Philp Cracknell writes:
This article appeared in The Courier-Mail Brisbane 21/9/45:
“baby Marged Ann Thomas, who was born on the hospital ship Oxfordshire, which arrived yesterday, became an 'Englishwoman.' .Because the baby daughter of Mrs. Jean Thomas, just released from Hong Kong, was born on the high seas on a British ship, she was 'registered in London.' 'She's a 'pommy' and that's 'the end of it,' the ship's Royal Navy crew told the baby's mother. But Mrs. Thomas insists that Marged (Welsh for Margaret) is 'half Welsh and half American.' Mrs. Thomas is an American citizen, born at Canton, and her husband is Welsh. Baby Thomas, who was born between Manila and Manus Island, seven days after the ship left Hong Kong, is being kept to a dressing table drawer, with a pillow as a bed, at night. Surgeon Captain H. U. Willoughby and sick bay attendant P. Pettit made a basinette out of a deck chair. A small operating theatre is being used as the baby's nursery. By 10 days, baby Thomas missed seeing Stanley camp, where her mother and father, Dr. Alun Lloyd Thomas, of the London Mission Hospital, Nethersole (HongKong), had been interned since October, 1942. Dr. and Mrs. Thomas had married at Canton in November, 1941, and in almost four years' married life had spent only a few weeks together outside internment”.