Everything tagged: Diary / Memoir

The following text was given as a lecture by Mrs L. I. Puckle to the Churchstoke Womens Institute.

I feel very much honoured that you should have asked me to come and tell you about our experiences at Stanley Internment Camp and I hope I shall be able to give you some picture of the life lived there. This is the first time I have ever spoken in public, so I hope you will forgive any shortcomings and make allowances for my lack of experience.

Capt, Thomas Pritchard, Commander R.D. R.N.R

Born at Bryn Coch Farm, Abererch Nr. Pwllheli, Carnarvonshire, N.Wales on September 24th 1877.

He wrote these memoirs whilst interned at Stanley Camp Hong Kong Dec 1941 - Aug 1944. He died in Stanley Camp.

His original notes were brought back by Capt. Albert Jones, "Mathan“, Pwllheli, friend and fellow internee.

Deacription of the internment at Stanley Camp during the Second World War.

These extracts are from Henry (Harry) Collingwood Selby's diary as partly published in "In Time of War" (a collection of materials, including essays, POW camp regulations, etc.) edited by his son, Richard Collingwood-Selby and Gillian Bickley (Proverse Hong Kong, 2013).

The book is available from HK bookshops and can be ordered by them from the distributor, the Chinese University Press. It is also available from https://www.createspace.com/6412761.

During the last year and a half of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War Two, my father, George Smirnoff, with some other Russian refugees, decided to move his family to the only safe place we could get to, the small neighbouring Portuguese colony of Macao.

Published by Frontline Books, here's their introduction to the book:

Trapped in the depths of Japanese-held territory, it was rare for Allied prisoners of war to attempt escape. There was little chance of making contact with anti-guerrilla or underground organisations and no possibility of Europeans blending in with the local Asian populations. Failure, and recapture, meant execution. 

I was born in Matilda Hosp in 1939 and left HK on the last US ship before the Japanese invaded. My father spent the war in Stanley Camp.

Writing from Brockhurst on the Peak where her family is spending the summer.

From: Annie Oakes Huntington - age 10

(an American expat child whose father worked for Russell & Co.)

To Marion Richardson (in Boston)

Hong Kong July 11th 1885.

My dear Man:

I suppose you are down at Beverly and asleep while I am writing this letter. The Bay of Hong Kong is very pretty with mountains all around the Bay. We live about half up the peak so we get a lovely view. We live on Robinson Road,

This document is courtesy of Carol Wheat, M F Key's Grand-neice. She writes: