CO129-592-2 Reports on current situation- medical work 3-3-1946 - 12-5-1947 — Page 117

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Immediately after the surrender, I persuaded as many of my Chinese staff of doctors, nurses, midwives, vaccinators, health inspectors and members of the Waterworks and Drainage Departments to remain at their posts in Hong Kong for the sake of the general community and the prisoners of war. When the Japanese military authorities took over the civil hospitals or made further service impossible by withdrawing permits for food and fuel, and when the cost of necessities became prohibitive, the staff were left with one course open to them, that is, to escape to Free China. Having served in Hong Kong after the surrender, they were liable to be imprisoned and even shot by the Chinese when crossing into China unless they could produce a certificate of identity proving that they were not Japanese agents coming to spy out the land. Hence, my certificate which was intended to protect them and, also, to enable them to obtain assistance from the British Consuls, British Militiary Authorities in China and the mission hospitals.

Another count in the indictment was that I paid sums of money to a large number of persons, either with the object of obtaining information for the allies or to bind them to the British Government.

The Gendarmerie refused to attach any credence to the suggestion that I was trying to implement, to the best of my ability, the undertaking given by the British Government before hostilities to care for widows, orphans, wives, children and dependents of members of Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, etc., with the help of a group of courageous persons including Chinese Portuguese, Eurasians, Czechs, British, my skeleton medical staff and my wife and small daughter.

My first prison was a small dark cell, 6'6" long 5' wide and 6'6" high, looking onto a large communal cell containing, at times 70 to 80 prisoners packed like sardines.

After the usual 'investigation' by the Gendarmerie, I was informed that I was to be executed without formal trial.

Possibly, owing to the repeated efforts for my reprieve made by the British Government through the Protecting Power, combined with the efforts of the British Consul in Macau, and the International Red Cross, the execution did not take place.

I was only in the hands of the Gendarmerie for ten months. After this, I was handed over to the Japanese Advocate General's

The Department where questioning is not accompanied by duress. Gendarmerie would appear to have made a close study of the "Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana" which you probably remember was issued in pamphlet form in the reign of Maria Therese of Austria (about 1768) as a guide to village magistrates on the value of the thumb screw, strappado, burning of areas of the skin, and the like. More modern 'improvements on these methods included preliminary deprivation of food for five or six days and ballooning-out of the stomach and bowel with gallons of water introduced by rubber tube.

The Advocate General's Department dispenses with physical force (other than execution by shooting and decapitation) and houses

Sixteen months its prisoners in relatively hygienic surroundings. after my original incarceration I was formally tried, if one can so describe a process in which there are no opportunities for making a defence and in which, for example, forty-four persons on different charges are dealt with in a court session 66 about three hours. This time, instead of being condemned to death, I was awarded a very light sentence of three years.

I served just over three months of this sentence, during the greater part of which I was no longer prevented from speaking with other prisoners. In December, 1944, I was released from prison and interned in a small camp in Kowloon. The reason given for this very acceptable and quite unexpected release was that it was the fourth anniversary of the Japanese attack on the Colony.

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