BOOK REVIEWS
Two views of internment: Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire by Jean Gittens (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1982) and A Yen For My Thoughts by G. A. Leiper, (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1982)
Happy coincidence has brought two excellent accounts of war-time internment in Hong Kong onto the bookshelves at the same time. Written from personal experience, they are a poignant testimony to the courage of all who endured hardship and deprivation at Stanley and fill a gap which has long needed filling in our knowledge of conditions during the Japanese occupation.
As a Eurasian, Jean Gittens need not have been interned, but the chance, however faint, of reunion with either her children in Australia, or her already imprisoned husband led her to enter Stanley voluntarily. The opening chapters of "Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire" are a revealing social commentary. She relates how her parents, the late Sir Robert and Lady Clara Hotung, were the first non-Europeans to gain permission to live on the Peak and the resulting snide remarks they had to endure from neighbours and their children. The "difference" was brought home with unbelievable callousness when the Eurasian wives and children of government employees, advised to leave Hong Kong prior to the invasion, were turned back on reaching Manila because of Australia's insistence that only those of "pure British" descent could be given refuge.
The same chapters convey the impression of a spoiled little rich girl: "In spite of the fresh air and exclusiveness, living facilities on the Peak were understandably primitive. Braving these conditions would have tried the spirit of anyone, but for a woman with a large family of young children it needed true courage," and again: "The summers were long and trying and, especially during our early years, Mother would take us away to one of the seaside resorts in the North to escape the heat.”
I am not sure whether the prissiness is deliberate, but it serves to heighten the contrast with the degrading and dehumanising conditions of the camp detailed in the remainder of the book.
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