Everything tagged: HKVDC

John and Yoshino Maycock had seven sons: Arthur, Ernie, Tommy, Willie, John,  Robert and Henry.  Before the war John and two of his sons, Willie and John worked for Hong Kong Electrics. 

John snr, John jnr and Willie were in the HKVDC and fought in the hills during the Battle for Hong Kong. They were captured and sent to Japan where they were badly beaten up in the POW camp. 

John snr was repatriated to England but had no news of his wife, Yoshino, who had gone back to Japan to be with her family. They were eventually reunited in England two years after the war ended.

He's listed on page J129 of the 1939 Blue Book, working as a Sanitary Inspector, having first joined the Hong Kong civil service on 6th Feb, 1931.

There's a Robert Arthur Simpson listed as a Private in the HKVDC on Tony Banham's website. I assume he is the same man.

During the War my father Leo was a volunteer , and captured and was in camp..he was in the kitchens so survived ....helped build the airport…

After the war, Leo went to China Building and found where Jimmy’s Kitchen had been..and then stumbled into some of his faithful staff (there were some extraordinary people there, brave Chinese..Sammy the manager etc) and they put together chairs etc they found around..and the restaurant came back to life..only with their help.

Anatole was born with the family name Zavadsky, but his father, Nicholas Alexander Zavadsky (violinist and photographer), changed the family name to Tonoff after arriving in Harbin China in 1921. Within a year or two, Anatole's parents divorced. His mother, Nina Engelgardt (mezzo soprano) married Vladimir Trachtenberg (violinist), and they remained in Harbin and Shenyang until 1959. By about 1930, Anatole had arrived in Hong Kong with his father, and his father's mother Claudia Gruzin.

Boris Milenko was born in central Russia during the Russian Revolution - the civil war which followed resulted in the Milenko family, along with many other White Russians who opposed the Red Russian communists, relocating to Harbin, Manchuria in 1920. Boris' father (Yuri Lukich Milenko) was a lawyer in St Petersburg prior to the Revolution, and continued to practice as a solicitor in Harbin from 1920 until the late 1940s.

“My activities commenced in Argyle Street Camp towards the end of Summer of 1942 when I began to speak to one of the Chinese drivers of the ration lorries, which used to make daily visits into the Camp.  I got some items of local news from him and then started the system of bringing in Chinese newspapers through him.  This went on for many months.

My father, Charles McConnell Sloan was born in Hong Kong in 1914, the son of John Sloan, an employee of the Taikoo Sugar Refinery.