Everything tagged: Diary / Memoir

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. 

This was what Lieutenant Commander R.B. Goodwin faced when he decided to escape from the Shamsuipo PoW Camp in Kowloon, Hong Kong in July 1944 after three years of internment.

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:

Here are some extracts of Father Biotteau’s diary. He was the procurator of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris based in Pokfulam, with a unique view on Mount Davis during the battle. His testimony is in French but still quite relevant for those who can read it and want more details about what happened.

Personal Account of the Japanese Invasion of Hong Kong by E.M. Guest.

Our home was on the Mainland, Kowloon, about 20 minutes by bus and 10/15 minutes by ferry from the Island of Hong Kong.