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

Elections for a British Communal Council (to replace the Temporary Committee) are held. The elections are organised according to a division of the Camp into eight districts or 'blocks'. This time more government officials are elected.

A week later six people are elected to represent the Camp as a whole, including L. R. Nielsen and B. Wylie.

Note: see also entry for March 2, 1942

Sources:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 10

Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003, 136

G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 208, 352

Note: Snow wrongly dates these elections to February 8.

The Temporary Commitee had planned to end its activities today, but three extraordinary meetings were necessitated by the attempt of the Chinese Camp Supervisor, Mr. Cheng, apparently in collusion with some elements of the Japanese authorities, to force the internees to pay for their fish and vegetables and for the accommodation in the brothel-hotels during January.

After vigorous protests had failed to have any effect, the threat of cutting off all rations forced the internees to pay the money demanded. The cheque was returned uncashed after Mr. Cheng had left his post.

Source:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 55

Volunteer R. E. Stott is sent from Tweed Bay Hospital in Stanley to St. Paul's Hospital ('the French Hospital') in Causeway Bay where the better food provided is expected to speed his recovery from a ruptured duodenal ulcer.

He is planning an escape:

Had I been able to do so I would have endeavoured to pass as Eurasian, but unfortunately was too well known by local enemy agents to succeed, Dr. Selwyn-Clarke listened intently but made no suggestions to help neither did he request me not to escape.

See also entry for August 11, 1942

Dr. J. B. Mackie manages to get into Argyle Street Camp to bring tinned food and tea for a friend there. He tells Isaac Newton about the Japanese response to the escape of Gordon King:

The result was all passes practically were withdrawn and everything was tightened up, all the camps became cut off from visitors and news. All R. A. M. C. ((Royal Army Medical Corps)) officers had their passes withdrawn and most of the Civil M.O.s ((Medical Officers)) were interned in Stanley ((up to that point many members of the pre-war Health Department were carrying on their work)).

Morris 'Two-Gun Cohen' starts the day still a prisoner of the Kempeitai. Since his interrogation (see Feb 11), he's provided them with an inaccurate written account of his activities with the Chinese Army, been beaten up without any attempt to ask him questions, and at one point been told by Rex Davis, who understands Japanese, that the two of them are to be beheaded.

But today, much to his surprise, he's sent with the Special Branch prisoners (including Davis) back to Stanley. During the first part of their journey, they are suddenly bundled into a side street off Nathan Road: Rensuke Isogai, the new Military Governor of Hong Kong is arriving, and they are not thought worthy of looking at him.

Sources:

Stott: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entry for August 14, 1942

Mackie's news: Isaac Newton, Diary, page 61

Cohen: Charles Drage, The Life And Times Of General Two-Gun Cohen, 1954, 298-299

Note: the date of February 20, 1942 for the arrival of  Lieutenant-General Isogai to assume the military Governorship of Hong Kong is given by John Luff in The Hidden Years (172). Philip Snow and Oliver Lindsay suggest slightly earlier and later dates respectively. Ramon Lavalle, the Argentianian Consul, in an affidavit of March 11, 1943 gives February 25.

Note:

Amazingly it is now possible for us to see something of what Cohen and the others were prevented from viewing; this link contains film of Rensuke Isogai arriving at Kai Tak, and of the Chinese procession that welcomed him:

http://www.t3licensing.com/license/clip/750155_001.do

At another Extraordinary Meeting called because of the 'Cheng crisis', the Temporary Committee hears a letter from Selwyn-Clarke to French banker Paul de Roux - the idea of a committee in town that will raise money to carry out relief work is eventually to give birth to the Informal Welfare Committee.

Source:

John Stericker, Captive Colony, 1945, Chapter IV, page 17

Today is George Washington's birthday. The Japanese have forbidden the celebration of patriotic holidays so the Maryknoll Fathers set up an entertainment programme featuring G. Washing Town. Edward Gingle supplies a large tub of real coffee, baskets of doughnuts and a sack of popcorn.

Source:

Daniel S. Levy, Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography , Kindle Edition, Location 5475

The Maryknoll Sisters finally move from temporary quarters to the American Block. They now have three rooms on the ground floor and one room on the third of Block A-3.

The Senate of Hong Kong University holds a secret meeting at a place in camp called 'Stonehenge'. Present are the Vice-Chancellor Duncan Sloss, the Registrar S. V. Boxer and Professors W. Brown, G. T. Byrne, K. H. Digby, W. Faid, Lancelot Forster, L. Robertson, L. R. Shore and Dean Smith.

The Board extends the award of 'War-time Degrees' that had been made on January 1 to medical students who had passed their final exams in December 1941 to all students in their final year at the time of the attack and to a few others. It goes on to record the death of Professor France, the wounding of Professor Simpson, the use of the University as a wartime hospital (under Professor Gordon King with William Faid as Lay Superintendent) and the fact of its becoming a refugee centre after the surrender.

After noting that the University buildings sustained little damage through shelling, but that there had been serious looting, the meeting recorded that Ah Kai, a worker in the Strength of Materials Department, had brought under control a fire started at the Northcote Science Building by looters.

It was also recorded that Duncan Sloss had arranged for those at the University to be temporarily interned there and not transferred to the waterfront hotels with the majority of the 'white' British community on January 5.

After listing those staff members (such as Professors Ride and Simpson) known to be held as POWs, the minutes conclude:

(T)he major part of the war surgery at the Q. M. H. (Queen Mary Hospital) during the actual fighting, where 1,200 severe casualties were admitted, was carried out by four teams of graduates of H. K. U., and that much other valuable work in other hospitals and first aid posts was also carried out by H. K. U. graduates and undergraduates. A full list of those wounded and killed is not yet available.

Sources:

Maryknoll: The Maryknoll Diary, February 23, 1942

HKU: http://www.impact100.hku.hk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/World-War-II.jpg

Note:

According to American oilman Norman Briggs (Taken in Hong Kong), The Maryknoll Fathers were favoured in accommodation and other matters because they provided the voting 'bloc' that kept Bill Hunt in power. According to Briggs, there were a lot of Fathers in the first place, and the Sisters all voted the same way as they did, thus guaranteeing a majority for whoever they supported.

My sense from reading the diary is that, if they were favoured, they weren't aware of it, and voted according to their conscience. But I wasn't there.

The families in the United Kingdom have had no official news of the fate of their loved ones in Hong Kong, but worrying rumours have been cicrculating and today Sir Percy Harris, the Liberal member for Bethnal Green, South-West, brings them to the House of Commons:

The Japanese, as is known by anybody who has studied the happenings in China during the last four or five years, are a cruel and brutal enemy, ruthless and savage in their methods, and they stop at nothing. They take murder and rapine in their stride. The appalling stories that have reached me of the treatment of the civil population in Hong Kong want a lot of explanation. I thought that we were to have a Secret Session, and if there had been one, I would have mentioned to the Government some of the stories of most sinister, appalling and horrible incidents that are gradually being spread about the country. I am informed that, rightly or wrongly, the Government are preventing the circulation of these stories because of the bad effect they might have on morale not only in this country, but in Australia and the East Indies. I do not believe it is right to spoonfeed our people. If these stories have a foundation in fact - and I believe they have - they are bound to creep out sooner or later.

Earl Winterton (Conservative, Horsham and Worthing) agrees:

We all know what he has in mind, as it is a matter of common talk, but may I suggest to him ((Harris)) that he should invite the Government to make such statement as they see fit about the treatment of our nationals in Hong Kong, and tell us quite frankly whether or not the appalling stories that one hears are true?

Source:

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1942/feb/24/ministerial-changes#S5CV0378P0_19420224_HOC_231

The camp's cooks are changed.

An extra half slice of bread per person is delivered.

St Albert's Convent Hospital, which had continued to operate, is abandoned. Bowen Road Military Hospital is still treating POWs and on February 27 four Medical officers, twenty RAMC orderlies and thirty nurses will be sent to St Teresa's to set up an 80 bed POW hospital in Kowloon.

Sources:

Cooks, bread: Constance Murray Diary, p. 2 (Weston House, Oxford)

Nurses: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entries for February 25 and 27, 1942

The British Communal Council, the Camp's new governing body, meets for the first time. 

John Pennefather- Evans suggests prayers be offered for Divine guidance, and the Reverend Sandbach obliges. 

The Council notes with satisfaction that some of those who committed the recent thefts of food from godowns just outside the camp have been handed over to the internee authorities to be dealt with, which, the Council believes, shows evidence that the Japanese intend to follow the Geneva Convention, which says that internment camps should be self-governing.

But Camp Secretary, John Stericker, cynically notes that it became obvious later there was no such intention and that the guards were too scared to let the Gendarmes know they had failed to stop the thefts.

Sir Atholl MacGregor speaks on the introduction of a camp judicial system, Finance and Executive Committees are appointed, and the committee refuses to co-opt two women to represent Stanley's 1000 or so women and children, a suggestion from the social worker, Miss Elliot.

After two hours, the meeting finishes.

Source:

John Stericker, Captive Colony, 1945, Chapter V, pages 5-6

The  internees insist on a separate election for chairman and vice-chairman  of the British Communal Council, and this takes place today. L. R. Nielsen, a New Zealand businessman with American interests, is elected chairman.

Eventually a deal is reached by which Franklin Gimson, still not in Stanley, will become a partner of the chairman.

Source:

G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 208.

The second meeting of the British Communal Council is held at the Prison Warders' Club.

Dr. Annie Sydenham is appointed to a Watch Committee, which is set up to protect women and girls from sex crimes. She is never called out on an emergency at any time during internment.

It's announced, perhaps at this meeting, that the internees are to be issued with 1/2 pound of bread per person per day, but that 5 ozs of the rice ration will be deducted, which is regarded as excessive. Eventually a compromise is reached: just under half a pound of bread will replace 4 ozs of rice.

Source:

John Stericker, Captive Colony, 1945, Chapter V, page 6; Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 177

John (Jack) Walsh of the Hongkong Police died aged 43.

At a meeting of the British Communal Council a Recreation and Entertainment Committee is formed. This will plan and co-ordinate the various entertainment programs for the rest of internment.

Source:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271; 206

Missionaries Alice Lan and Betty Hu send a message into Stanley.

A woman comes to their Bethel Mission on a visit. She tells them she'd been used by the British as a warden to take care of 'Japanese prisoners of war' - perhaps supervising Japanese and other Axis civilians who were interned in Stanley Prison on the outbreak of hostilities. Now she is again a warden 'but taking care of the British prisoners in the same camp'.

She agrees to take in messages, so they write down the names of their missionary friends and ask her to find out if they are still alive. They also give her $HK20 for one of them. On March 29 this woman, who they then call "Maria," will  return with the news all the friends are alive and with thanks for the money. On May 18 Lan and Hu will see "Maria" searching women passengers at the Star Ferry and surmise she's been transferred because the Japanese suspected her and others of carrying messages.

Source:

Alice Y Lan and Betty Hu, We Flee From Hong Kong, 2000 ed. (1944), 53-54, 57, 61

Note:

It seems that routes for messages into and out of Stanley were established quickly. R. E. Jones records that he wrote to my father, Thomas Edgar, (at that time in the compound of St Paul's Hospital) on February 15, 1942 and he must have sent the letter either with one of the drivers of the Red Cross ambulance or using this kind of 'ad hoc' route: http://gwulo.com/node/9808

Captain A. H. Potts and his companions, who are living in St. Stephen's Preparatory School are ordered to move to the Indian Quarters to make way for the Consular staff of the USA, Holland and Belgium:

We did not enjoy the prospect of joining a community numbering over 500 in those cramped quarters.

Captain Potts was in Stanley because he'd lost his uniform - he explained this to the Japanese, who nevertheless treated him as a civilian.

Daisy Sage, a 36 year old biologist with the Hong Kong Education Department, begins work on the embroidered sheet that is now usually known as the Day Joyce Sheet, a coded record of life in Stanley Camp.

Jan Marsman flies from Kweilin (Gweilin) to Chungking (Chongqing). He has a 'very long interview' with  the 'military intelligence authorities' and later claims that his account of wartime atroctities was to be the basis for that in Anthony Eden's speech to the House of Commons.

Sources:

Potts: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 181; 165

Sage: Bernice Archer, The Internment of Western Civilians Under the Japanese, 2004, 15

Marsman: Jan Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 246

Note: For Eden's speech, see March 10. In fact a draft had been made on March 5.

Just over six weeks after Stanley was set up, life is still grim, as the American community hears at its monthly meeting, where reports are made about conditions and prospects. Continual representations are being made by Bill Hunt and the British leaders to try to get the Japanese to provide milk for babies, medicines and other basic supplies. Many people are still sleeping on concrete floors.

It’s announced that there are 324 Americans in camp and their food rations are listed:

80-100 pounds of meat daily (bones and fat included)

80 lbs of green vegetables

4 ozs of rice per meal

8 or 9 loaves of bread, enough for a slice or half a slice daily.

Some of these rations are reserved to increased shares to babies, growing children and convalescents.

Source:

Maryknoll Diary, March 9, 1942

Phyllis Harrop arrives in Kweiyang at about 3 p.m. She takes a bath at her guest house and meets the notorious Mimi Lau while making her way back to her room.

Rhoda Reeves, the wife of John Reeves, the British Consul in Macao, is allowed to leave Hong Kong to join her husband and daughter. She was trapped in the colony by the Japanese attack while on a Christmas shopping trip, and spent much of the time before her departure  with other refugees in St. Stephen's College in Lyttleton Road, in a poor state of physical health and 'in an extremely bad state of nerves.'

The Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, speaking to the House of Commons, makes the first official statement about atrocities in Hong Kong. This matter had been discussed and a statement drafted at a meeting of the War Cabinet on March 5. According to Edmund Hall-Patch, the financial advisor at the British Embassy in Chungking, the statement was based on information provided by Lindsay Ride, who gave the Embassy the first reliable information about conditions after the surrender.

Extracts from Eden's Speech:
Out of regard for the feelings of the many relations of the victims, His Majesty's Government have been unwilling to publish any accounts of Japanese atrocities at Hong Kong until these had been confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt. Unfortunately there is no longer room for doubt. His Majesty's Government are now in possession of statement {sic} by reliable eye-witnesses who succeeded in escaping from Hong Kong. Their testimony establishes the fact that the Japanese army at Hong Kong perpetrated against their helpless military prisoners and the civil population, without distinction of race or colour, the same kind of barbarities which aroused the horror of the civilised world at the time of the Nanking massacre of 1937.
It is known that 50 officers and men of the British Army were bound hand and foot and then bayoneted to death. It is known that 10 days after the capitulation wounded were still being collected from the hills and the Japanese were refusing permission to bury the dead. It is known that women, both Asiatic and European, were raped and murdered and that one entire Chinese district was declared a brothel, regardless of the status of the inhabitants. All the survivors of the garrison, including Indians, Chinese and Portuguese, have been herded into a camp consisting of wrecked huts without doors, windows, light or sanitation…

Most of the European residents, including some who are seriously ill, have been interned and, like the military prisoners, are being given only a little rice and water and occasional scraps of other food. There is some reason to believe that conditions have slightly improved recently, but the Japanese Government have refused their consent to the visit to Hong Kong of a representative of the Protecting Power and no permission has yet been granted for such a visit by the representative of the International Red Cross Committee…

The House will agree with me that we can best express our sympathy with the victims of these appalling outrages by redoubling our efforts to ensure (Japan's) utter and overwhelming defeat.

Sources:

Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 182

Reeves: Editors Colin Day and Richard Garrett, John Pownall Reeves, The Lone Flag, 2014, KIndle Edition, Location 218

Commons: http://ww2timelines.com/britain/misc/420310edenhongkong.htm

War Cabinet: http://ww2today.com/5th-march-1942-war-cabinet-discusses-japanese-atrocities-in-hong-kong

Note: Harrop's chronology of this part of her escape is a little confused. I've dated events as best I can.

After an exhausting truck drive from Kweiyang {Guiyang} Phyllis Harrop finally reaches her goal, China's wartime capital:

We arrived at Chungking {Chongqqing} about seven o'clock...desperately tired and filthy with dust and grime.

She meets Colonel McHugh of the US Army and gives him news of his friends from Hong Kong. She sleeps like a log.

In London the papers lead on Eden's speech of yesterday:

The Daily Express launches the slogan 'Remember Hongkong', and then reports:

JAP ATROCITIES HORRIFY WORLD

Two of the most terrible revelations made by Mr. Eden in the House of Commons yesterday were these :—

Fifty British officers and men were bound hand and foot and then bayoneted to death.

Women, both European and Asian, were raped and murdered. One entire Chinese district was declared a brothel, regardless of the status of its inhabitants.

 In Canada the news was also met with horror. From the same Daily Express report:

There were shocked cries when Premier Mackenzie King read the statement in the Canadian Parliament. "Words cannot begin to express our sense of outrage and feeling of bitter resentment," he said. "Retribution for this barbaric behaviour will follow in full measure in due course."

Source:

Harrop: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 188

Note:

Harrop's text gives March 10 for her arrival but the Chapter sub-heading has March 11 which fits in better with her other dating.

Note:

The claim, taken from Eden's speech, that an entire district was made a brothel is untrue. One BAAG source was later to state that the reality was that one district - Wanchai or part of it - was declared the only one in which brothels were allowed. I don't know if this is true or not.

Death of Essie Jean Greenburg at the age of 46.

Mrs. Greenburg was a hotelier who'd put her 44 room  premises on the market about two years before the war, citing ill health as the reason for sale.

In Chungking Phyllis Harrop wakes up at 9 a.m. after a night of deep sleep. During breakfast she is telephoned and told that a car will be sent to take her to the British Press Office and that meanwhile she mustn't talk to journalists. At the Press Office she meets two old friends, one of them Ronnie Holmes a colleague from Hong Kong.

 Source:

Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271

http://gwulo.com/node/7439

 Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 188-189

Former Colonial Secretary Franklin Gimson and his Government team arrive in Stanley; Gimson declares himself the representative of the King and the London government, and calls on the internees to accept his authority.

He finds a Camp in which many people are angry at the colonial Government for its perceived failure to prepare properly to resist the Japanese and for other shortcomings. As a result, he was, in his own later words, 'Not welcomed universally'. In fact, a sometimes bitter power struggle now begins, as Gimson attempts to impose his authority on Stanley.

Sources:

Jones and MacNider diaries. John Stericker Captive Colony, Chapter V, page 11 gives March 11, but I think our two diarists are correct.

St. Patrick's Day, and it's a day of some importance in Camp history. There's a 'well-organised' concert in the evening. Father Charles Murphy seems to have been the man mainly responsible for the whole event, and he also directs Father Madison in a skit on Irish history. It's the start of what is to be an important programme of amateur dramatics.

Camp supervisor Mr. Cheng is reported seriously ill and leaves. Mr. Yamashita, a former barber at the Hong Kong Hotel, replaces him.

At 10 a.m. Shanghai lawyer and camp legal advisor Norwood Allman, one of the American 'guards' is making his rounds. He sees Elsie Fairfax-Cholmondely 'in a state of high excitement'. Although the group's security has been tight, Allman has somehow got to know an escape is imminent; but he says nothing, and continues on his way.

Sources:

St. Patrick's Day: http://www.sloba.org/Fr%20Tohill%20with%20notes.pdf;

some details from Maryknoll Diary, March 17

Cheng and Yamashita: Maryknoll Diary, March 17

Allman: Norwood Allman, Shanghai Lawyer, 1943, 16-17

Note:

To the best of my knowledge Father Charles Murphy is the only internee whose wartime exploits turned him into a comic book hero:

http://capebretonsmagazine.com/modules/publisher/item.php?itemid=4328