CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG:
THE STORY OF THE BRITISH MILITARY HOSPITAL, HONG KONG 1942-1945
DONALD C. BOWIE
The future comes one day at a time*
In international, as in private life, what counts most is not really what happens to someone, but how he bears what happens to him†.
INTRODUCTION
Ever since I sailed from Hong Kong in September 1945 after my release as a prisoner of war, I have waited for a suitable opportunity to write an account of the experiences of those who served or were patients in the British Military Hospital there. The story will be almost entirely about men for, though I served in the hospital from April 1939, the period of which I write is only that covered by my diaries which began in August 1942. It was then that I took charge of the hospital after the women nurses were removed by the Japanese and except for two, interned thereafter in Stanley. The two exceptions were Latvian and Russian women, lately medical students in Hong Kong University who were released in Hong Kong and sent later to North China. The two Canadian nurses were repatriated to Canada from Stanley in November, 1943.
The position of Senior Medical Officer was thrust upon me at twenty-four hours notice, and from the 7th August 1942 I kept diaries of events, daily at first but never less frequently than every two-three days, up to the 8th September 1945. Up to September, 1944, I summarized events in a separate book each month and all were sealed in tins and buried in our cemetery in Bowen Road up to March 1945. I recovered the buried diaries after the Japanese surrender and to these I was able to add the 1945 diaries which I had compiled while in the Central British School, Kowloon.
During the long years of captivity I also compiled and saved in the same way a report on our wartime surgical experiences in
* Old saying.
† Quoted here from Present at the Creation by Dean Acheson, 1969, who attributes it to George Keenan. The sentiment itself must have been expressed millions of times since principle sought to replace instinct as a guide to human behaviour.
For the author's career see end of this article.
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