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

Lieutenant T. D. Hunter, writes from the 'Prisoner of War Camp, Hong Kong to Mrs Peggy Hunter in Block 16, Room 34, Stanley (officialy called the 'Military Internment Camp'):

My Pegs,

I'm in a hurry now - so tired. And one has got to fight when one's too tired.

You 'take' and grow on one, I realise! I'm sorry I could not be brought to say there had to be this other way for us.

I'd like, somehow, to snatch you home with me!

My love as always to you both - Drummond

Source:

David Tett, Captives in Cathay, 2007, 198

An interview with Drummond Hunter can be heard here:

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80018267

Note: The both presumably includes Peggy's mother - 'B. D. Scotcher, d.o.b. 1892, housewife'.'

This is an intriguing card, and, as David Tett comments, sounds like it might be a coded message. As the couple married at Bowen Road Hospital on Christmas Day 1941, they had hardly spent any time together.

At about this time Lieutenant Kadowaki becomes the final Commandant of Stanley Camp:

He was comparatively tall and lean for a Japanese in a soft job...He had an odd walk, an exaggerated thrusting forward of the leg, rather than the expected waddle...(He) was a stickler for military etiquette.

Back in Britain there's mixed news for families with loved ones in Hong Kong: citing a War Office report, the Daily Mirror (page 3) says that the Japanese have been pilfering or holding back Red Cross parcels meant for internees. Nevertheless, the situation now is much better than it has been. Readers of the communist Daily Worker (page 4) also learn that a Red Cross delegate visited the camps last December and reported an improvement. The death rate, says the paper, is low.

Source:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 243.

Note:

Wright-Nooth claims Kadowaki came towards the end of April while Geoffrey Emerson dates his arrival to May.

Death of Norman Charles Barber, merchant of Loxley and Co., at the age of 46.

He was the husband of M. C. Barber. For the circumstances of his death see Barbara Anslow's diary entry for today.

The proceedings in the trial before a Camp Disciplinary Tribunal of Dr. Harry Talbot come to an end today. He is accused of refusing to return a hen belonging Mrs. L. Flaherty on April 7.  The case had gone to arbitration and he'd been told to return the hen on being given 100MY for his services in looking after it for its owner. According to George Wright-Nooth, Talbot's lawyer, at the height of proceedings, stood up to make a dramatic announcement:

My Lord, I regret to inform you that my client ate the chicken last night.

The tribunal - E. S. Brooks, G. A. Pentreath and A. Raymond - express their disapproval of his 'very reprehensible' conduct in strong terms and hand out the toughest sentence in their power: two week's deprivation of canteen privileges.

Sources:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 217

MacNider papers: Unheaded sheet.

Note: MacNider's account doesn't mention a lawyer. It seems the original hearing was April 19. Emily Hahn gives a fictionalised account of the incident in Miss Jill (1948). The novel has Talbot ('Lionel Levy') looking after the hen because Mrs Flaherty ('Hawkins') is in prison for black market activities (254-258). Wright-Nooth's account is humorous, while Hahn's is much darker.

Speech Day at the camp school, and Franklin Gimson is the speaker. The internees know that Germany is close to defeat, and there's a feeling of exultation at the prospect of victory and release.

Source:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, Kindle Edition, Location 3121

The Instrument of Germany's unconditional surrender, signed in the early hours of May 7, comes into effect.

The Hong Kong News reports Germany's unconditional surrender. It cites a Domei (Tokyo) report of May 8.

Source:

Summary in the Macnider Papers, unheaded sheet

Ellen Field (known at this time as Ellen Lee) leaves the Rosary Hill Red Cross Home for the safety of Macao.

Field ('The Shadow') worked with Dr.Selwyn-Clarke and Kiyoshi Watanabe on legal and illegal relief for the POW camps, and, independently of these two, on helping British soldiers escape to Free China. Watanabe had pressed her to go to Rosemary Hill and live quietly for her own safety, but eventually told her she was on a blacklist and had to leave Hong Kong or be arrested.

Source:

Archives of the International Commitee of the Red Cross, Geneva: BG 017 07-073, ‘Effectives Du Home De Rosary Hill’.

Note:

Field had three daughters but the record cited only lists two of them as accompanying her.

Les Fisher in Shamshuipo records some big news in his diary:

Yesterday the Japs sent in some fresh meat, the first for two years.

Meat will soon be reintroduced in Stanley (see June 16). I've never seen a convincing explanation as to why.

Source:

Les Fisher, I Will Remember, 1996, 209

Birth of Joanna Margaret Kennard to Dorothy (née Deakin) and Eric J. Kennard.

Joanna's parents had married in camp on May 1, 1942.

Doctors Gustav and Helen Canaval are re-interned, this time in Ma Tau-wai Camp, Kowloon.

On October 6, 1943 the two doctors were transferred from Stanley to act as Medical Officers in the Rosary Hill Home that had been set up by the Red Cross to look after the impoverished dependents of British internees and POWs and other indigents. Red Cross Delegate Rudolf Zindel claims he was forced to accept them because the Japanese refused to release any 'native' British medical personnel but allowed the Canavals out of Stanley because they didn't accept their status as 'naturalised' British (he was originally Austrian, she Hungarian). Zindel states the pair caused him huge problems by their high-handed attitudes and that matters came to a head when one of the victims of their behaviour posted an anonymous letter containing threats under Mrs. Canaval's door. She demanded he provide Gendarme protection, so Zindel consulted with the Foreign Affairs Department, and agreed with their idea that adequate protection could only be provided by re-internment. This infuriated the doctors, who responded, if the Red Cross delegate is to be believed, with the detailed critique of his policies at Rosary Hill that circulated after liberation and caused the Red Cross some embarrassment with its claims of mis-management and waste.

We don't have the Canavals side of this story!

Source:

Archives of the International Red Cross, Geneva: Zindel to ICRC, in BG17 07-074, 

Birth of Gary Ian Howard Heath to Mr and Mrs Ian Heath.

The Heath family (which included Gary and one other child) are to be amongst the technicians sent out of camp on August 10th. Ian Heath was a ship's officer, presumably with mechanical expertise.

When, however, on a Saturday night at the end of June the first lot of meat really arrived, the camp was in a fever of excitement. 'Meat!' 'Meat!' the magic word was passed from mouth to mouth as the carcase of an old water-buffalo arrived and was dumped into the kitchens. In the dark it was chopped up and cooked at once to prevent its going more bad than it was. We hung about on the verandas long into the night smelling the vapours from the kitcehens.

Source:

William G. Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 166-167

Note:

See also tomorrow's entry, and that for January 29, 1944.

(W)e tasted the first meat for seventeen months, except for a morsel of Manchurian pheasant sent to us when refrigeration failed. The Sunday food queue was formed hours before its time. At last the meal was served: rice, and beef stew, rice cake as Yorkshire pudding, and small pieces of boiled sweet potato. We could hardly wait until the food was on the table....There were five ounces of buffalo meat and bone for each of us. Most of it was stewed, but some was minced.

Source:

William G. Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 167

Note: see also yesterday's and tomorrow's entries

Buffalo stock is used for soup. The buffalo bones are heated in the camp-made pressure cooker until they are soft and can be used as a spread on the rice bread.

Source:

William G. Sewell, Strange Harmony, 1948, 167

Note: see the previous two days' entries.

A number of Allied prisoners, both civilian and military, are moved from Stanley Prison to a jail in Canton.

These include former Stanleyites William Anderson, Andrew Leiper, Reginald Camidge, W. A. Cruickshank and Hugo Foy,

Source:

China Mail, October 17, 1945, page 2

Birth of Robert Anthony Keates, son of Walter J. and Dorothy Keates.

Death of John Joseph Osborne a 57 year old post office employee.

Source:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188

Note:

The Osborne family were probably Eurasian, and as such had a degree of choice as to whether they entered Stanley. Alfred Richard Osborne and his family were also in camp, while Patrick William Osborne remained uninterned.

Edward Reed escapes from arrest - he's accused of stealing 300 lbs of sugar from the godown ration store to sell on the black market - and creates a furore in camp that lasts until tomorrow.

While he's being beaten by Formosan guards - his screams can be heard throughout the camp - it begins to rain, the guards go inside and Reed siezes his chance and runs off in the direction of Bungalow C. Leon Blumenthal finds him hiding nearby and tells him to give himself up; while he goes to alert the guards, Reed runs again. The entire camp has to parade for an emergency roll call which lasts for 90 minutes. Reed is eventually found in No 10 Block, sheltering with his mother and younger brother.

Reed is taken to Japanese headquarters ('up the hill'), brutally questioned about the sugar, but manages to escape again at about midnight. The camp is searched again but it's several hours before Reed is found 'crouching in a garden close to the prison walls'. He's questioned again, this time by the Gendarmes in Stanley Village. He survives and ends up in hospital. The full truth about the sugar theft, which almost certainly involved some of the guards, is never known. Wright-Nooth sums up:

Reed was a young man of astonishing physical stamina.

Source:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 235

Note:

Reed or Manwaring - see http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/stanley_camp/conversations/topics/1318))

Birth of Raymond Williams - the last baby to be born in Stanley during the war.

Source:

China Mail, September 15, 1945, 3

Note:

For more on the Williams family see:

http://gwulo.com/node/10897

An informal meeting of the Hong Kong Fellowship is held at the Drill Hall of the 30th Battln. The Middlesex Regiment in Clapham Park. 650 people attend in spite of the fact that the meeting was arranged at short notice.

Members hear that few communications from Hong Kong had been been received recently, but it was stressed that this needn't mean bad news - the 'Korean Sea' through which mail travelled was 'mined and bombed ceaselessly' and it was quite probable that no more mail would arrive.

Hong Kong escapee Captain Freddie Guest describes the events leading up to the surrender - praising amongst others the Canadians who defended the Repulse Bay Hotel - and then Mrs. Martin, widow of the Consul-General at Chungking, takes up the story describing life in the early days of the occupation.

Canadian repatriate Nell Eliot said that the three main problems in Stanley were lack of food, lack of privacy and lack of news. But there was freedom to organise community life and little interference from the Japanese. She spoke of the valuable work done by the International Welfare Committee under the chairmanship of Franklin Gimson, and said that the productions of the Stanley Optimists - 'twenty clever people who put on "variety entertainments"' - and the interdenominational church services helped keep up morale.

There was a short talk by the Bishop of Hong Kong, Ronald Hall, who said that in an occupied city the Allied air raids were welcomed and that every day brought closer the timed when the prisoners would be returning home.

Controversial Hong Kong escaper George Kennedy-Skipton suggested that in addition to the £60,000 a month sent to the International Red Cross delegate it might be possible to send money to certain Chinese in Hong Kong to spend on food for the camps. However, he stressed the many problems with such a scheme.

The formal part of the meeting closed with a talk by Colonel Browne of the Middlesex and a prayer from the Bishop.

Source:

Hong Kong Fellowship Newsletter, August 1945, pages 4-9