[ { "id": 207404, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "164\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nted and after a few weeks we depended upon the Japanese for the supplies of these basic necessities.\n\nThough the Japanese had not signed the Geneva Convention 1929 they apparently notified to governments concerned their intention to abide by its provisions, and in 1942 recognised the position of the International Red Cross in Hong Kong. The first Red Cross inspection of Bowen Road took place in June 1942 before I began to keep my diaries and I have now no note of this.\n\nWe did not know it at the time but the Japanese obviously decided as an article of policy to leave our hospital with its own staff to look after allied sick and wounded prisoners of war. They decided the size of the staff, the number of patients who were to be admitted and sometimes who were to be discharged. They did not interfere with the treatment of our patients nor did they remove anything other than minor quantities of drugs and equipment from our stores.\n\nI have no means of judging accurately but my feeling is that the Japanese supplied us with food, fuel and small quantities of material for repairing clothes and boots, essentials such as soap etc., on what were probably the scales they used for their own troops. Perhaps the scales were those for their garrison troops rather than for fighting troops; I can recall that our Formosan guards were poorly dressed and I know shared our anxieties when rations were late arriving. Japanese fighting troops of course drew largely upon local resources for food etc., during their campaigns.\n\nIn the hospital we had Japanese-supplied electricity and water for nearly three years, and when these finally failed we had recourse to our own alternative sources of power and improvised water supplies. We had no periods of relief from our surroundings and were increasingly closely confined as the years passed. I draw attention now to these points since, and before I close this account, I shall try to assess how far the outcome of our story, happier than it might have been, depended upon the Japanese and how far it depended on the efforts of our own staff and patients, the Red Cross and our friends in Hong Kong.\n\nI had made few records of the food situation before August 1942 but we fared none too well for rations. Of course we had some stocks of our own and Lt. F.J. Campbell, the quartermaster and his staff made forays without Japanese leave on the ration dumps accumulated by us in the Colony before hostilities began. These", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "184\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nin September and December, and two each in October and November. In 1945 we had one intake in January, a tiny intake in February, one in March and two in June. I imagine that most of the tinned foods came from overseas. I learned later that two ship loads of Allied Red Cross stores had reached Hong Kong during the war having been transhipped to Japanese vessels.\n\nEffects of supplements upon the General Diet\n\nIn February 1943 I began to estimate and record the protein, fat and carbohydrate contents of the contributions from the three voluntary sources to the general diet. I started also to calculate the calorie values of our general diet, but the figures I arrived at were undoubtedly high partly due to the fact that I made no allowances for losses in preparation and cooking and partly due to assumptions I was forced to make when calculating the value of unknown varieties of flabby fish or lily roots or chrysanthemum leaves. I have not thought it worth while to burden readers with these calculations but making them occupied many hours of my time.\n\nFeeding the Patients\n\nI referred earlier to the problems of feeding patients suffering from acute infections and how these were tackled. In the case of the deficiency diseases some patients had turned against all food and went downhill in spite of everything that we could do for them. In these fatal cases the walls of the intestine had become as thin as a sheet of paper and were quite incapable of absorbing nourishment. Little that we could do therefore influenced the cases of these patients at all. Those among us who were able to eat a rice diet and who escaped major infections were indeed fortunate.\n\nOur system of feeding patients suffering from deficiency diseases and those in whom the acute stage of infection was passing was quite simple. Anything in the food store was available for them in as great quantities as they could take, the aim being of course to arrest the declining state of nourishment and to reverse this as soon as possible. This policy was undoubtedly the right one and certainly preserved many lives. It had less obviously good results in those with defects of vision and certain other neurological damage.\n\nPatients therefore had first call upon the extra food stuffs received from all sources. Reference to the tables showing food", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207483, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n243\n\nRed Cross X-ray films but by then we had no developer. We were very glad to receive from the Japanese some bars of coarse washing soap which we badly needed. We were also given 200 envelopes of tooth powder, some material for sewing and for boot repairs and some drugs including T.A.B. for inoculations.\n\nIn January 1945 we had to render yet another list of patients suffering from serious visual defects, arranged by nationalities, and this list recorded a total of 65. No mail had come in for some time but some did arrive on 18 and 19 January, my latest letter from home being dated August 1944. Christmas and New Year messages were delivered to us from Red Cross Societies in many of the allied countries.\n\nThe month however was dominated by American air attacks on Hong Kong. By 8 January we had had 17 air alerts without a raid and on 15 January we had a two-hour raid. On 16 January occurred the most spectacular and effective of all our raids. It began about 8 a.m., went on till noon, was resumed during the afternoon and continued until dark. The all-clear was sounded at 9:30 p.m. During raids, all movement in the hospital was prohibited but we had to go out of doors to reach our kitchen and as the morning went on, I went out myself, as of course there was no interpreter about and by signs got the agreement of the guard to draw breakfast, which we eventually got about 11 a.m. It was 2 p.m. before we got dinner and not till after 6 o'clock was it possible to draw tea. All bearers of food had to hasten to get under cover with the greatest possible despatch.\n\nIn the hospital, Japanese standing orders were to keep all shutters closed during raids or run the risk of being shot at. My little bunk in a converted lavatory overlooked the harbour and it was not difficult to open a shutter far enough to get glimpses of what was going on. Three large Japanese cargo ships were anchored in the harbour and the American air attack was pressed by dive-bombing through very heavy fire in the most courageous fashion. At times the whole atmosphere seemed full of the sound of sustained gunfire and bomb explosions and the amount of ammunition used in the defence must have made a serious inroad on Japanese stocks. I did not see any aircraft brought down though there must have been casualties, but at the end of the day three cargo ships were badly listing and clearly unseaworthy for a long time to come. Fires were left burning in oil storage tanks on Stonecutters Island and elsewhere, and this day was to us a most impressive...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207486, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 254, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "246\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nAll of Mr. Campbell's records of receipts of Japanese rations were removed by Saito on 17 February in order, he said, that they could be examined by Japanese checkers. We never got them back.\n\nOn 19 March 24 lorry loads of beds (100) and mattresses and medical equipment left the hospital. On 21 March 109 patients with four doctors and 5 nursing orderlies were transferred to huts in Sham Shui Po leaving four officers and 56 staff with 15 so-called strong patients. I left with these on 23 March for Sham Shui Po. This was the only time I had been in a P.O.W. camp and by then the prisoners, like ourselves in the hospital, had become adjusted to the conditions. The hospital equipment had gone to the Central British School in Kowloon. We had stripped Bowen Road of every single article and structure we thought might be useful to us on our new site. In this, the Japanese seemed to encourage us.\n\nTHE REASONS FOR THE RETENTION OF\n\nTHE HOSPITAL IN 1942 AND ITS REMOVAL IN 1945\n\nIn the conditions following our surrender, it is not hard to understand the Japanese decision to leave a British Military hospital, which they found as a going concern, to care for Allied sick and wounded. Such a decision enabled them to conform with the provisions of the Geneva Convention, a political decision, while at the same time using an immediately practical alternative to involving their own medical services. Our hospital must have been a showpiece to their own inspecting officers and to the Red Cross representatives, both International and Japanese, and illustrated how they were conforming with the provisions of the Convention. They clearly succeeded in creating a good impression, as shown by the spontaneous remark to me of Mr. Engelbacher (I am not certain of the name) of the International Red Cross at the inspection on 21 December 1942 by Mr. Zindel and himself. He declared that we were better off than patients in a Japanese military hospital. This might have been true, but at that time, I was oppressed by the deaths of the last few months and the condition of large numbers of our patients, and I received the information with some coldness.\n\nThe arrangement under which we continued to occupy our own hospital must have provided quite serious administrative inconveniences for the Japanese. So far as I know, we provided the only concentration of British P.O.W. on the Island, though the Stanley Internment Camp, some miles away, held civilian internees and was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207516, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 284, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "276\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nordered to do so, unwounded. However this may be, there we were, available to relieve them of the responsibility of caring for our casualties.\n\nThe next point of importance is the Japanese decision to behave like other belligerents and abide by the terms of the Geneva Convention though they had not been signatories. As a result, they recognised and accepted representation in Hong Kong and some, at least of the activities of the International Red Cross Society.\n\nAs a possible third consequence they allowed the hospital to remain in its buildings and concentrated there all allied wounded from other hospitals in the Colony. They used it also to receive some, but not all sick from the P.O.W. camps.\n\nAll of these actions conferred clear benefits on the Japanese, as well as upon us.\n\nAny drugs or dressings removed by them from the hospital were in such small quantities as to be unimportant to us. Even when an electricity generator was taken, we still had another left. Except when some unacceptable decisions to admit too late, or discharge too early, sick prisoners were made by the Japanese the clinical freedom of our doctors was not challenged.\n\nThe hospital was given staple food and fuel rations and clothing and boot repair materials on a scale which may have been based on a standard used for Japanese troops who of course were known to live in part off the country in which they were operating. International agreements of course required only this scale to be observed. I think that our guards fared rather better than we did on their basic rations, especially in fish, but I have recorded earlier the anxiety shown by guards when their rations, like ours were late in arriving. I recall here the public statement to us in 1944 by a supplies officer that there were shortages on the Japanese side but that they would try to keep the hospital properly supplied. This was an appeal to us to understand their position, an appeal which fitted ill with much of the Japanese bearing towards prisoners. Their plight then, in Japan itself as well as in Hong Kong and no doubt elsewhere was extremely grave and their desperate resistance for another year is surprising. It was however hard, even impossible for prisoners to take then the detached view that we can today.\n\nWhile the Japanese haul of booty in the form of drugs and medical supplies in Hong Kong must have been enormous the quantities that reached the hospital were negligible and we were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208019, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "42 \n\nG. C. EMERSON \n\nJanuary 5 \n\n21 \n\n24 \n\nFebruary \n\nAssembly at Murray Parade Grounds; internment in waterfront hotels \n\nMove to Stanley \n\n1st meeting of Temporary Committee \n\n1st meeting of British Communal Council \n\nJune 29 American repatriation on \"Asama Maru\" \n\n1st meeting of First British Community Council \n\n1st Allied air raid on Hong Kong 1st Red Cross parcels, from Britain \n\nAugust \n\nNovember \n\nFebruary April/May \n\n1st meeting of Second British Community Council Arrests of bankers & Dr. Selwyn-Clarke (Director of Medical Services) \n\n1st meeting of Third-British Community Council \n\nCanadians repatriated on \"Teia Maru\" \n\nExecutions of seven internees \n\nSeptember \n\nOctober \n\nJanuary \n\nFebruary \n\nSeptember \n\n2nd Red Cross parcels, from Canada \n\nMilitary took control: Civilian Internment Camp, H.K. became military Internment Camp, H.K. \n\nBritish Community Council dissolved; District Chairmen to run Camp \n\n1944 \n\nJanuary 16 Bombing of Bungalow C-14 internees killed \n\nMarch \n\nMay \n\nAugust \n\n15 \n\n3rd Red Cross parcels (part of Nov. 1942 shipment, from Britain) \n\nNews of Germany's surrender \n\nEmperor's broadcast in Tokyo \n\n16 Japanese informed Mr. Gimson of surrender \n\n30 Rear Admiral Harcourt arrived; flag-raising ceremony in Camp", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209962, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "199\n\nA pair of Chinese drums, each with writhing dragons, with colours still surprisingly bright considering their age, is on show. There are Chinese caricatures of British soldiers and a red lion rears on the ensign which flew from a piquet boat in the attack on Chusan in 1842.\n\nThe regiment was one of those honoured by being allowed to carry the China dragon on its badge and it still features today, with the word \"China\" underneath, on the buttons and badges of the Border Regiment. The museum has a good collection of belt plates and cap badges bearing the dragon.\n\nThere is an interesting Chinese map, epaulettes and medals of the First China War. A banner seized by the 55th now in Kendal Church is the subject of a separate note.\n\nMore modern memories of Hong Kong are housed in the museum of the Middlesex Regiment, in Bruce Castle, Tottenham, London. The museum was closed for re-organisation when I visited but I was kindly shown the relevant items in the collection. The role of this distinguished regiment in the 1941 battle for Hong Kong is well known. There are several weapons which were used in the battle. One machine gun was buried to prevent its capture by the Japanese and it was recovered after the Allied victory. A Japanese machine gun is also held.\n\nThere is a framed menu card which was used on the regiment's Albuhera Day, 10th May 1943, in a Hong Kong prison-of-war camp. Sketched on the front is a guard tower and those present have signed their names. A Japanese flag bears the Rising Sun. Other reminders of POW life are the 1st Battalion's bugle which was used in Hong Kong, and later in Japanese prison camps and a small wireless set which was used secretly in the prison-of-war camp here. For refusing to divulge its whereabouts Colonel L.A. Newnham was tortured and executed. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross.\n\nThe museum also has a small flat fan with a pagoda painted on it which belonged to Captain Kyodo Shigeru of the Lisbon Maru. A poignant reminder of the incident is a sketch which shows the stern of the ship already under water and the decks crowded with desperate men. The drawing was kept for over two years concealed in a bamboo stick by Major C.M.M. Man,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 } ]