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

George Wright-Nooth's diary records eloquently what's probably the dominant feeling of 1944:

Hunger is like a ghost that can find no peace...It is always there, a perpetual groaning in one's stomach...It pervades every thought; it sets you dreaming of steaks...you must fight with your all your will power against these dreams....or they will become your master. It is a hard fight that only those who have been really hungry can understand.

Source:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 121

The British paper the Catholic Herald publishes an article based on an interview with Mrs. Lancelot Forster, wife of the head of Stanley's Educational programme, Professor Lancelot Forster.

Mrs. Forster tells a staff reporter that she received a letter from her husband in January. It was written in September 1943 and this represented 'a much quicker delivery than usual and very probably it came on one of the (Canadian) exchange ships'.

The main problem in the camp has always been the poor diet compounded by the Japanese refusal to allow Red Cross parcels:

Strangely enough, this scanty diet is quite in keeping with international law, which says that the prisoners shall have no less than their guards. But Japanese are able to exist on a sparse diet of rice, a little fish and vegetables - which is not enough for the European frame. All kinds of deficiency diseases have resulted, including intermittent blindness in which the eye registers a blank and sometimes sees objects far removed from their actual location.

Mrs. Forster pays tribute to members of 'the fortunate section of Hong Kong population that has escaped internment' some of whom have helped supplement rations:

(The Italian) priests did wonderful work, I know, and so did the Catholic Irish missionaries.

Mrs Forster goes on to speak about the educational programme, under the leadership of her husband, and presents a picture of the varied activities allowed in camp (including bathing, walking and discussion groups) but ends by stressing the prisoners are haunted by the 'worrying' knowledge that there is not enough to eat and calling on the Japanese to allow the Red Cross to alleviate the situation.

The London Sunday Express (page 4) carries an article based on the testimony of a Canadian repatriate who's recently arrived in Britain. It makes grim reading for the families of the internees:

Conditions are dreadful in Stanley, and I shudder to think what's going to happen to those people if help isn't sent quickly. We were all almost at the end of our tether when we left nearly two months ago. ((September 23 1943.)) There just isn't the food in Hong Kong to feed those people.

She goes on to describe small gifts of money from the Red Cross - which don't go very far because food is 'fifty times' its pre-war price, and many items are unobtainable anyway.

She claims the outside world has not been properly informed of conditions in the Camp to spare people's feelings.

The only improvement has been that they are now getting an 8 ounce loaf of bread instead of the half ounce half inch thick slice of a year ago and the fact that the camp doctors were issuing Vitamin B.extract three times a week  In her last month in camp she received a daily tablespoon of yeast.

Nevertheless morale was wonderful - in spite of basic rations of less than 8 ounces of rice and two ounces of meat or fish daily.

Sadly things were about to get worse: the bread issue will disappear in February and meat will come off the menu at the same time-  until an intermittent re-appearance in 1945. The rice ration will be increased, and amazingly that plus a small issue of low quality vegetables will keep almost everyone alive until liberation.

Birth of Alexander Ramsey.

Source:

China Mail, September15, 1945, 3

Note:

Judging by the age of the people named Ramsey/Ramsay on the Stanley Roll, his parents were probably Mr. A. and Mrs. M. Ramsey, both born in 1909, he a mariner and she a housewife.

Tonight in London an 'authoritative' statement is issued on the Japanese camps, which amplifies Anthony Eden's remarks in the Commons. Hong Kong is one of those places where occasional visits ((by Red Cross and other Swiss personnel))  have been allowed and conditions are on the whole tolerable, although well below acceptable 'European' standards with regards to food.

Source:

The Daily Worker, March 16, 1944, page 3

The (London) Daily Express reports on page 4 that £15,000 is being provided from 'British funds' though the International Red Cross for the relief of prisoners and internees in Hong Kong.

George Wright-Nooth records in his diary that he's now reduced to cleaning his teeth with ashes, and that four razor blades have lasted him a month, and will need to be used still longer - they're very expensive, and it's either blades or food.

Source:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 196

Death aged 59 of Scot James Stevenson, second engineer on S. S. Ben Lede.

Source:

Philip Cracknell at http://battleforhongkong.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/stanley-military-cemete…

Thomas Edgar writes home and includes a message for another family from Windsor:

Dear Mother & All,

We are all very fit, please do not send us anything. Please convey Meredith Clarence Road son fit and well.

Lena and Tommy

Source:

https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/from-the-dark-worlds-…

Note:

Edgar asks not to be sent anything because he knew previous Red Cross parcels had not been delivered to him. He probably suspected they were being intercepted by Japanese officials.

Food is getting in desperately short supply as American planes and submarines take their toll. Today the Japanese authorities end subsidised rice sales to the public - only special categories like government workers will continue to get this form of help. Embattled Red Cross delegate Rudolf Zindel manages to get the Rosary Hill home exempted from the new scheme - but only until November 15.

The question for everyone now - in town and in the camps - is simple: will the war end before the food runs out?

Source:

Rice, Zindel: Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, BG17 07-074.

Death of Mrs Edith May Henson, formerly of 6, Gun Club Hill, Kowloon, at the age of 65.

She and her husband Joseph, who had worked for the RASC Barrack Department at Shautakok, were helped by Charles Barham to escape to Hong Kong Island on December 8, 1941, the start of the fighting.

Some time in 1944 he sent his wife a postcard from Shamshuipo which ended with the injunction to 'Keep on smiling'. It's not known if she received it before her death.

Sources:

Address: http://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/civilians/html/h.html

Escape: Charles Barman, Resist to the End, 2009, 7

Card: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HONG-KONG-c1944-POW-MAIL-CAMP-TO-CAMP-P-OF-CFS-TO-STANLEY-HASEGAWA-CENSOR-/131018883809?pt=UK_Stamps_CommonwealthStamps_GL&hash=item1e815582e1

The Japanese begin Operation Ichigo, their last major offensive in China. 

One source claims that part of its rationale is to create a land route for supplies from South East Asia to Japan, Korea and Manchukuo because Allied bombers and submarines, sometimes armed with intelligence gathered in Hong Kong by the British Army Aid Group, have rendered the coastal supply route too dangerous.

By the time Ichigo finishes on December 31 it will have achieved some of its objectives and become the last significant Japanese success of the war.

Source:

http://industrialhistoryhk.org/world-war-baag-mateys-allied-attempts-di…

As a seemingly endless occupation drags on, half a dozen Hong Kong miles divide families and friends as effectively as the Atlantic. Mrs Agnes Hopwar writes to her daughter, Florence Robinson (Block 4, Room 4), from Rosary Hill Red Cross Home at 44, Stubbs Road:

Received letter. Glad all well.

Entered Hospital March 3rd., left April 15th. Nearly better. Foot septic. Aim very kind. ((These three words are written clearly but I don't know what they mean.))  Hard up. No money. Miserable. When shall I see you all again? Extremely hard to write you. Don't get anxious.

Love to all. God keep you safe.

At least the message seems to have moved reasonably fast by wartime standards: a note on the card suggests it was received on May 15th.

The Regal Cinema in the north Devon town of Barnstaple is packed. People have come to hear a talk by Gwen Priestwood, an escaper 'from the notorious Camp Stanley'. Priestwood tells the audience she's grieved to hear the false story that Hong Kong was surrendered without a fight, and goes on to give 'intimate' details of camp life:

If anyone tells you that you can get used to sleeping on a hard floor don't you believe it. As I grew thinner and thinner the floor seemed to grow harder and harder.

The talk is organised by the Ministry of Information.

Sources:

Robinson: Peter Hall, In the Web, 2012, 37

Priestwood: North Devon Journal, 27 April 1944, 6

Note:

This is one of a number of reports of Gwen Priestwood giving talks in the west country under the auspices of the Ministry of Information. At various times in 1944-1945 she was in Plymouth, St. Mary's in the Scilly Isles and different places in Cornwall including Truro. She was also reported talking in Berwickshire, Dundee and Selkirk so she obviously toured Scotland too, and perhaps the north as she was in Morpeth, Northumberland in September 1944.

The final draft of Prisoners of War leaves Hong Kong to labour in Japan. The Naura Maru sails with 220 men. They will arrive, after 15 days enduring cramped, filthy and noisome conditions in the hold, to be hosed down with icy water in spite of the cold weather.

Source:

Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, Kindle Edition, Location 2312 ff.

A couple who were probably the first internees to marry have their second child: Robert McGregor Mitchell.

Mrs. Rachel Grace Rose dies at the age of 44.

Mrs. Rose was a Chinese woman married to a Henley Hemdon Rose, formerly of the Public Works Department and then a POW in Shamshuipo.

She left a daughter Dawn (12) and son Gerald (8) to be cared for by Mrs. H. Aitken.

Gerald was to become an award-winning illustrator of children's books. His claim to have seen his first live tiger in camp presumably means that he was one of those who caught sight of the Stanley tiger of May-June 1942.

Sources:

Mitchell: China Mail, September 15, 1945, 3

Name and Age: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 272

Son and daughter: http://gwulo.com/node/11330

Husband: http://gwulo.com/node/11238

Tiger: http://gwulo.com/node/11238

Birth of Robert McGregor Mitchell to Amy Maltida May Eliza Mitchell and A. McGregor Mitchell, a prison officer.

Robert's sister Rosemary was also born in Stanley.

Criticism is never far away from Franklin Gimson - 'the Representative of the Internees' - who is almost always being blamed by someone for something. Today he notes in his diary a rather mysterious source of discontent:

At the Chairmen's meeting {meeting of the senior elected District representatives} in the morning I was glad to be able to state that I had never given through Arthur Blackburn {a repatriated British diplomat} any report on camp conditions though the camp generally believes I have. The subject has cropped up again in connexion with a statement in a letter about an interview Blackburn has given to the "Daily Mail" saying all was well at Stanley. I hope my denial will circulate throughout the camp.

Whovever wrote that letter was well-informed: the article based on the Blackburn interview will not be published until May 24. In any case, Gimson's denial does not put the matter to rest.

Source:

Franklin Gimson, Diary, Weston House, Oxford, p. 71 (recto)

Edith Hamson is sitting on Tweed Bay Beach watching men trying to fish:

The atmosphere was always one of serenity at Tweed Bay, and visiting gave me brief respite from the realities of war.

I was absorbed in the tranquillity when all of a sudden I heard a commotion coming from the children’s wading pool. I will never forget the awful screams. I jumped to my feet and everyone else on the beach did the same.

Up at the pond, a young boy named Brian Gill, who was only three years old, had been found floating face down in the shallow water. Despite desperate attempts, Brian could not be revived.

The camp was filled with tremendous grief and shock, and the children were affected terribly.

The pool was a fresh-water man-made pool on the hillside a little above the beach, generally used for swimming wading by the younger children.

Soon after the beach at Tweed Bay was declared off-limits.

Source:

Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 239-240.

At Brian's funeral, the children were asked if they would like to lead the procession and to see if they could find something white to wear. When the day came, hundreds of little ones, each carrying a bunch of wildflowers, turned up to say goodbye to Brian. It was quite a sight. Someone had made a coffin out of some old timber, and in it, Brian Patrick Hirst Gill's body was laid to rest in the cemetery that overlooked the tranquil waters of Stanley Bay.

Source:

Allana Corbin, Prisoners of the East, 2002, 240

Death of Cyril Conway Shilton, aged 58 at Tweed Bay Hospital.

Source:

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