex: Female
Status: Deceased

Born
Date: 20 November 1906
Birthplace (town, state): Rochdale, Lancashire
Birthplace (country): England

Died
Date: 8 February 1992
Place of death (town, state): Victoria, British Columbia
Place of death (country): Canada

ChatGPT would not provide me with the exact source(s) for this information.

Harrop's escape

Thanks to Moddsey and yvr-foodie for some interesting information.

Harrop tell us that her first idea was to change nationality by presenting her British passport which was endorsed 'Naturalised' - the Japanese did not accept naturalisation as valid (Hong Kong Incident, p. 124). This was because, although 'English by birth and descent' she was married to a foreigner, we soon learn to a German, and presumably took by choice or law her husband's nationality and then reverted to British after their divorce. Eventually she decided to present her divorce papers, which were in German and stamped with eagles, as evidence of German nationality - luckily the official didn't turn over the papers because that would have revealed the stamp of the British consul in Berlin! (p 129).

Further to Phyllis Harrop

"In 1934, Miss Harrop met and married in the East a German baron - a man whom she subsequently learnt to know 'as a man of a thousand moods, a typical Prussian, brutal, domineering, a sadist.' After two long spells in hospital as a result of his cruelty, a divorce was obtained, and Miss Harrop regained her English nationality, and was free to travel and to eventually become associated with the life of Hong Kong ......"

Source: Article - "Diary of the Hong Kong Incident" in The Age (newspaper) 4 December 1943

Phyllis Harrop, SOE Agent?

Thank you for the additional details! I haven't yet come across any source that definitively states it, but from Harrop's movements in East Asia (Shanghai, Manchuria, Japan, Hong Kong) and some of the people she associates with, it would seem she is employed in the intelligence services.

It looks like I'll have to track down Harrop's book, "Hong Kong Incident". There does not seem to be a copy in my university's library, nor the city library, unforunately. I believe Tim Luard's book, "Escape from Hong Kong", also mentions her in connection with her activities before her escape to Free China. Tim's book appears to be out of print, however.