John Norman RAYMOND [1895-????]

Shipping executive for American Trading Company, the American firm that owned the freighter Admiral Y.S. Williams, which was captured in drydock along with its all-American crew in December 1941 in Hong Kong.  A U.S. citizen who lived in California, Raymond was in Hong Kong to supervise repairs of his ship when the Japanese invaded the colony.  Raymond supervised gasoline supplies for volunteer truck drivers during the siege of Hong Kong.  He was interned at Stanley and repatriated in 1942.  Fellow repatriate and journalist Gwen Dew, author of the memoir Prisoner of the Japs, described him as "one of America's two bullfighters" without providing any explanation of what she meant by this!