According to a British Army Aid Group report of October 20, today sees the first Third Nationals interned in Ma Tau-chung camp, newly vacated by the Indian POWs, and now re-named Ma Tau-wai. By August 15 about 100 people are inside: mainly Eurasians, South Americans and Overseas Chinese.
Source:
Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, Kindle Edition, Location 2553
Note:
For the contradiction in the sources about the opening of Ma Tau-wai see yesterday's entry.
The Camp Tribunal finds a police Sub-Inspector guilty of stealing rice. He's fined the maximum - 25 Military Yen - and loses several privileges, but he's not dismissed from the service. The case has gone on for two months.
Source:
Tribunal: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 198
American bombers and submarines are taking a heavy toll of Japanese shipping and generally this causes difficulties for Stanley Camp. But today they get a pleasant surprise: the shortage of coal in occupied Hong Kong means that the electricity supply has become so unreliable that the freezers at the Dairy Farm cold storage facility aren't working so the Japanese send in the pheasants. On the 23rd they'll get more of the same and on the 25th patridge will be served.
A most welcome addition to the boney fish that replaced meat in February.
Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night. Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom's barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men's blood.
Albert Camus, novelist and philosopher, writing in the resistance newspaper Combat.
The Allied armies are getting closer, and there are those who argue that they should allow them to evict the Germans from the city, but some of the men and women who make up the resistance forces in the 'capital city of Europe' insist on playing a role in their own liberation, and on August 19 an armed insurrection began.
Tomorrow Camus will write:
This night unlike any other ends four years of a monstrous history and an unspeakable struggle that saw France at grips with its shame and its fury.
Those who never lost hope for themselves and their country are finding their reward tonight. This night is a world unto itself: it is the night of truth....Truth is everywhere on this night, which finds the people and the canon roaring in unison.
The Germans have surrendered and de Gaulle and the Free French have entered in triumph, although, as Camus's words suggest, sporadic fighting is still going on.
Six thousand miles away in Stanley Camp it's a different world, but one of the lessons of the war is that of human connection, and the news arrives quickly and plays its part in creating a brief period of relative optimism in the grim struggles of 1944. On August 27, in his weekly retrospective, diarist George Gerrard will write:
Things locally have become brighter for us and the period is known as the week of P's.
Pheasants, Partridges, Parcels, Paris and Perhaps Peace.
But back in Paris there's a sour note: under American and British pressure black troops are not allowed to take part in the victorious entry of the Free French.
No wonder that Camus will warn on August 30 that 'victory on the battlefield does not signify total triumph.'
Sources:
Camus quotations: Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, 2007, 16, 17, 20
Black troops: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7984436.stm
David Charles Edmondston, Hong Kong manager of the HKSBC, dies in Stanley Prison of malnutrition, sepsis and medical neglect. He was 54.
He was arrested on May 24 (or May 3), 1943 and interrogated under torture, most probably either about his role in raising money for the British community and smuggling it into Stanley or about his contacts with the resistance or with Consul John Reeves in Macao. He was tried on October 19, 1943 and sentenced to ten years in prison.
According to Japanese medical officer Sato (or Saito) Shunkichi he first entered the Prison hospital in May 1943 suffering from indigestion. He was eventually discharged but frequently returned for treatement for colitis, beri beri and dysentery.
He was finally admitted with a carbuncle that covered the whole of the back of his neck.
Dr. Harry Talbot examined him and later stated that his continual sepsis contributed to his death. Sato, defending himself at his post-war trial, claimed that he'd adminstered various appropriate treatments, but Dr. Talbot stated that Edmondston had received no help from the medical officer, and this is supported by the banker's own statement, two days before his death.
Just before Edmondston died his wife Kathleen and his daughter Mary were called in from Stanley Camp to see him. He was so emaciated she didn't recognise him and his state was such that no meaningful communication was possible. The Japanese refused to allow a doctor to enter the Prison to inspect him, but did allow drugs to be sent in. The injections came too late.
Sources:
Date of trial: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 180
Age: http://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/Cemeteries/Stanley_Military_Cemetery/html/e.htm
All other details: Reports of War Crimes trial in the China Mail:
January 9, 1947, page 2
April 3, 1947, page 2
April 9, 1947, page 2
April 12, 1947, page 2
Note:
When Edmondston's body was taken into Stanley, Dr. K. H. Uttley carried out a post-mortem, finding that death was caused by beri-beri and nutritional anaemia. The camp doctors took such investigations very seriously - they refused to come to any conclusions about Vandeleur Grayburn because his body was too decomposed when they recived it - so this is likely to be reliable.
China Mail, April 4, 1947, 2
I'm rather confused about the 'sepsis' at the moment as both Dr Talbot in his brief post-mortem report and Vincent Morrison in his war crimes evidence say the large carbuncle on the back of Edmondston's neck had healed (Morrison adds it had left a star-shaped scar.) Perhaps there had been further carbuncles, More research necessary!
Jean Gittins sows pak choi in her rooftoop garden. (See also October 14, 1944)
Source:
Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 107
The University of Hong Kong's Professor Gordon King has been working in Free China since his escape in February 1942. Today he sends a message to the British Colonial office:
In the view of the Vice-Chancellor, Mr. D. J. Sloss, who is still under Japanese confinement in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, it is necessary to decide whether the future scope of the University is to be mainly a local one, and limited chiefly to the training of subordinate officers for the Hong Kong Civil Service, or whether it is to count as an expression of British policy towards China and the Far East. In the past the University has existed without subsidy from the Imperial Government and has been too poor adequately to fill the wider function, yet too large and cumbersome economically to fulfil a purely local purpose. It is essential to consider and decide for which of these two functions the future University is to be planned.
Duncan Sloss and the other imprisoned members of the University Senate have continued to discuss two visions of the University's function - 'local' versus 'Far Eastern'. This question had proved controversial before the war and would not be finally settled for some years after it.
But it's interesting that even after the apparent destruction of the British Army Aid Group's operation in Hong Kong in the spring of 1943 Sloss was still able to smuggle messages out of Stanley. Presumably a degree of organisation remained, or was reconstituted.
Source:
Clifford Matthews and Oswald Cheung, Dispersal and Renewal: Hong Kong University During The War Years, 1998, 401
Note: see also the entries for July 16, 1943 and November 30, 1944.
Note 2: One source (see comment beloiw) says that Sloss sent a message about the University's future through one of thee Canadians repatriated in September 1943. This is an alternative to his having used a continuing BAAG route - but I still believe that such continuing contacts existed.
Birth of Lydia Elizabeth Veriga.
Source:
China Mail, September 15, 1945, 3
Note:
For information about the Thirwell and Veriga families members of the Yahoo Stanley Camp Group can consult:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/topics/2…
See also:
https://brianedgar.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/guaranteeing-out-3-the-evid…
Florence Eileen Hyde dies of cancer. More than one internee believes that her tragic death is in part due to her husband's execution on October 29, 1943. Her young son, Michael, is adopted by Lady Vandeleur Grayburn so continues to live in Bungalow 'D'.
Birth of Veronica Ann Reddish.
Cecil Reddish is a police inspector. His wife Anna ('Dolly') a Gibraltarian. In his diary, discovered long after his death, he wrote:
We're surviving on two bowls of rice a day, usually full of weevils. The pig-swill they call soup turns my guts over! Less than 48 hours after Veronica's birth, Anna has to join the rest of us and stand for hours in the pouring rain. I can't bear to see my beloved Dolly and our baby daughter suffering like this. We're starving. I don't know how much more I can take.
Mr. Reddish weighed six and a half stone on liberation, and was never able to recover his health and work again; he died in 1964 at the age of 54, killed by the TB he contracted in camp.
Veronica offers a summary of the effects of internment on her father's later life:
My father was always very anxious. For him it was the loss of his career, and his future and a bit of dignity too. What he had planned for himself he hadn't been able to achieve because of the prisoner of war camp and his illness.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/japanpowdiaries.shtml
Note:
As far as I can make out, Veronica and her two sisters were interviewed for the BBC radio programme Home Truths, probably in 2006. Their mother, Anna, was still alive and 89 years old at that time.
The three sisters feel that discovering their father's wartime diaries helped them come to terms with difficult experiences in their childhoods.
Death of Walter Pryde from hypertension, heart failure and beri-beri at the age of 57.
Source:
Philip Cracknell at http://battleforhongkong.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/stanley-military-cemete…-
The Canadian Red Cross parcels - two to each internee - are distributed.
These are excellent parcels, and there are enough of them to give out another one on the 21. ((For the contents see R. E. Jones's entry for today.))
In town in it's the first anniversary of the setting up of Rosary Hill Red Cross Home for uninterned and largely destitute British dependents. Delegate Rudolf Zindel marks the occasion with an off-the-cuff speech at dinner:
Today a year ago, the first batch of "Dependants" came up here. They were taking a chance and the rest of you after them were taking a chance. It has perhaps not been an easy year, neither for you, nor for the Administrative Staff, nor for me, but I do hope that you will agree with me that from the point of view of most of you, we did, everything consided, the right thing in moving up here.
In this connection, you will remember that before you came here, I promised you cramped accommodation and modest food both in quantity and quality; I leave it to you to judge whether I kept my word. If more could not be done for you with the money at my disposal, I would like you to remember that from the very same funds with which the Home is kept going, I have to do what I can for the Prisoners-of-War and Civilian Internees in Stanley. I would fail in my duty, and also you would not expect it from me, should I divert one Yen from the Prisoners-of-War and Internees to this "Home" than is absolutely necessary.
I doubt that Zindel believed that last sentiment for one moment. In any case, he will be criticised for spending too much money on Rosary Hill at the expense of Stanley, a charge he denied.
Source:
Rosary Hill: Ex-Tempore Adress GIven by Mr. R. Zindel...on the occasion of the first Anniversary of the opening of the "Rosary Hill" Red Cross Home...' in Archives of the International Committe of the Red Cross (Geneva) BG 017 07-068
Seminarian Bernard Tohill of the St. Louis Industrial School begins studies in Moral and Dogmatic Theology at the Jesuit Wah Yan College in Robinson Rd. He needs to take these courses if he is to become a priest, and the war's already delayed them by a year.
He begins his day by taking the 80 plus boarders he's responsible for to their classrooms for a nine o'clock start, then walks to Wah Yan 'at a brisk pace' through deserted streets ('few people dared to walk the streets so early') for the lectures, which begin at 9.30. When they're over, he hurries back to St. Louis to meet the boarders and share their company until 5 a.m. the next morning.
Father O'Meara teaches him Dogma and Father Joy Moral Theology. All lectures are in Latin.
Source:
Father Bernard Tohill, Some Notes From A Diary of the Years 1941-1942, 21-22
Death of John McCullum Broom, Second Officer on SS Mausang.
After a period of mental disturbance, Mr Broom died of beri-beri and malnutrition.
Source:
Philip Cracknell, at
http://battleforhongkong.blogspot.co.uk/
They will pray for Japs' prisoners
A service of remembrance and intercession for the people of Burma, Malaya, Hongkong and Borneo and for prisoners of war and civilian internees in the Far East, will be held in St. Paul's Cathedral at 5.30 p.m. on September 21. The sermon will be preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Source:
Daily Express, page 3
Death of Winifred Eveleyn Dabelstein, age 39.
Source:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188
Note:
There was a Lionel Arthur Dabelstein in the HKVDC.
John Charter surveys recent events in camp:
Another month has come. September did not see the end of the war in Europe as most of us thought it might....
Today we were all given our first vitamin capsule. I cautiously bit mine and tasted a most terrible flavour of concentarted fishiness! So I hastily swallowed the rest. We are to have one capsule each, every other day, and this will suply us with the necessary amount of vitamins A, B1, B and C....
The electricity came on again last Sunday, 24th! We had never really expected it, so its advent was hailed with great delight. Unfortunately it is available only for lighting purposes, and then only from 7.30 till 9.30 p.m. each evening. We cannot use it for cooking, so we still have no bread - we shall never see bread again in this camp I think - and they cannot make yeast again. The cessation of the camp yeast supply, when the electricity was cut off, is probably a contributory factor to the increase of beri-beri for yeast is rich in vitamin B, However, these 2 extra hours of daylight are a great boon and a blessing, for it grows dark at 7.30 now and it used to be terribly dreary just sitting and chatting after 7.30. The trouble is that there is simply nothing to sit and talk about in here! We have often noticed how trivial conversation has become. War news has always been the number one topic, except for occasional spates of repatriation or parcels etc..... So now we all diligently strain our eyes from 7.30 till 9.30 under our 25 watt lights and then grope around in the dark and go to bed!
The water suppply is still very uncertain. Sometimes it flows all day and some times it comes on just for a short time in the mornings and then not again till the evenings....
Source:
Anthony Crowley Charter, The First Shall Be Last: The War Journal of John Charter and the Memoirs of Yvonne Charter, Grosvenor House, 2018, pp. 439-441.
Mrs. Cryan comes to see Franklin Gimson this morning. She complains that she left a pair of shorts to dry on a line, and on her return she found they'd been thrown into a corner with the zip fastener and the area around it cut out.
No-one has any idea who was the culprit, but Gimson feels that the crime is a symptom of the current 'extraordinarily low morale' of the camp. He has been warning about the deterioration of morale, and this is proof - albeit in an unexpected form - that he was right.
Source:
Franklin Gimson, Diary, Weston Library Oxford, p. 103 (verso)
Maurice Alfred 'Monty' Johnson, a superintendent in the Police Reserve, dies of T.B. A holder of the DSM, he'd lived with the rest of the police in the Luk Hoi Tung Hotel before being sent to Stanley. ((See also tomorrow's entry))
Sources:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 201;
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/uniformedcivilians.html#_ftnref18
Death from TB of Maurice Alfred Johnson, aged 60, manager of Otis Elevators.
Source:
Philip Cracknell at http://battleforhongkong.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/stanley-military-cemete…
Death of Maria Anne Duncan, aged 72.
Monty Johnson ((see yesterday's entry)) is buried today.
George Wright-Nooth and the fellow police officers in his mess act as pall-bearers. The coffin's covered by a sheet and on it are placed the deceased's medals, cap and cane. The Rev. Upsdell, Chaplain of the Forces, conducts the service, which is well attended.
Sources:
Duncan: http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.ht…
Johnson: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 201