THE BOAT REFUGEES FROM VIETNAM
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for Refugees (UNHCR) to press into service all available reception areas and facilities. At the same time, large numbers of government staff were deployed on special duties, co- ordinated by the Secretary for Security, to ensure that the refugees were escorted to the reception areas in an orderly fashion and that they were adequately cared for inside.
On the government side, much of the burden fell on the Royal Hong Kong Police Force (particularly the marine police) and on the Immigration, Prisons, and Marine Departments. But, in fact, there was no branch, department or agency of government that was not called upon to make a contribution to the handling of the problem. The role of official emergency and relief bodies such as the Civil Aid Services and the Auxiliary Medical Service deserves special mention: many of their volunteer members found themselves putting on uniforms for a night of strenuous duty after doing a full day's work at their normal jobs.
The strain on manpower and resources intensified throughout the summer. While camps were being set up from scratch, other sites had to be found quickly for further ones. The pressures rose frequently to intolerable levels. On June 1, for example, there were 5,623 refugees still on their boats at the Western Quarantine Anchorage. Five days later, an improvised anchorage at Discovery Bay on Lantau Island held boats with 8,363 people on board, for whom food and water had to be supplied. At this time, the staff of the Social Welfare Department's emergency kitchens were producing about 40,000 hot meals a day for the refugees.
Under these pressures, it is not surprising that conditions in most camps during the summer were both crude and crowded. Thanks largely to the efforts of public health and medical teams, no serious epidemics broke out; and many refugees bore witness that the main reason they had headed for Hong Kong was that it was widely known in Vietnam that Hong Kong's treatment of refugees was more humane and better organised than elsewhere. In the latter months of 1979, there were 12 camps and centres in operation = eight in Kowloon, three in the New Territories, and one on Hong Kong Island. Four of these camps, all in Kowloon, were under the control of the UNHCR and were staffed by members of charitable relief organisations such as the Red Cross, Caritas, the Hong Kong Christian Service and the International Rescue Committee. To these bodies belongs much of the credit for the high reputation Hong Kong earned for its efforts to treat the refugees (insofar as numbers allowed) as individuals in whom hope, dignity and a sense of purpose must be kept alive. Help in various forms also was given by a number of other charitable and religious bodies including the Salvation Army, the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Save the Children Fund.
The remaining eight camps were run by the government. They included the Government Dockyard in Canton Road, managed by prison staff on secondment, and two large camps run by the Housing Department at the new town of Tuen Mun in the western region of the New Territories. The premises used ranged from former military camps to factory buildings, fitted out with tiered bunk-beds.
Throughout the year hundreds of visitors from overseas arrived, with the encouragement of the Hong Kong Government, to see the refugee situation firsthand and to inspect the camps. The camp which many of these visitors will remember most vividly is the arrival and transit centre at the Government Dockyard, where the refugee boats, on their release from the Western Quarantine Anchorage, reached their journey's end.
From April onwards, when this centre was set up, nearly all refugees spent their first two or three weeks in one of the dockyard's four large godowns, or warehouses. There were periods in the middle of the year when this camp held more than 12,000 people; visitors to the godowns had to thread their way along a quay through hundreds of people - including dozens of naked children showering themselves during the full heat of a summer's day.