The Norwegians arrive in Stanley today. They'd been allowed to stay in town, but are interned because two of them escaped. (See entry for February 10, 1943).
Some had been working pre-war in Hong Kong, others were merchant seamen in port when the hostilities began.
Note:
For more about the Norwegians see:
http://www.warsailors.com/POWs/pows3.html#foreignships
http://www.warsailors.com/POWs/pows2.html#haraldsvang
http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/haraldsvang.html
Sir Vandeleur Grayburn and his deputy E. P. Streatfield go to the head of Foreign Affairs Mr. Oda and confess their role in the attempt to smuggle money into Stanley (see February 20). They keep the name of Charles Hyde - who'd also given Dr. Talbot money - out of it, probably because Hyde is the most active BAAG agent amongst the bankers. Oda tells them this is a serious matter. But they have to wait to find out what action, if any, will be taken against them.
Source:
Frank King, History of the HKSBC, Volume 3, 1988, page 622
The first meeting of the Hong Kong Fellowship is held at the Queen Mary Hall, Y.W.C.A., in London's Great Russell Street. The organisers had recived 500-600 acceptances to their invitations but nearly 900 turn up and some people are unable to get into either hall.
Lt.-Gen Sir Arthur Smith is chairman. Former Hong Kong GOC Lt.-Gen Grasset gains 'the warm sympathy of his audience' by a tribute to the 'spendid behaviour of the troops under him' during the prelude to war. Mr. King speaks of the work of the Red Cross, and Mrs. Thorold of the formation of Prisoner of War Clubs.
Colonel Cole, of the Colonial Office, describes conditions in Stanley Camp, quoting Phyllis Harrop as to the location and nature of the buildings. He goes on:
The conditions in this camp have improved and may now be regarded as fairly satisfactory...
Sir Arthur Smith brings the meeting to a close with a speech stressing 'the high morale of the men', and recommending the consolations of the Christian religion.
Source:
The Hong Kong Fellowship Newsletter, No. 1, March 1943, 1-5
Notes:
The QM Hall/YWCA, Residential Club, now a hotel, is a 1928-32 building designed by Edwin Lutyens. From the description of the meeting, it seems that the organisers had booked two halls and held meetings in both (although still not accommodating all those who turned up).
http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1113221
Grasset left the China Command in August 1941.
The Daily Mirror publishes an account on page 4 of yesterday’s inaugural meeting of the Hong Kong Fellowship. The paper describes speakers having to go out into the streets to address an overflow of ‘hundreds’ of people from all over the country. Six hundred had been invited but over a thousand formed ‘a long, anxious queue before the doors’.
Mrs. M. Knight of Leyton asked Phyllis Harrop if she knew anything of her daughter Marjorie Madgwick and her husband: Harrop did know them and told her they were both alive and together.
Note:
It seems that Sergeant C. S. Madgwick’s first wife, Dora, was the victim of a shooting at Lok Ma Chau Police Station on July 21, 1930.
Frank H. Fisher writes in his diary:
The Canadians and those with wives and families in Canada have been called up.((to be listed for repatriation)).
Today's cut in the flour ration mentioned by R. E. Jones is the start of a process which is to lead to the complete cessation of new flour supplies to the camp. The ration ends on January 29. 1944 (http://gwulo.com/node/13649).
Source:
Fisher: Daniel S, Levy, Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography, 1997, Kindle Edition, Location 5505
Diarist Frank H. Fisher cynically notes that many 'Pseudo Canadians getting quite frantic to get on the list ((for repatriation - see yesterday's entry)).
Source:
Fisher: Daniel S, Levy, Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography, 1997, Kindle Edition, Location 5505
At Shamshuipo the entire camp attends a play written by one of the prisoners. The Golden Road is set soon after a time everyone's yearning for: the end of the war. A POW rushes home to be re-united with his fiancee but discovers she's married someone else:
Her explanation that 'two years is a long time' was greeted by the audience with the tense silence of men who recognized in it a horrible truth.
Source:
Andro LInklater, The Code of Love, 2000, 120
Mutal Fielder 'celebrates' the birthday of her fiancee, Kenelm Digby, who's interned in Kuching:
I had my 21st birthday in Stanley in 1942 but it passed like any of the other often boring days there; it was certainly no time for partying. But we always marked Kenelm's birthday on 10 March every year and made some sort of cake, usually rice mixed with a bit of sugar in it, as we wondered how we was spending the day, interned in Sarawak. I had heard he was alive but only one card from him ever reached me in Stanley. I sent two or three cards while I was there but none of them ever reached him.
Source:
Derek Round, Barbed Wire Between Us, 2002, 163
Note:
Kenelm Digby had a cousin in Stanley: Professor Kenelm Hutchinson Digby, surgeon and head of surgery at Hong Kong University (Round, 163)
Death of Christine (or Christina) Cameron, aged 45.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 186
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html
Arrest of Sir Vandeleur Grayburn and E. P. Streatfield.
They are driven from the Liquidation Office to a row of barricaded off ouses on the race course side of Ventris Road - Streatfield thinks this area is being used as a divisional Kempeitai headquarters. They are taken into one of the houses Grayburn is interrogated that afternoon and accused of getting money from the Macao Consul, John Reeves - this would make the offence much more serious in Japanese eyes.
About 7 p.m. the two bankers are taken out of the house and they find a 'boy' with food, clothing, washing and shaving materials and cigarettes sent by their colleagues in the Sun Wah. Then they're moved to a large Chinese house just outside the barricade where they're locked in rooms on the opposite side of a landing patrolled by a Chinese guard. They'll be kept here six days and allowed to receive two baskets of food, cigarettes, clothes and toilet articles sent by the other bankers in the Sun Wah Hotel.
Loved ones in the United Kingdom know little or nothing of these events and the arrests that have preceded them or are about to take place, although they are now receiving some information through the Hong Kong Fellowship. For obvious reasons, the newspapers can't tell them much about what's going on in occupied Hong Kong, and the occasional articles aren't usually very illuminating:
Hong Kong: pay decision
Definite news has been received regarding nearly 95 per cent, of those originally reported missing at Hong Kong, says the War Minister in a written reply.
It is presumed that the others are dead, and the Minister does not think it justifiable in these cases to continue indefinitely the special extension of allowances, due to expire on March 31.
The allowances will continue to April 30, with pensions afterwards in certain cases.
Sources:
Grayburn and Streatfield: Statement of E. P. Streatfield in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-6; Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 22; Evidence of E. P. Streatfield at trial of Sato Choichi, reported in China Mail, April 2, 1947, page 3; Frank H. H. King, The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Volume 111, 1988, 622
Newspaper: Daily Mirror, March 17, 1943, page 2
Note:
Frank King places these arrests on March 19. He states that the two bankers were taken from the Liquidation Office. (622)
Vandeleur Grayburn is interrogated for a couple of hours this morning. Then it's Edward Streatfield's turn: his interrogator points to lengths of cord and baseball bats and advises him to tell the truth. The questions last for two hours, and the unpleasantness is compounded by poor interpretation, but there's no torture and the banker is never to suffer physical mistreatment.
Not surprisingly, the Japanese seem to regard Grayburn as the main culprit and he's taken for questioning again. Streatfield hears a lot of abuse followed by a crash and later learns that his boss was made to stand on a chair with his wrists tied behind and above him to a ring bolt and then had the chair kicked away leaving him hanging for some minutes. Contrary to some lurid accounts elsewhere, this is the only torture he ever experiences.
Grayburn doesn't seem distressed afterwards and later characterises the manoeuvre as 'very elementary third degree stuff.'
Luckily the interrogators never find out he's a British Army Aid Group agent (code name: Night) or things would be much, much worse for the courageous banker.
Source:
Account of E. P. Streatfield, Hong Kong PRO, HKMS, 100-1-6, pages 3-4
We were in trouble...for the ballet Esther. An enthusiastic audience packed the main hall of St Stephen's College on a Saturday evening. The music was excellent and the dancing, considering the circumstances, was first-rate. The ((Japanese)) authorities, however, were strongly critical of the costumes, which had been made from mosquito nets dipped in solutions of mercurochrome and gentian blue from the hospital dispensary. Perhaps our enthusiasm had taken us a little beyond the realm of prudence, but the show was a huge success.
Source:
Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 115
A petition, signed by 1594 internees, is presented to the camp authorities complaining about the rations. They mention the cut of 75% in the flour ration, the absence of meat, and the inadequate supply of 'proper food' - they stress that for them, rice is not a proper food and no substitute for flour.
Grayburn and Streatfield are moved.
They are taken to Happy Valley Gendarmerie (on the site of the former Italian Convent) where they are seen by C. M. Faure, who later testifies they are held in a cage-like cell in filthy and noxious conditions. On the left are a row of three cages and on the right one big one taking up the same area. Streatfield is assigned to cell two on the left, Grayburn to the large cell on the right, where he finds himself next to Henry Ching, the courageous editor of the South China Morning Post. Grayburn was later to share food parcels sent to him by his wife with Ching.
Streatfield too describes the cells as 'literally cages' and says the smell is like 'a menagerie'. There are between 40-45 people in Grayburn's cell, just over a dozen in Streatfield's. There is not enough room for all the prisoners to lie on their backs at the same time. They are given two bowls of rice a day, soemtimes with a piece of cabbage stalk; they need to eat quickly, as the same bowls are used for tea.
In the British House of Commons John Wardlaw-Milne, M. P. for Kidderminster asks a question to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:
(Are you) aware that private reports received regarding the Stanley camp, Hong Kong, indicate unsatisfactory conditions in regard to overcrowding, rations, shortage of drugs and instruments, books, bedding and clothing....?
Mr. Richard Law replies that he is aware that 'very disquieting' reports have been received in the past, but claims that the Red Cross report of January 25 shows a 'steady improvement'.
Sources:
Petition: MacNider Papers, 'Stanley 1/3/43'
Grayburn and Streatfield: E. P. Streatfield, Account, page 4, in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-6; Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 226; Evidence of E. P. Streatfield at trial of Sato Choichi, reported in China Mail, April 2, 1947, page 3; Evidence of C. M. Faure, at trial of Noma Kennosuke, reported in China Mail, January 3, 1947
Ching: http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/
House of Commons: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1943-03-24a.1600.3
'Friends' from the Sun Wah Hotel have quickly found out where Grayburn and Streatfield have been moved to ((see March 24) and today they begin to send in daily food parcels and periodical changes of clothing. Sometimes they are given the food, sometimes they aren't.
E. P. Streatfield, Account, page 4, in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-6
Lewis Bush, a Japanese-speaking Volunteer Naval Officer, leaves Camp for Shamshuipo after repeated protests that, as a uniformed Volunteer, he is in the wrong camp:
Lieut. Bush sent in from Stanley, Alan Barwell very fit. But there is some friction there with the families, only to be expected.
Bush's own account:
One morning...I was told to pack my kit. At the camp office a host of friends saw me off escorted by a Japanese major. I was sorry in many ways to leave the many good friends I had made at Stanley, but was eager to join my comrades, and looked forward to hearing how they had fared and being able to relay the tidings from Stanley to husbands, fathers, brothers, sweethearts and friends.
Sources:
Bush and Barwell: Diary of Staff-Sergeant James O'Toole: http://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/James_OToole/html/dairy_1943.htm
Bush: Lewis Bush, The Road To Inamura, 1972, 162
Note:
Writing in the early 1970s, Lewis Bush dates his transfer to 'one morning, in April'. James O' Toole's wartime diary is almost certainly correct, and is supported by Bush's own post-war statement.
For the circumstances of his assignment to Stanley, see http://gwulo.com/node/9858
Death of Violet May Evans aged 40.
Before the war she'd been a filing clerk for Jardine's and lived in Gap Road.
Before being sent to Stanley, she'd been held at the Tai Koon Hotel.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 186
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367488
Death of Paul Ewart F. Cressall.
Before the war he was Puisne Judge and was in charge of the enquiry into allegations of corruption in the building of air-raid shelters. He took the unpublished report with him into Stanley, but it disappeared after his death.
Red Cross Delegate Rudolf Zindel makes a full-day visit to Stanley and talks to 84 internees. Not surprisingly he finds 'rations' still the main focus of interest, although he is able to report a 'doubling' of the flour issue: the basis will now be 8 ozs. of rice and 4 ozs. of flour per day. He notes another piece of good news - the bathing-beach will be open from May 2.
However, he also notes the internees' disappointment that he wasn't able to pay any 'pocket money' during April as the necessary funds have been held up in Tokyo since March.
Sources:
Cressall: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271
Zindel: 'Delegation Report for April 1943' p. 1 attached to General Letter No. 45/43, 7 May 1943 in Archives of the International Red Cross (Geneva)
Note:
By the time of the May report Zindel is in a 'desperate' financial situation because the funds still haven't reached Hong Kong. This is presumably the period referred to by Emily Hahn when for more than two months the Japanese closed down the activities of the Tokyo Delegation because they caught them 'juggling' with Red Cross funds to profit from the exchange rates (Hahn, China To Me, 384). However, it shouldn't be assumed that this was for private profit - as Hahn implies it was. It might have been, but it could also have been to make their money go farther in the relief of distress. From the autumn of 1944 Rudolf Zindel would be forced to pay for his own family's upkeep and to make sure he had enough money to fulfil his Red Cross commitments by raising black market loans against the promise of repayment in Swiss Francs when the war was over. After April 1945 Zindel received no more remittances from Tokyo so he financed the entire Hong Kong operation by borrowing against his personal Swiss bank accounts. Hahn's inaccurate and biased treatment of Red Cross activities is sadly not untypical of the thanks he got!
Grayburn and Streatfield are moved again.
This time they're taken by car to Stanley Prison where they're held in much improved conditions. Each has a cell to himself and exercise periods and baths are provided.
Their arrival is recorded in the diary of George Wright-Nooth:
Grayburn brought to Stanley chained to Streatfield....
It seems from Streatfield's account that they were both roped up, but not to each other.
Sources:
E. P. Streatfield, Account, page 5, in Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS100-1-6; Maurice Collis, Wayfoong, 1965, 226-227
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 157
Mr Hattori, a former diplomat, now head of the Japanese Foreign Affairs Deprartment, makes his first visit to Stanley since his appointment.
He's presented with a Memorandum outlining internee grievances, the chief of which is the amount of food provided.
Source:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment 1942-1945, 2011, 191 ff.
The banker Charles Hyde is arrested for his role in a plot to help Captain Mateen Ansari escape from Ma Tau-chung Camp. The plot has been infiltrated by Japanese intelligence - in fact, it might have been instigated by them - and a letter written by Hyde with regard to the plan falls into the hands of a pro-Japanese Indian.
Hyde's wide-ranging resistance work included raising money to buy supplies for the camps, smuggling medical drugs into Stanley, organising escapes and sending military intelligence to the British Army Aid Group.
Source:
Ride Papers, 10/37/10 (kindly supplied by Elizabeth Ride)
Note:
This is the most plausible of a number of dates given for Hyde's arrest. Others are April 30, May 3, 'some time in April', 'May' and 'early May'. An undated entry in Harry Ching's diary suggests that Hyde's involvement in plots to free Captain Ansari was known at an early stage in the arrest process:
Hyde's detention was reported, along with that of Selwyn-Clarke and Bunje, in a report that reached the British Army Aid Group on May 3.
For more details of Hyde's resistance work, see
http://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/charles-hydes-resistance-work/
The Ride Papers are held at the Hong Kong Heritage Project:
https://www.hongkongheritage.org/html/eng/index.html