Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp: View pages

Birth of Elizabeth Mary Fyffe.

Almost from the start the bankers at the Sun Wah Hotel have been raising money to provide relief for Stanley and Shamshuipo and for Allied nationals still in Hong Kong. At first they've been getting Indian and Chinese customers to agree to divert some of their funds for this purpose, but they realise that, although quite large sums are involved, still more is needed. Today HKSBC chief Sir Vandeleur Grayburn gets a message to the British Embassy at  Chungking through a British Army Aid Group agent asking for the honouring of financial instruments (Rupee and Sterling drafts on paper dated 23/12/41) that they're selling secretly to raise the extra funds. After a period of confusion - the authorities in London are aware that the bankers are now working under 'duress' and not all their financial transactions should be accepted - the Rupee and Sterling drafts are honoured.

Sources:

Birth: China Mail, September 15, 1945, page 3

Bankers: Frank King, History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Volume 3, 613-614

Death of  Mary Williamson, aged 75 (also given as 74). Mrs. Williamson's grandson, Douglas Harvey Collins-Taylor, was killed in action at Stanley Village while fighting with the HKVDC on December 25, 1941. They are memorialised on the same post-war grave stone in the Military Cemetery.

Even before they’ve arrived back home, the Americans are bringing news of events in Hong Kong to the outside world.

An article with today’s date by Vaughn Meisling (from Lourenco Marques where the Americans changed ships)  provides perhaps the first account ever published of the genesis of a scheme to provide every internee with a 'seventy five dollar parcel'.

 Meisling tells his readers that, due to the scarcity of medicines, food and clothing, the Red Cross representative (Arthur M.) Fifer, a Stanley internee, and some Americans outside camp devised a plan to get a loan to enable the internees to buy supplies. An informal committee of Americans, British and Japanese was set up to implement the plan, and, once the loan was secured, the purchasing was done entirely by Americans. The items were brought from Hong Kong stores and brought into camp on trucks by Dr. Selwyn-Clarke and members of his staff. Items provided included shoes, socks, medicines, dried fruits and many other kinds of foodstuff.

Sources:

Death: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271

Panama City New Herald, August 2, 1942, page 10

Notes:

1) For the arrival of the ’75 dollar parcels’ in Stanley see, for example, http://gwulo.com/node/10378 and http://gwulo.com/node/10367

The Americans got theirs before the June 29/30 repatriation, while most of the British had to wait until August.

 2) From the MacNider Papers it seems that the main  purchaser was F. C. Barry (pre- and post-war Rice Controller).  Chester Bennett carried out a preliminary survey and some or all of the items were obtained from the Department Store Habade in the French Bank Building. Today's account seems well-sourced and probably establishes that the money from the parcels came from the American Red Cross, not, as some sources claim, the Japanese. American internee Norman Briggs claims that ‘a wealthy Iranian ship owner in Hong Kong by the name of Namazee’ was involved in completing the deal. Emily Hahn knew Nemazee (as she calls him) so might have been one of the uninterned Americans involved in the plan. Other likely candidates are some of the delivery drivers –  https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/thomass-work-6-more-o… and, of course, the bankers.

Update: A document in the Red Cross Archives Geneva establishes that the loan did in fact come from the Japanese!

Birth of Jonathan Goforth Nance to Elizabeth and Ancil Nance, an American missionary couple who chose not to be repatriated:

On August 3, 1942, we welcomed Jonathan Goforth Nance. He was 14 months younger than his brother, Ancil. Jonathan was a happy little boy, named after Rev. Jonathan Goforth, whose story Ancil and I had read on the way across the ocean to China. Dr. Loan used to call our Jonathan the “family ambassador,” because he was so friendly.

Jonathan was born in the “hospital” at Camp Stanley. At that time, if you had an escort, you could leave your building and go down the short road to the hospital building after dark. When I realized the birth was imminent, and I was wise enough this time to know it was probably going to be faster than the last one, I made it down with the approved escort of Chinese employees, to the hospital. We were fortunate because it was a very quick birth.

Jonathan Nance died in a canoeing accident in 1961.

Source:

http://bethnance.com/

Professor Robert Cecil Robertson of the Hong Kong University Medical Department is found dead at the foot of a balcony.

He had not been sent to Stanley in January 1942 but kept in university premises and forced to continue his bacteriological research under Japanese supervision. Although his work benefitted the Chinese population as well as the Japanese, he had become depressed by his situation, and suicide is a possibility.

Robertson had won a Military Cross in WW1. One of his Shanghai paintings was hung in the Royal Academy in 1937.

Sources:

Circumstances of death: Charles G. Roland, Long Night's Journey Into Day, 2001, 194

Cross, painting: obituary in British Medical Journal, October 24, 1942

M. L. Bevan's diary entry:

Bailey and Cole moved to Bungalow E. Mason died.

Cole is presumably A. L. Cole of the Colonial Secretary's Office, and Bailey is probably C. T. Bailey, who served under Bevan (Deputy Director of ARP) as an Air Raid Precautions Training Officer.

Bungalows D, E, F were all in use at first and 'E' was associated with Public Works Department staff; for unknown reasons 'D' and 'E' were closed down and then opened in 1943 for the previously uninterned health workers ('D') and bankers ('E').

Mason was Joseph Mason, who died of heart failure in bed in the Indian Quarters.

Eighteen people are 'guaranteed out' of Stanley. Four are American and most or all of the rest British. The Americans are E. F. Gingle, Dr. Frank Molthen, 'Red' Sammons and Miss Dorrer.

The first death from diphtheria at North Point POW Camp is recorded. The disease struck Shamshuipo in late June, and will now wreak havoc amongst the Canadians. 

Sources:

Bevan Diary: Imperial War Museum 523.1 (Bevan) 58132, Typescript of Diary

Cole and Bailey:

 http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.ht…

Death of Mason: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271

Mason's first name:  https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/messages…

Out: Maryknoll Diary, August 5, 1942

First death: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, Tuesday 4 August 1942  

Note:

Dr. Molthen was one of Hong Kong's first chiropractors, and he's said to have treated General and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. During the hostilities he showed himself adept at scuttling ships.

'Red' Sammons had worked for Gingle as a manager.

Former policeman Jim Shepherd must have been one of the last to receive his 'seventy five dollar parcel'. An invoice with today's date, made up by the Department store Habade, shows that he was soon to receive a package that would include soap (laundry and toilet), brown sugar, size 9 rubber shoes, chocolate, toothpaste, currants, needle and thread, honey and even gruyere cheese.

Source:

Jim Shepherd, Silks, Satins, Gold Braid and Monkey Jackets, 1996, 75

Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi launches the 'Quit India' movement.

Soon after the surrender of Hong Kong, the Japanese began a campaign to try to win over their Indian POWs and of the Colony's Indian communities. They attempted to recruit soldiers to the pro-Japanese Indian National Army and they set up the Indian Independence League to provide civilian support for that Army and for Japanese agitation against British rule. 

At the start of WW11, Ghandi had originally hoped for some kind of a deal with the British, as, although remaining true to his principle of non-violence, he understood the racism and brutality that Britain was fighting. However, disillusioned by the failure of London to come up with what he regarded as an acceptable guarantee as to India's future, today he launches a campaign of civil disobedience against the Raj. 'Quit India' was not supported by many influential forces in India, and soon Ghandi, Pandit Nehru and most of the Congress Party leaders will be in prison, but today's events will continue to resonate in India and the rest of Asia, including Hong Kong, to the end of the war and beyond. The power of the movement will not depend just on Ghandi's personal prestige, immense though this is; he is articulating discontent and defiance that has now come to be widespread in India:

Quite suddenly the feeling of awe for the state, the izzat or 'face' of the British Raj, which more than troops and police had sustained foreign rule, simply vanished, melting away in the warm monsoon rains.

A major factor in this change in attitude was the general success of the Japanese troops so far and in particular the spectacle of the defeated troops and wretched civilian refugees fleeing through north-eastern India after the Burma rout of early 1942.

Source:

Tim Harper and Chritsopher Bayly, Forgotten Armies, 2004, Kindle Edition Location 4875.

Matron Dyson, Kay Christie, Anna May Waters, Daphne Van Wart, Molly Gordon ((not sure if this is the same lady as Amelia Gordon)), Mary Curry, Kathleen Thompson and the other nurses who had been working at Bowen Road Military Hospital and St Teresa's in Kowloon arrive in Stanley.

Sources:

D. C. Bowie, Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong, 1975, 169, 289 (incomplete staff list)

Note:

The Maryknoll Diary gives the figure of about 90 nurses coming into camp today, although other sources give about 60. Nicola Tyrer (Sisters in Arms, 2008, 64-66) states, citing archival evidence, that Van Wart, Thom(p)son and some other nurses came in from St Teresa's in Kowloon. Bowie's incompete staff list has Thompson (sic) and Van Wart working at Bowen Road. And according to Bowie, St. Teresa's will be closed tomorrow - see Chronology. The exact nature of these events is still unclear to me, but I'm confident that on August 10-11 all the female nurses of 'enemy' origin at Bowen Road and St Teresa's were sent into Stanley.

Note:

Nurse Mabel Redwood, had come into Stanley on June 17 because of illness:

http://gwulo.com/node/10257

Death of Col. Walter Roy Dockrill, aged 65. Dockrill was a Canadian who worked his way up in the lumber business. In 1915 he went off to the war:

Col. Dockrill’s return to civilian life was marred by his exclusion from the board of directors of the company,and after a year or two in Vancouver, he sold his remaining control to Captain Crawford and moved to Shanghai.

It's not known how he found himself in Hong Kong.

Chester Bennett, the American Council Chairman, and three Britishers are 'guaranteed out' and leave camp - we know from Eric MacNider's diary that one of the others was Mrs. Owens. Bennett was asked by Franklin Gimson to decline repatriation to continue to help the internees (he's the person who organised the food parcels from Habade) and he soon adds illegal money raising and smuggling into camp to his legitimate activities. Eventually he becomes an agent for the British Army Aid Group, working with Charles Hyde and Marcus da Silva.

R. E. Stott, a land bailiff, puts his carefully prepared escape plan into operation.

He takes advantage of a gardener's shed to get over the rear wall of the French Hospital - 'just as dusk fell when people's eyes had not got used to the dark'.

Although he sprains both heels landing, after a short rest he crawls along the nullah running past the hospital and finds some rope hidden there by friends. He crawls through some barbed wire and loops the rope round a support so that he can reach the bottom of the nullah:

With feet so painful I had to sit and drag myself inch by inch along the slimy slippery bottom towards the typhoon shelter into which the nullah emptied...The tide was low and I had to hobble as best I could to the waiting sampan...

which takes him to a shrimp boat in which he lies until 4 a.m. before setting off. Passing between Shampshuipo and Stonecutters Island, they anchor for the night at a point opposite Castle Peak. The next morning they set off at dawn for Macao.

Enid Foy, wife of the uninterned banker Hugo, gives birth to a daughter. The birth is announced in the (London) Times of August 31. It seems the news reached Britain with surprising speed - I know of no case in which the Red Cross postcards were delivered in under three weeks. Messages went from the French Hospital (where I would guess the birth took place) to John Reeves, the Consul in Macao, and the  British Army Aid Group were in touch with boith the Hospital and the bankers at the Sun Wah - perhaps a message was smuggled through one of these routes.

Kowloon's St Teresa's Hospital is closed to British patients, who are sent to Bowen Road Military Hospital, where they are the last people suffering from war wounds to be admitted.

The Gripsholm arrives in Rio de Janeiro - 'We had twenty-four hours in Rio, and it was all too short'. Although for two men who show up at 4.05, five minutes after it's pulled away from shore, the stop-over comes close to being greatly extended. In the end, to the accompaniment of much mockery, they get onboard via a tug and the pilot boat.

Sources:

Dockrill: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:GEu3-XJjqdcJ:www.tsi.bc.ca/_pdf/Historical.pdf+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjN_s0SnZCfB-1713wFIUUn1D-aXvTUUe4EOSF9pYT2PnNYOe_oOtJwXKrI1OfTjGv8OxjLavqpdhnGWMd49cw4icK4sYGrHIt2WXF_oLV_9weuCGJoF7y1XNRKwKIyS3S4unh&sig=AHIEtbTWXfoDXMzDuitHSYapW5i4fC7NXA

Stott: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entry for Friday, August 14

Hospitals: D. C. Bowie, Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong, 268

Gripsholm: Carol Brigg Waites, Taken in Hong Kong, 2006, Kindle Edition, Location 3850

See also:

Chronology, February 20, 1942

Anslow Diary, August 14, 1942

The last meeting of the British Communal Council. Its successor body (see tomorrow's entry) will be named the British Community Council as it's felt that's less revolutionary in its implications.

The Maryknoll Diary notes that as punishment for the escape of R. E. Stott no-one's to be allowed to go to the French Hospital for X-rays for one month.

The British Communal Council, which is elected today, is renamed the British Community Council (see also August 18).

Source:

BCC: HK Public Records Office, HKRS112, Catalogue; G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 208

Note:

The Diary refers to the failure of a 'patient' sent to the French Hospital for X-rays to return to camp. In fact, Stott was sent there on  February 20 in the hope that the better diet would help his duodenal ulcer. It seems from Barbara Anslow's diary that the ban on X-ray leave lasted two months, as did the other punishment that Stanley received for this escape - the end to visits by Dr. Selwyn-Clarke. For Stott's escape and the controversy it caused see https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/early-days-in-the-fre…

The inaugural meeting of the (first) British Community Council takes place.

'Community' has been chosen because it seems less democratic than 'Communal'. There are ten elected representatives, and a number of individuals are appointed by Gimson to serve as administrative officers. In fact, the Committee's role, in theory at least, is to advise him - he's won the 'constitutional conflict' and is the effective governor of the camp, except when the Japanese decide to get involved.

David McFerran, a former employee of the Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Co., dies in St. Paul's Hospital. Most of his possessions are in poor condition, but the Red Cross uses money from their 'British Fund' to to buy part of them for the use of 'needy internees' in the Hospital who expect to be repatriated soon and are in desperate need of clothing.

The Gripsholm is now a week's sailing away from the United States. Charles Winter, who'd worked as a bread delivery driver and lived at the French Hospital alongside the bakers, writes to the family of Thomas Edgar. The Edgars learn, perhaps for the first time, that their son is alive and well - and that he was due to be married on the afternoon of June 29, soon after Charles Winter began his journey home.

And the ship's passengers see some of the destruction caused by the war at sea:

At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon we passed a bit of wreckage, big enough for several men to have been on it. We passed it at extremely slow speed, no doubt to avoid striking any partly submerged wreckage and partly to make sure that we discovered any possible survivors. There was nothing alive on the wreckage. So many of our passengers crowded the rail to see, that the ship took on a decided list. Between 6 and 7, we came to a proper wreck. This time it was the forward half of a ship, floating on an even keel. It was apparently an oil tanker which had been torpedoed. The superstructure was a black mass of wreckage. Flames were still licking the edge of a hold. Our passengers crowded the rail and every vantage point, even climbing into some of our lifeboats which were swung out at deck level, everybody straining his eyes in the dusk to see if there was anybody on the wreck.

Sources:

BCC: G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 356, 208-209

McFerran: Rudolf Zindel to the International Committee of the Red Cross, General Letter No. 3/44 in Archives of the ICRC (Geneva)

Edgars: Letter from Charles Winter viewable at: https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thomas-edgar-some-doc…

Wreck: Diary of J. B. Sawyer, quoted in Greg Leck, Captives of Empire, 2006, 289

In pouring rain from a typhoon, Doug Ferguson and Les Howarth cut through the barbed-wire at Shamshuipo.

Villagers and guerrillas help them into the hands of the British Army Aid Group, who lead them to safety.

Source:

The Hunter News, Souvenir Edition, November 2004

The German Sixth Army, in pursuit of two fleeing Russian forces, reaches the outskirts of a town called Stalingrad. It's of no special significance to them - 'It was no more than a name on the map' said one officer later - but it is to become the scene of the bloodiest battle in history. And one of the most decisive: after it's over, Hitler will blame the defeat of the Third Reich on the events that are about to take place.

The Gripsholm docks at Jersey City, New Jersey. The Americans are home.

The brethren of Cathay (Feemasonry) Lodge 1734 hold their first meeting in the quarry, 13 people attending. The purpose is to trace the whereabouts of brethren, and the Worshipful Master suggests that members take the opportunity of studying while in camp.

Sources:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 64

http://www2.gol.com/users/lodge1/history-e/papers/washizu.html

Vaughn Meisling, former Associated Press Correspondent in Hong Kong,  and Stanley repatriate, has an article in the Billings Gazette (page 2) today. It’s about the bad treatment meted out to the American bankers.

Meisling lists the bankers, and describes their squalid home (the Sun Wah Hotel) – ‘a fire trap well-stocked with vermin’. He says that the30 or so women and children weren’t allowed out of the hotel until late May, when they received a pass that allowed them an hour’s walk morning and afternoon. Many of them needed treatment for dysentery, malnutrition and insect bites.

 The bankers were paid $100 (US) from late February on and had to buy their own ‘meagre supplies’. They were marched a mile and a half to their work every day.

 They were often slapped and humiliated by their captors, the worst of whom they called ‘Slaphappy Joe’ because he was never happy except when hitting someone. At afternoon roll call he would box their ears until they learnt to answer in Japanese.

There were also a few slappings inside the National City Bank, as the Gendarmes had taken over the ground floor and resented the Americans on the floor above looking down on them.

The bankers often felt they were being sniped at as bullets hit or entered the hotel.

The New York correspondent of the Canberra Times publishes a report of an interview with journalist Vaughn Meisling who was repatriated on the Gripsholm.

The first thing he mentions is that Meisling saw Dorothy Jenner ('Andrea') in Stanley. She worked as a secretary to the Commissioner of Police during the fighting and a bomb scored  a direct hit on her building but she was unharmed apart from shock. In Stanley she'd lost weight but looked well.

Meisling had also met Richard Cloake, formerly of Brisbane, who worked for the South China Morning Post. He'd been ill with typhoid before the war but had recovered and could do physical work - he was pushing a wheelbarrow around camp as a 'food distributor'.

Other Australians he saw in Stanley were 'reasonably well' and all were cheerful.

Food was the biggest problem in camp, but the situation had improved since April when 'it was very bad'.

Source:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2584921

The Detroit News begins front page serialisation of Gwen Dew's 'I Was a Prisoner of the Japs.' It begins:

I was hunting for war. I found it. I wanted to know what war looked like thorugh a woman's eyes. Now I know. Horror, destruction, torture, hunger, death. I want to tell you in Detroit what it means if war comes to your front door.

Source:

http://www.albionmich.com/history/histor_notebook/S_Dew.shtml

Well-known Australian journalist Dorothy Jenner ('Andrea') has recently been elected representative of her camp area (such people were generally called 'blockheads'). It's not an easy job and today she confides to her diary, 'committee a hellish one - I am automatically everybody's enemy'.

Source:

Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 61

Mr. G. H. Cautherley, a bank official, and Mrs. D. A. Cautherley, have a boy, George, in Tweed Bay Hospital. Later George will remember his years in Stanley as happy ones. Fast forward a few years and whenever Kiyoshi Watanabe, who was loved by the Camp's children, comes into Camp George will be following him around.

It seems that at some time, probably in 1942, Mr. G. H. Cautherley went to the French Hospital in Causeway Bay for x-rays and on his return smuggled in money raised by Sir Vandeleur Grayburn and other bankers for relief purposes.

The repatriated American banker Theodore Lindabury writes to Elizabeth Grayburn, the daughter of Sir Vandeleur and the step-daughter of Lady Mary:

I was interned with them in a Chinese Hotel from January 5 until June 29 when we left Hong Kong. During that time they were working every day in the liquidation of the Bank and were able, by various means, to secure a sufficient supply of food, other than the rice given by the Japanese. You probably have heard that condition ((sic)) in the Stanley Prison Camp are very poor and should be pleased to hear that they are not in this Camp but are interned with the other Bank people in a Chinese Hotel not far from the Bank.

Conditions in Stanley made it hard for those who'd been wealthy and influential before the war to maintain their privileges. New divisions arose, with 'prosperity', which was always relative, depending on such things as having family and friends outside camp willing to make the sacrifice and take the risk of sending you parcels, or having a friend on the billeting committee. And some people were able to bring more into camp in the first place. Stanley was an infinitely more egalitarian place than pre-war Hong Kong, but it still had its 'have' and have nots'.

Australian journalist Dorothy Jenner is the 'leader' of her area of camp (a 'blockhead'). In a diary entry for today she makes it clear how she sees her job:

I am looking after the have-nots.

In an undated note Jenner made her views on the effects of internment clear:

When people become anonymous they become hateful. Judges & dustmen look the same in the cookhouse & are just as light-fingered. Society - or its segments - with nothing to lose or gain don't possess the dignity of denizens of the jungle. Rogues have more stature than snivelling, grabbing members of this community - taipans caught with their pants down - Externally there is little difference these days between the millionaire and the park dosser. I'll take the simple dosser, he's kinder.

In London Sir Maurice Peterson of the Foreign Office is clear about the future of Hong Kong:

In view of the ignominious circumstances in which we have been bundled out of Hong Kong, we owe it to ourselves to return there and I personally do not believe that we will ever regain that respect in the East unless we do.

But at this stage of the war the Chinese claim to 'retrocession' has the support of America, which is, by a huge margin, the most powerful military and diplomatic force in the region. One of the many missions of the British Army Aid Group is to work towards restoration of British prestige in the short term and the regaining of Hong Kong in the long. The question will hang in the balance until the last moment, and in the tumultuous ten days after the Japanese surrender the matter will be decided by BAAG mission from Macao to Stanley Camp and the determined action of a small group of internees. No-one today, looking down on the starving, ragged, scared and quarrelsome Stanleyites would predict such an outcome.

Sources:

Cautherley family: 'Stanley Recollections and Reminiscences ', University of Hong Library, Special Collections, HKP940.547252 C37;  China Mail, September 15, 1945; Frank King, History of the HSBC, Volume 3, 621.

Grayburns: David Tett, Captives of Cathay, 2007, 294

Conditions, Jenner: Christina Twomey, Australia' Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 73, 74

Peterson: Andrew Whitfield, Hong Kong, Empire and the Anglo-American Alliance at War, 2001, 18

Note:

The bankers were living at the Sun Wah Hotel. The 'various means' of supplementing the low-quality ration rice were probably purchases on the open and black markets.