We hear that the Americans commenced their invasion of the Philippines on Oct 17th!! Of course the Japanese, as usual, are claiming to have inflicted enormous losses and say they will soon wipe them off their beachheads, but I have heard all that before. They sailed into Leyte Bay on 17th Oct, so my premonition that something important would happen on that day has proved correct. I had hoped it might be the capitulation of Germany, but that has not proved to be the case.
The invasion of the Philippines is intensely exciting to us, for most of us felt it would be the pre-requisite for the invasion of HK. I think it will take the Americans from 3-6 months to occupy the Philippines and consolidate their positions and bases, after which they will be able to launch their attack on the China coast. May they choose Hong Kong!! So we are expecting Americans during Dec or Jan! However, I find we are notoriously over-optimistic. I am more conservative and I now predict that we will be out of here by 23rd April. That may even allow for the fact that the Americans may not choose HK as their initial point of attack. Our dates are usually quite wrong (in the early days we were convinced we should not be here for more than 6 months!) but it helps enormously if you can fix some date in your mind; it gives you something to work to with regard to provisions and it helps to make imprisonment here seem not quite so endless.
We hear that a tremendous amount of damage was done during the air raid of Oct. 16th. Report has it (via the ration lorry) that on the Kowloon side the area from Jordan Road (vehicular ferry) to the end of the peninsula was completely flattened with the exception of the Peninsula Hotel. I hear also that 5,000 unfortunate Chinese were amongst the casualties. We hear that in that area there were a large number of Japanese soldiers and personnel; Whitfield Barracks is situated there, for instance, and some huge new blocks of coolie quarters which had been erected by, I think, the HK and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Co just before the blitz and which would make admirable temporary barracks; so it was probably these large Jap army units that the raid was directed against. The paper admitted nothing but claimed (as usual) to have shot down half a dozen of the raiders. However, it is evident, I fear, from newspaper reports of official visits by the present Japanese Governor to casualty centres and relief funds that have been inaugurated in an official way that civilian casualties as well as army casualties have been high.
Some time ago there was another night raid (a small one) and a couple of planes flew low over our camp in an Easterly direction and disappeared over Shek O Peninsula (we were able to spot them as black shapes as they blocked out the brilliant array of stars as they flew by). Presently there was a vivid flash that lit the sky behind the peninsula and after quite an interval there was the crash of an explosion that rattled all our doors and windows. This seems to strengthen our theory that these planes are sowing mines and in this instance, one of the mines blew up by accident – either there was something faulty in its release, or it struck a rock or small island or junk or something in one of the narrow channels they were attempting to block by a mine bed. Also, we have occasionally seen a couple of small vessels steaming along, side by side, as if they were mine-sweeping.
We wished Father “Many happy returns of the day” last Saturday. I do wish we could see them. This internment is such a dreadful waste of time – Yvonne has not yet met a single one of my family and Mother and Father are not growing younger all this time. Well, perhaps our great reunion will not be deferred for much longer.