L
1979/6
THE PRIDISH CAMP.
- 6
PART III.
193
(E) Letter from Rex RAY, American Southern Baptist Mission, Wuchow, S.China, dated (post mark) 13.4.42.
Fuchs
"I had four refugees to supper last night who escaped from the liong Kong prison camp at Stanley. One American airplane mochanic, one Britisher, Customs, one Polish man, newspaper correspondent, and one tall English girl, about 26, Government clerk....
....No one is allowed to see or talk to anyone in the camp. They have come 2500 Britishers, 450 Americans, and a few Dutch in the camp,
There are about 1000 women and children in the camp. Daily they are issued about ten ounces of rice and one of meat, counting the bone as meat. They have plenty of water. Boiled water to drink. No soap. No mosquito nets....The small children were given milk for several weeks, but that stopped about 13th March, The people in the camp do all their own work. Everything is handled by Committees. Those refugees say that nearly everyone is on a Committce, Burnside is cheerful and fat still. He is in charge of the tools, in other words tool Ross....In the camp grounds they have an old English cemetary where the first coldiers that evcr arrived in H.K. were buried. The prison camp use that now. So far only very old people have died except one young man with heart trouble. They have only one coffin to use for all, One of the internees got a few boards and made it. The coffin is lowored into the grave and the coffin having a hinge on the betten, in some way which leaves the body in the grave and coffin is taken out and saved for the next one.
The campers managed to get a bit of tea leaves. These are boiled and boiled until there is no more sell about them, thon they are dried and crumbled up for the men's enoking substitute for tobacco. The belief of these four escaped refugees is that unless more food is supplied one half of those in the camp will be dead within six months, They believe it is the determined plan of the Japs to let them starve to death gradually. Money is of no
use now as there is nothing they can buy in the camp. The American Concul is in a little rock walled pen by himself as the Japs say it is against international law to keep him behind the berbed-wire Fences with the other internees,"
INOTES- The want of mosquito nets may be a most dreadful thing soon.
as Stanley was the most malarious place in the Island until about ton years ago when it was drained and controlled for the building of the new jail and St Stephen's College. The cemetry bears witness to the fate of nearly all the first arrivals, and about a year nîter the first landing the camps were all moved from Stanley because of the death rate. Without proper control, one fears that by autumn malaria will be a worse enemy than Japs to the interncos, One writer quoted in the last Report said that tea and broad were provi- ded in the American camp, but these amenities seem to be denied to the British and Dutch.
(F)
Letter from Elizabeth H.S.KURRAT, Christion Literature Cociety, Changtu, dated 25.4.42. This Society seems from the contest of Misc Murray's letters to be connected with the London Mission of the Church of England, Headquarters in London. The names she mentions are those of British people.
"We find it almost impossible to get news from Hong Kong, Boxer, Gosby,and Dr.Sydenham have all been mentioned as safe, but that does not mean the others are not. Undoubtedly all our people are in concentration camps and conditions there are unsatisfactory owing to insufficient food, no medicines and uncatisfactory saniration."
(G)
•
Letter from V.FARMER, 160.I., Chungking, dated 26.4.42. This writor has met Mrs Priestwood and other escaporu,
Food was not tro plentiful, two bowls of rice a day and a little boiled lettuce, There is a canteen though, where with luck you