CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
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of course I was responsible. Only on one occasion was I accused of a misuse of stores myself. In a community the size of ours, in the disturbing atmosphere of the early year or two, I suppose I was lucky not to meet more accusations of my own shortcomings. Anonymous letters diminished and eventually disappeared as the policy of spreading responsibilities took shape and of course as conditions improved.
In this account I have given much space to the problems of general messing of patients and staff for this was the most important general matter which affected everybody. Ordinary complaints as to quantity and quality of food were openly and freely made and as speedily forgotten by most of our population. There were some, a few only, whose recurring complaints made life miserable at times for all those in the supply line.
Arrangements made by our friends in Hong Kong
Even now I do not know the whole story about the food supplies which arrived at the hospital as gifts from our friends in Hong Kong. I repeat here the hope that Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke will find it possible to relate this in detail for it was he who originated the system. A short account of this remarkable man is necessary. He was Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong at the outbreak of war and was deeply committed to the welfare of Hong Kong Chinese citizens of all classes. He had reorganized the medical services in the Colony and had a formidable reputation as an advocate in any cause that he took up. He sought nothing for himself; he liked his own ways of doing things and often enough these did not commend themselves to others. Courage, pertinacity and not a little guile allowed him usually to carry the day. His wife and very young daughter were in Hong Kong with him, and were not evacuated to the Philippines and later to Australia with other service and civilian wives and families in July 1940. His view was that if the families of Chinese and other races for whom the Hong Kong government was responsible were not to be evacuated then his own family would also stay in the Colony. In this decision his wife backed him up fully.
Before the Far East war, following representations by the Japanese Foreign Office a Japanese doctor named Eguchi came to study on the spot the medical and health arrangements in the Colony. Colonel T. Eguchi next appeared as the Director of Me-