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At the isolation hut the conversation was on similar lines a promise of medicines "tomorrow". When I observed that that was the reply we got every day, kajor Joh flushed and shouted to the interpreter to shut up, adding that if we spoke like that again he would turn the machine guns on us. He then strode off in a temper and when I tried to speak to him directly in German, he ignored me completely. General Kaltby then stepped forward and asked for permission to see the Japanese general, and this was flatly refused. I then returned to the attack and asked for permission to visit our sick in Argyle St., camp, and again the answer was "NO"; when I referred to the Geneva Convention he broke into English for the first time saying, "British Doctors in the Philippines have turned machine guns on our men, pop-pop-pop; you will stay here." In vain did we explain that there were no British doctors in the Philippines (I have often wondered since whether he meant Stanley). We asked again when he was returning and when he would send us the medicines, and he replied "Tomorrow, may be morning, may be afternoon," With that he jumped into his car and did not visit us again while I was in the camp.
16.
3rd January. sufficient for one day. Lt. Sawamoto came in to
17.
The rice stores left in the camp today were only
No medical supplies were sent in at all, but say he would get us some tomorrow!
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4th January. On this day a mumber of Indians estimated at about 200 were suddenly marched out of the camp by a group of Japanese; no one knew where they were going or for what reason they were being taken away. No medical supplies arrived, nor did any Japanese officer visit the camp.
Two Volunteer officers were allowed to go out into Kowloon and buy some picks, shovels, disinfectant, cooking utensils, etc.
18.
5th January. Lt. Sawamoto came in a lorry and took me, along with a fatigue party to the Central British school which had been converted into a Japanese Military Hospital; there he gave us 47 camp beds (from our own stocks of course) for our sick. While the lorry was taking these back to the camp, I persuaded him to allow me to visit the Argyle st. camp nearby, and there I found similar deplorable conditions. There were about 1100 - 1200 men there of whom many were Indians. There were 82 cases of dysentery (69 Indian and 13 British), and 55 other cases (wounds, malaria etc.,) were lying in a hut they called the hospital (43 British and 12 Indians). They had had 6 deaths there (5 British 3 from secondary haemorrhage and toxaemia and 2 from dysentery and 1 Indian from dysentery).
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There were 6 cases there at the time urgently in need of surgical attention, but no help had been rendered to these cases despite repeated requests by the doctors in the camp. I persuaded Lt. Sawamoto to arrange for these urgent cases to be taken to a civilian hospital that afternoon and he promised to come to the camp at 1500 hours and pick up a surgeon and take him along to do the operation. We waited at the appointed place till 1900 hours in vain. He told us afterwards that the operations had been performed, the next day by a civilian doctor. In this camp there was one military doctor together with about four civilian doctors but their usefulness was curtailed by the same lack of supplies.
19.
6th January.
At 1500 hours Lt. Sawamoto suddenly arrived with a lorry load of Indians, many of them too ill to walk; but this was only` the begiming for it was followed by another and yet others until 120 additional cases of dysentery, including 12 British, were unloaded on us from the Argyle St. camp. I protested that we lacked the accommodation and the staff and the facilities to look after this large number of cases, and suggested that Argyle St. camp should be converted into an isolation camp and all the fit people from that camp should be transferred over to us,
but /
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