CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
203
The Japanese appetite for reports continued to be insatiable and they sought to learn details about our hospital pre-war, particularly as regards staffing, equipment, numbers in wards and so on. All of this information was in official publications which were already in Japanese hands. I suppose it allowed Saito to compare our standards with those of his own army. In July 1944 he took a photograph of the medical staff in Bowen Road and at another time he asked for certain text books on obstetrics and gynaecology which we lent him though we never got them back.
On 9 June 1945, in a long search of the hospital, he took away all our case sheets, operation books and admission and discharge books which had been carefully preserved and which served as the basis for the statistical and factual accounts of our experiences to be found in the Official History. Thereby he got rid of a mass of material which would have made sorry reading in the originals. I had of course already extracted all the information I wanted, and so the loss was not disastrous. I found it remarkable when on 28 August after the Japanese capitulation I demanded a written acknowledgement that these had been, as he said, burned that he signed this at once. I even took the trouble to get witnesses to his signature, one being our Major James Anderson and the other being Hasegawa who was Saito's interpreter at the time. On the same occasion he affirmed to me, also in writing, that all the civilian clothing he had taken from us in Bowen Road had been stored in Japanese headquarters and later stolen by the Chinese. At this time the British naval relieving force had not arrived, we had no arms and I was quite astonished at Saito's complaisance. I had expected a haughty refusal to acknowledge any responsibility.
Saito like Tokunaga was condemned to death by a War Crimes Court in Hong Kong in 1946. This sentence was later commuted to 20 years imprisonment and later still this was again reduced to fifteen years. When I try to form a judgement on Saito I do so solely upon our experiences with him in the hospital. I do not know if he was a career officer in the Japanese army, what we would call a regular officer. He was apparently deeply imbued with the mores of his army, he was usually short-tempered and irritable, and as I have said earlier I never established any relationship with him even professionally. He gave us that to which he or his commander considered we were entitled under the Geneva Convention so far as lay within his power, though he showed no tendency to do more
CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
203
The Japanese appetite for reports continued to be insatiable and they sought to learn details about our hospital pre-war, praticu- larly as regards staffing, equipment, numbers in wards and so on. All of this information was in official publications which were already in Japanese hands. I suppose it allowed Saito to compare our standards with those of his own army. In July 1944 he took a photograph of the medical staff in Bowen Road and at another time he asked for certain text books on obstetrics and gynaecology which we lent him though we never got them back.
On 9 June 1945, in a long search of the hospital, he took away all our case sheets, operation books and admission and discharge books which had been carefully preserved and which served as the basis for the statistical and factual accounts of our experiences to be found in the Official History. Thereby he got rid of a mass of material which would have made sorry reading in the originals. I had of course already extracted all the information I wanted, and so the loss was not disastrous. I found it remarkable when on 28 August after the Japanese capitulation I demanded a written acknowledgement that these had been, as he said, burned that he signed this at once. I even took the trouble to get witnesses to his signature, one being our Major James Anderson and the other being Hasegawa who was Saito's interpreter at the time. On the same occasion he affirmed to me, also in writing, that all the civilian clothing he had taken from us in Bowen Road had been stored in Japanese headquarters and later stolen by the Chinese. At this time the British naval relieving force had not arrived, we had no arms and I was quite astonished at Saito's complaisance. I had expected a haughty refusal to acknowledge any responsibility.
Saito like Tokunaga was condemned to death by a War Crimes Court in Hong Kong in 1946. This sentence was later commuted to 20 years imprisonment and later still this was again reduced to fifteen years. When I try to form a judgement on Saito I do so solely upon our experiences with him in the hospital. I do not know if he was a career officer in the Japanese army, what we would call a regular officer. He was apparently deeply imbued with the mores of his army, he was usually short-tempered and irritable, and as I have said earlier I never established any relationship with him even professionally. He gave us that to which he or his commander considered we were entitled under the Geneva Convention so far as lay within his power, though he showed no tendency to do more
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