Everything tagged: Diary / Memoir

<Introduction>

People mentioned in the diary:

Lieut. John Gibson, D.S.C., R.N.V.R., wrote this account of sailing into Hong Kong with the first allied ships to arrive after the Japanese surrendered.

It was published as the article "Sweet Waters" on pages 72-80 of the January 1946 edition of Blackwood's Magazine.

Thank you to Stuart Braga for letting me know about this.

My Mum, Shirley Gillard, born in 1933, came out to HK in 1956 as a teacher with the Army School at Murray barracks.

As children growing up in England in the 1950’s and 60’s, my sister Antonia and I were aware totally unaware that Mum had a very different history to other mothers. There were the occasional visits to Chinese restaurants when she would impress us by breaking out in Cantonese, there were her slightly strange behaviours related to food such as hoarding tinned goods and praising us for eating every last grain of rice from our plates. Then came a wonderful voyage to Hong Kong in 1962 aboard the P&O ship Chusan, and getting to know Mum’s Hong Kong relatives. 

Valerie Davies lived in Hong Kong from 1965-1970; she has written some interesting articles on her blog of her time in Hong Kong, the people she met, her life. 

an excerpt below

Valeriedavies.com

Published by Blacksmith Books in 2014 (303pp).

The back cover of the book states:

Published by The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd, 196pp.

This book is a lightly edited copy of Grenville Alabaster's journal, which in turn was based on his diaries covering the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941, the years of internment in Prince’s Building and Stanley Camp that followed, and the eventual liberation in 1945. We have several journals from that period available to read here on Gwulo, and recent years have seen a steady flow of other diaries and journals being published, so what makes Alabaster's worth your attention?

Japan marched into Hong Kong at the outbreak of the Pacific War on December 8, 1941. On the same day, Graham Heywood was captured by the invading Japanese near the border while carrying out duties for the Royal Observatory. He was held at various places in the New Territories before being transported to the military Prisoner-of-War camp in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon. The Japanese refused to allow Heywood and his colleague Leonard Starbuck to join the civilians at the Stanley internment camp.