Father Bernard Tohill and two others had waited around at the Murray Parade Ground yesterday but were told to go home in the late afternoon. He returns today with five others and they're eventually taken to the Nam Ping Hotel at 141 Des Voeux Road Central. They are given no food by the Japanese, but are fed by a group that had arrived on the fifth. The next day they are told they have to provide for themselves, so they set up a fund to which they contribute a dollar a day.
The police had been exempted from the summons to the Murray Parade Ground, but today they're sent to the Luk Hoi Tung Hotel:
About 250 of us were packed into its forty odd rooms (meant for two each) which opened onto narrow verandahs along each of the two floors...
It was a small, dark room with plywood walls, the only ventilation being the half-size swing door that opened onto the verandah. Taking up most of the room were two small, Chinese-style double beds with wooden bed boards and straw mats over them...Two of us slept on each bed, the rest of us on the floor. I preferred the verandah despite the constant stream of visitors to the three stinking lavatories at the end of it. I found them less offensive than the rats running around the room or the cockroaches dropping from the ceiling.
Policeman Jim Shepherd has previously got a pass from the Japanese and now puts it to use:
On 6/1/42 we were put into internment in the Chinese Hotels, prior to going to Stanley, and by my efforts I retained the Commissioner of Police's car for which I received permit to use, and, with my own pass, made full use of same by taking wounded from the Hong Kong Hotel Military Casualty Clearing Station (where S. I. Whelan and Sgt. Alexander performed some fine work) - to Bowen Road Hospital.
Franklin Gimson, the newly arrived Colonial Secretary, is taken away under guard after writing a strongly-phrased letter to the Japanese authorities:
(Y)ou must realise that your occupation of the Colony can be but a temporary measure....
Sources:
Tohill: Fr. Bernard Tohill, 'Some Notes from a Diary of the Years 1941-1942'.
Police: George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 79-80
Shepherd: Jim Shepherd, Silks, Satins, Gold Braid And Monkey Jackets, 1996, 55-56
Gimson: Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident, 1943, 105