Noel BRAGA [1903-1979]

Noel Braga 1903-1979

by Maurice Braga, June 2022

Noel was born on 6th December 1903 in Macau but lived most of his life in Hong Kong, the sixth of nine brothers and four sisters, the children of José Pedro Braga and Olive Pauline Braga. José Pedro was a prominent member of the Portuguese community and from 1929 until 1937 of the Legislative Council (Hong Kong’s Parliament), and was a director of the China Light & Power Company, an electricity undertaking in Hong Kong. The family enjoyed a colonial lifestyle. Originally Roman Catholic, the family became deeply divided when Olive converted in 1906 and became a member of the Christian Brethren, with most of the children following her. In his book Making Impressions, about the Braga Family ancestry, my cousin Stuart writes, “From about 1907 [the family] lived a double religious life, going to Mass on Sunday morning at the nearby Catholic Cathedral, and in the evening to the Gospel Meeting of the Brethren at the Gospel Hall, a little further away on Pedder Street …. At the Gospel Hall, the Braga family formed a substantial part of the congregation, which varied between twenty and thirty, often augmented by uniformed sailors from the ships of the Royal Navy’s China Station and soldiers from the garrison.”

Educated at St Joseph’s College with his brothers Noel was an outstanding student, coming first in his class and awarded the prestigious Belilios Scholarship in his final year. He went on to the Hong Kong Technical Institute where he earned distinctions in each of the four years.

However, before he could go on to University his father took him into the family printing business and later he was employed by the China Light & Power Company, an electricity undertaking, becoming the Company Secretary at the age of 22, a position he held until after the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during the second World War. The following testimonial from China Light and Power Company was signed by the Chairman, Lawrence Kadoorie, later Lord Kadoorie of Kowloon and the City of Westminster.

In the 1920s the ship in which Ernie was serving began to visit Hong Kong and during shore leave he would attend the Gospel Hall where he met the Braga family. They would enjoy social outings together and so Ernie came to know the family well.

Noel became Company Secretary of the China Light & Power Company and had a promising career ahead, but in the 1920s Hong Kong was hit by industrial action and a General Strike in 1925 which crippled its economy. Several passenger ships were stranded in Hong Kong when their crews deserted to join the Strike. In his book Stuart writes that this gave four of the boys, namely, Hugh, James, Clement and Noel “the opportunity to travel to Vancouver” working as stewards. In July 1925 Noel and his eldest sister Jean did so on the Canadian Pacific liner RMS Empress of Canada, Jean working as a waitress and Noel in the purser’s office.

Noel repeated the voyage on the same ship in May 1930 but this time taking his mother and they reached Vancouver at the end of May. They visited and stayed with Christian friends before going on to Calgary and from there to Chicago where they met and stayed with his brother James at the Moody Bible Institute. James had enrolled there the previous year to train as a minister. Noel left his mother there and on 1st August went on to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec from where, on 12th August, he embarked on the Empress of Australia for England. Arriving in Southampton he went to Bournemouth. What happened next is explained in a long letter to his mother dated 1st September from Plymouth.

He explained that he arranged to meet “Morris of the submarines” in Plymouth and had already booked a coach for the journey when he received a telegram saying that Ernie had to go to London. So Noel changed his coach ticket for one to London and on arrival wrote to Ernie asking him to phone him. Ernie did so and invited Noel to his home at 48 Sugden Road, Clapham Common, to meet the family.

Neither of them could have known that on Christmas Day Hong Kong would surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army. That day, the family gathered in Paul Braga’s house on Braga Circuit, Kowloon, for what would be their last meal together. Close by was a Japanese battery firing across the harbour on British positions, still holding out on Hong Kong island.

Paul wrote in a letter to his brother James, on 22 October 1943,

Nor did we leave our seats during the return shelling from British forts in Hongkong which brought direct hits on some of the Jap guns. (Most of these shells missed their targets, one hit Hughie’s house and wrecked it completely). It was the happiest and yet the gloomiest tiffin we ever had. During the fire and cross-fire we all sat still, but you could never imagine more laughter and talk from a ‘Xmas party when the guns were silent.

As darkness fell on that strangest of Christmas Days, the sound of gunfire on Hong Kong Island ceased and there was silence. “We knew what that meant”, said Marjory fifty years later. “Hong Kong had surrendered”. The defeat in Hong Kong was bitter. A white flag was raised over Government House on Christmas Day 1941 as the victorious Japanese took over in triumph. This was the only occasion on which a British civilian governor ever surrendered to one of His Majesty’s enemies. All military personnel and all members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force became prisoners of war and endured harsh conditions until the end of the war in August 1945. They included Marjorie’s brother, Ernest Morris, a crew member of HMS Thracian, a destroyer damaged and beached at Hong Kong during the fighting. Ernest lost his left arm in the fighting. British and American civilians were rounded up and interned. More than 2,500 people were crowded into the premises of a boys’ boarding school designed to accommodate 500.

Using Noel’s knowledge of Japanese which he picked up in Japan in 1933, the Braga family were able to avoid internment, and were immediately able to claim Portuguese citizenship. A few weeks later, Marjory and her two small children, Maurice and Janyce, were able to leave Hong Kong for the neutral Portuguese colony of Macau.

Upon their move to Macau they were able to take their piano and, concealed in it, the share registers and other vital records of the China Light & Power Company which Noel had saved from falling into the hands of the Japanese, realising that these documents would be crucial to the regeneration of the Company after the War. Had the documents been discovered during their journey Noel would certainly have been shot by the Japanese.

How Hong Kong and the Braga family fared during the War is the subject of Chapter 12 of Stuart`s book Making Impressions. This is on-line at http://hdl.handle.net/1885/10180. It is word-searchable.

When the War ended Noel and Marjory and their family were repatriated to England and settled in Eastbourne with Marjory`s mother and where Maurice and Janyce were educated. They joined the local Plymouth Brethren community where Noel became a leading Elder. He obtained employment with Louis G Ford Ltd, a firm of wholesale hardware merchants, as its Assistant Company Secretary, the founder and Chairman, Louis Ford, being also a member of the Plymouth Brethren.

In 1952 Noel accepted an invitation to join an American organisation, Christian Children's Fund Inc. as its Director in South Korea at the end of the Korean War. Marjory went with him to Seoul and Noel established and organised several centres in that country for the relief of children orphaned by the War.

In 1958 Noel left the organisation to become Secretary of the St John Ambulance Brigade in Hong Kong, a position he held until 1961 when he and Marjory returned to England and settled in London where he tried to fulfil his lifelong ambition to become a lawyer. He joined the Middle Temple as a Bar student and passed his intermediate examinations with distinction but unfortunately a serious illness prevented him from qualifying. However he was able to see his son Maurice qualify in 1959 as a solicitor.

He took an active role in the welfare of his fellow students and retained a keen interest in the law until his death in 1979 following several years of declining health.

Marjory had travelled to Hong Kong in 1934 on a British passport. No doubt this was destroyed soon after the fall of Hong Kong. Had it been discovered by the Japanese, that would have meant being sent at once to Stanley Camp, already desperately overcrowded. Other members of the Braga family would have done the same. The exception was J.P. Braga, who kept his British passport, possibly hoping for a rapid Allied victory.

Francisco Soares was the Acting Portuguese Consul in Hong Kong. He grasped the situation firmly and realised that the broadest possible definition would have to be given to Nossa Gente [Our People]. In practical terms, this meant the granting of Portuguese citizenship to hundreds of people who had hitherto claimed to be British. This would enable them to obtain Third National [i.e. neutral countries] passes from the Japanese authorities. This later created much criticism, it being said that he granted papers to people whose only claim to have anything Portuguese in them lay in that they had eaten Portuguese sardines, but they now clamoured for Portuguese Identity Cards. Many people of Portuguese descent who had previously been at pains to conceal their origin, now openly wore arm-bands bearing the Portuguese colours. All of them sought refuge in Macau.

Without doubt this action saved many lives, Soares issued some 600 certificates of Portuguese nationality. The grateful recipients included seventeen members of the Braga family. The Portuguese identity card was of great importance. Without it, there were two options: either internment as enemy aliens or else starvation. At the end of the war, all the Hong Kong Macanese returned to Hong Kong, resuming their British citizenship. Their Portuguese papers would have been discarded. However, Marjory kept hers. In the dark days of 1942 it had saved her life.

In 1953 Marjory joined Noel with the Christian Children’s Fund in South Korea helping to rehabilitate children orphaned during the Korean War, and later with the St John Ambulance Brigade in Hong Kong, where they resumed the open house for servicemen and missionaries, hospitality they had begun in their early marriage before the War. Marjory also threw herself into the work of helping the founders of Peace Clinic, a Christian medical mission in Hong Kong. In 1960, while Noel was working with the St John Ambulance Brigade, she was employed by Shewan Tomes Ltd as a Manager’s secretary until Noel retired in 1961.

They then returned to the UK and settled in Hanwell, West London, joining the Dean Hall Assembly of Christian Brethren. When Noel’s health began to fail Janyce gave up her job as a schoolteacher in Hong Kong and came to live with her parents.

Noel died in 1979 after many years’ devoted service as an elder of the Assembly and Marjory continued to devote her energies to the work amongst the women, taking over the leadership of the Women’s Meeting in 1980. She was a fine speaker and was in popular demand at Ladies’ Meetings attached to churches of different denominations throughout the area. She took a keen interest in the activities of the family, including her many nephews and nieces worldwide. She enjoyed swimming, was a keen gardener and was fond of music, influenced in this by her mother-in-law who had been a professional musician. Janyce and Marjory looked after each other until Marjory’s death in 2005. Her family adored her and thank God for a life dedicated to her Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

And so Marjory and Noel’s marriage of 45 years had held together despite the most trying ordeals of hardship and physical separation, due to their unflinching devotion and faithfulness to each other and to their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Maurice Braga, June 2022