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CHINE SE
The Camp Superintendents, who are Chinese, are not anti-British; so far as they can show it, without incurring Japanese displeasure, their attitude is markedly pro-Allied. During black-outs in Hong Kong, anti-Japanese leaflets are posted at many points in the City. Every Chinese must work for the Japanese or starve, i.e. if he cannot prove that he is working for the New Order, his ration card is withheld. From what little Sergeant Medley could glean, it seems that there is doubt at all among Chinese that the Allies will win the war. He emphasized, as d. all the other returned prisoners, that the effect of the American air raids on Hong Kong has been electric. A number of Chinese civilians have been killed but
there is no hint of resentment.
JAPANESE
It is difficult to get any line on Japanese reactions but the following incident is significant. When Mussolini fell, Mr. Gimson was called to Japanese Headquarters and interviewed by the Chief of the Gendarmerie. He was asked what the meaning of this latest event was and he laid it on thick about the surrender of the Italian Navy and the consequent release of more and more warships for duty in the Pacific. to say nothing of aeroplanes. He was listened to with attention and at the end of the interview was sent back to Stanley with a sack full of cigarettes.
When the internees left Stanley to board the Exchange Ship, Nakazawa the Camp Superintendent, lined them up and told them that if they had suffered in Stanley, (and he knew they had) they must blame him alone. The internces were not able to account for this strange behaviour, especially, as Nakazawa (Camp Superintendent) has in the past been consistently sympathetic and helpful so far as was possible under the eyes of the Gendarmerie.
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Sergeant Medley said that the Repulse Bay Hotel and the Queen Mary Hospital have been converted into recuperation centres for Japanese; I need scarcely add that he hoped they would be bombed.
The rice used in the camp, so far as the internees can tell, is still the same rice which the Hong Kong Government bought and stored in 1941.
Sergeant Medley emphasized the impossible conditions aboard the Japanese Exchange Ship and the gravity of the situation in Stanley owing to near-starvation, illness and lack of medical facilities and equipment.
Sergeant Hedley has already sent to the Colonial Office a short report, dated October 26th, 1943, from hair. Pennefeather-Evans, Sergeant Hedley received the very strong impression that the Commissioner of Police left unsaid what he most wanted to say, which was that the Police Force as a whole will require a period of leave and recuperation before they are fit to resume their duties. Sergeant Hedley himself makes a point of this. The Police Force seem to have come through their ordeal as a whole better than most other bodies of men in the camp but they too are hard pressed and, in Sergeant Medley's opinion, physically incapable of active duty without a period of rest.
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