THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46
NOVEMBER
33
Pat Wong, an old Maryknoll friend from our first days in Hong Kong, and now visiting the Colony from his new home in Honolulu, took the new men to their first Chinese banquet with no casualties reported.
The Kongmoon contingent among the new men, with Father O'Melia as guide and teacher, take off for the Tan Chuk Seminary in the Wuchow Mission as the new site for the Language School; a safety precaution in view of the worsening conditions between the Japanese and the British-American bloc. Father Siebert, assigned to Kaying, will leave for there later on.
The Stanley staff went to the dock to greet the S.S. Van Buren and the other new missioners but they were not on board - a mystery!
Brother William arrived from Shanghai where he has been staying with Father Whitlow for some time. He is unable to return to Korea at present.
Father Don Hessler arrived from Kweilin by plane for a rest after his recent bout with typhoid. Father Barney Meyer goes to the Paris Foreign Mission compound, "Nazareth," for a retreat preparatory to his coming jubilee. Father Feeney and Father Bauer arrive, the latter for treatment at St. Paul's for a bad case of dysentery. The end of the month brought Passionist Bishop Cuthbert O'Gara by plane from Kweilin.
PART II: WAR AND OCCUPATION, DECEMBER 1941 -- AUGUST 1945
With the proximity of the Japanese across the border, the atmosphere in the Colony was rather tense. When Canton fell to the Japanese, there was a mass flight of refugees to Hong Kong. It was then estimated that some one hundred thousand came in 1939, bringing the population of the Colony at the outbreak of hostilities to approximately one million six hundred thousand, and it was thought that at the height of the influx, some half a million were sleeping on the streets.
Then, on the fateful date of December 8th, the quiet of the Maryknoll House was rudely broken by the events of what was, no...
Page 60
Page 61