On the 29th December 1941, we received orders to prepare on the morrow to march to a prisoner of war camp, which was situated in the old Chinese internment camp at North Point.
A word about this North Point Camp. In 1939 and 1940 when the Japanese first swarmed through South China, many hundreds of thousands of refugees came across the border into British territory. The police were helpless in trying to keep them at bay and these penniless refugees were dying in the streets through hunger and malnutrition, many hundreds a day. The Government did all they could to help, one scheme being to erect refugee camps in two or three places on British territory. These consisted of wooden huts and each camp was issued with a small amount of food. When the Japanese attacked, North Point Refugee Camp, being situated right on the waterfront, received a very heavy pounding by shellfire and hardly a building escaped damage. After the capture of this area, the camp was used for the stabling of Japanese horses and mules for about a fortnight. The state of the camp can be well imagined, and it was into this that 1,500 prisoners of war were herded, the original accommodation being for 300.