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Lamp posts are still down, and shell damage has not been repaired and what buses are running are packed to suffocation, and will soon cease functioning as gasoline is nearly finished in the Town. Owen Evans told me that the two lorries which they have been operating for the Medical Board would stop in another few weeks, this was in June, because there was no further supply of petrol. The trams run wonderfully well, but are packed also, and charge 30¢ for a first class fare. They do get you about, which is something.
All main streets have been given Japanese names.
It was
The banks opened three times, if I remember rightly, and third nationals were allowed to take out a limited amount of money, which was paid in big notes, which sold at a discount, so that anyone drawing $500 got about $350. a terrifio ramp, some one made money out of it. Third nationals and people of similar classification wore in a desperate plight, many of them. Any money they had was used up. There is apparently no future source of supply. Father Joy particularly emphasized this. Their position he said was worse in many ways than the people in Stanley.
In March the chinese population really realized that they are literally facing starvation. The shops that are open are selling what stocks they have. There are no new stocks coming in. when what they have is gone they are finished. One shopkeeper after another told me this. They all wish to "go home". And already, in June when I left Hongkong more than 600,000 had left Hongkong, the majority of them going on foot, large parties of them, four hundred or more, walking to all parts of the interior. They must arrange through their Guilds for protection, because many individual Chinese who started to walk early on returned penniless to Hong Kong, very often in a pair of trousers only. They had been stripped by their own countrymen the moment they were outside the protection of the Japanese.
The wealthier Chinese pay $300 for a boat ticket, which should cost $15 and get out that way, up to Swatow and Amoy, and down to Macao. But the majority of them just walk. If all the students and nurses and all their friends who were going to chungking, got there, together with thousands of others of the same type, Chungking must be packed just now. All the better type Chinese were heading for Free China. The Japanese are only too glad to see them go and it is reported that their idea of a suitable population for Hongkong is no Europeans whatsoever and 50,000 Chinese,
The Indian community have been quickly absorbed into their normal police work, those who are pliant. Those who are not are still in the Concentration camps. The Rutanje es and other leading figures in the Indian community were arrested by the Gend amerie and re reported to have had a thoroughly bad time, suud to have had to pay enormɔusly to get out. Among the Chinese community, Sir Robert Ho tung is reported to have lost sixteen millions of Hong Kong Dollars due to the war, in one way or another. He is only one of Aany. Security for people of this type usually is a pretty expensive affair.
The
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