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ted and after a few weeks we depended upon the Japanese for the supplies of these basic necessities.
Though the Japanese had not signed the Geneva Convention 1929 they apparently notified to governments concerned their intention to abide by its provisions, and in 1942 recognised the position of the International Red Cross in Hong Kong. The first Red Cross inspection of Bowen Road took place in June 1942 before I began to keep my diaries and I have now no note of this.
We did not know it at the time but the Japanese obviously decided as an article of policy to leave our hospital with its own staff to look after allied sick and wounded prisoners of war. They decided the size of the staff, the number of patients who were to be admitted and sometimes who were to be discharged. They did not interfere with the treatment of our patients nor did they remove anything other than minor quantities of drugs and equipment from our stores.
I have no means of judging accurately but my feeling is that the Japanese supplied us with food, fuel and small quantities of material for repairing clothes and boots, essentials such as soap etc., on what were probably the scales they used for their own troops. Perhaps the scales were those for their garrison troops rather than for fighting troops; I can recall that our Formosan guards were poorly dressed and I know shared our anxieties when rations were late arriving. Japanese fighting troops of course drew largely upon local resources for food etc., during their campaigns.
In the hospital we had Japanese-supplied electricity and water for nearly three years, and when these finally failed we had recourse to our own alternative sources of power and improvised water supplies. We had no periods of relief from our surroundings and were increasingly closely confined as the years passed. I draw attention now to these points since, and before I close this account, I shall try to assess how far the outcome of our story, happier than it might have been, depended upon the Japanese and how far it depended on the efforts of our own staff and patients, the Red Cross and our friends in Hong Kong.
I had made few records of the food situation before August 1942 but we fared none too well for rations. Of course we had some stocks of our own and Lt. F.J. Campbell, the quartermaster and his staff made forays without Japanese leave on the ration dumps accumulated by us in the Colony before hostilities began. These