THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46
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rice at a very low price in order to help the people and giving away bread and canned goods in order to insure that they would have enough to eat. On communications he noted that there were no buses in the city at all. The Japanese had sent them all to Japan early in the war. He got from Stanley to the city and back again by hitch-hiking in army jeeps and trucks. At the same time he applied to the military for a telephone and electricity connections. He noted that business was at a complete standstill. The two American banks had no business at all since they were not allowed to receive U.S. currency from the States. The exchange rate was 8 to 1 when he arrived but by the end of November it was down to HK$4.50. In December the railway between Canton and Hong Kong was reopened and people began flocking to Hong Kong; however, due to the poor condition of the track the trip was taking eight hours instead of the normal three. In normal times most people would have made the trip by boat, but in the course of the war more than half of the Canton boats had been sunk by mines, usually with the loss of all aboard. Nevertheless, as order was gradually restored in the Colony, more and more Chinese who had fled during the Japanese occupation returned and the Colony witnessed a spectacular recovery. People were returning at the rate of one hundred thousand a month, and the population, which had been reduced to about 600,000 in August 1945, rose by the end of 1947 to an estimated 1,800,000.
When Father Meyer first returned to the Stanley House he was overjoyed to find that his priceless manuscript and 200 copies of the famous "Meyer-Wempe Cantonese-English Dictionary" had not been destroyed. In his correspondence to the Superior General about this he learned that the dictionary had been used by the U.S. Navy during the war years, and the Navy had given Maryknoll 50 copies of the printing they had made for the use of their personnel. In the same correspondence the Superior General announced that former South China missioners Fathers Keelan, Sprinkle, Youker, Weber, Cunneen, O'Neill, and Brother Michael Hogan were on the high seas returning to their mission posts.
Just before Christmas Father Tennien hitched a plane ride from Hong Kong to Kunming in Yunnan Province, the city where every Maryknoller stayed before his thrilling flight "over the hump" into India during the war years. At one time there were so many