Everything tagged: Japan

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Pages tagged: Japan

Alvena WELLSTEAD / MAIN (née LAIHOVETSKY) [2018-1983]

Submitted by agwellstead@gm… on

Alvena lived in HK 1919-1940 as Alvena Laihovetsky, except for a couple of years in the early 1920s when the family went to Vancouver, Canada chicken farming (unsuccessfully), and 1946-1959 as Alvena Wellstead.

She was born in Japan to Russian parents who happened to be outside Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. Her father registered her birth with the outgoing Imperial Russian Consul in Nagasaki, who took the money and ran.

Alvena remained stateless until she was naturalised in 1940 in time for evacuation to Australia via Manila.

Ritsu WOOD (née UMETSU, aka Emily) [1889-1983]

Submitted by brian edgar on

Emily Ritsu Wood (Japanese-German) married an Englishman, Captain Cecil Herbert Wood on April 6, 1910 in Hong Kong.

She was interned in Stanley with her children and grandchildren (the Hamson family and Leilah Wood). She used her native Japanese language to get blackmarket medicine from a guard most of which she gave to Tweed Bay Hospital. She also sold personal items to buy blackmarket food for internees in need.

After the war she emigrated to Canada and became an artist.

Tsuneo HATTORI [1897-????]

Submitted by Admin on

He was the head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Japanese administration in Hong Kong, from April 1943 to July 1944. (See pages 55-6 of Hong Kong Internment, 1942-45 by Emerson).

His name is mentioned regularly in R E Jones Diary (see "What links here" on this page), suggesting he was a regular visitor to Stanley Internment Camp.

John Charter mentions him in his diary entry for 5 May 1943:

Kiyoshi WATANABE (aka Uncle John) [1890-????]

Submitted by Admin on

A Japanese Lutheran Minister, present in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. He provided help to the Allied prisoners in the POW and Interment camps, at great personal risk.