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DONALD C. BOWIE
When I started to write this account I intended to concentrate upon the experiences of staff and patients, and to restrict reference to myself to trying to cast a little light on situations which otherwise might seem obscure. My diary notes, though voluminous, were for the most part phrased in what I thought then discreet language in case they were discovered by the Japanese. I had a healthy respect for the Japanese capacity for dealing out punishment to anyone who failed to obey their orders to the letter. This discretion, allied to a tendency to refer in cryptic terms to events which filled my mind at the time but which have now faded from my memory, has left me with masses of statistics and information of a kind which I have found difficult to weave into a coherent story which will do justice to patients and staff. I have lost touch with nearly all my colleagues and friends whose own memories might have stimulated me, and in this account I am therefore relying far more on personal recollections and experiences to round off the story than I ever intended originally. I hope that those who shared these years with me will, if they read the story, forgive the change in emphasis which these considerations have made necessary. Looking back over my diaries now I am glad that I never had to explain some of the entries to the Japanese. I learned enough then to understand now that a quite truthful explanation of a simple description of an event might not be accepted. Practised interrogators were known to use methods against which the truth finds it hard to prevail. Fortunately I never had to submit to such an ordeal.
This then is the story of the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong. I did not see any prisoner of war camps until I lived in Sham Shui Po for a few days in March 1945 when conditions had, as they had also in the hospital, become much more stable. I am in no position to write the stories of the camps, and any references I may make to conditions there are based on hearsay only. Their medical and administrative problems were different from those we met in the hospital.
After considering in a prelude the general situation in Hong Kong as I saw it, I refer briefly to the period of hostilities and then to the early months of captivity up to August 1942. I then deal in more detail with events from that date onwards fortified by the notes in my own diaries.
The story of the Army Medical Services in Hong Kong is contained in Volume 11 of the Official Medical History of the Second