[ { "id": 207415, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n175\n\nat the corners of the mouth and scrotal oedema. During August 1942 only 17 cases of deficiency diseases were admitted as such, but the same signs were common among the dysentery and diphtheria admissions. We began an investigation into all the various manifestations and intensive treatment was started. These patients with deficiency diseases were to form a nearly immovable block in our patient population for a long time because improvement came about extremely slowly. An outstanding symptom was burning pain in the feet which sometimes required morphine for its relief. Many sought to ease the pain by plunging their feet into cold water and one patient had to be confined in a place where water was not available in order to avoid maceration of the skin. Some who had had deficiency diseases improved enough to return to P.O.W. camps. Others remained in hospital up to our release in 1945. These last had balancing problems, numbness of limbs and visual defects.\n\nThe hospital had admitted 1225 patients during 1942 and this figure included all patients transferred to us from all the other civil and service hospitals in the Colony. Of the total, 443 were admitted during the five-month period August-December and at 31 December 341 patients remained. Pressure on our accommodation had been severe, and repeated changes in the usage of wards were needed to isolate infectious patients and provide room for all who needed our care. The Canadian P.O.W. camp at North Point closed in October and the troops moved to Kowloon. Perhaps because of the rearrangements required by this move, but almost certainly reinforced by the well-known Japanese fear of infectious disease, we were not allowed to discharge patients whom we considered would suffer by a move to a camp. The pressure on our space and feeding arrangements was therefore intense and this did not begin to ease until April 1943. By the end of 1942, however, the heaviest burden of the infections had become lighter, though the long haul to cope with the deficiencies as the main load had already begun.\n\nThe year 1942 had weighed heavily on the spirits and energies of patients and staff. The departure of the women nurses cast a gloom over the hospital. The future seemed uncertain, the rations were poor, patients flooded in, deaths were frequent, but food gifts to the hospital from friends in Hong Kong and the arrival of a Red Cross parcel per head, to which I shall refer later, together with a natural resilience as the acute epidemics subsided towards the end of the year brought about some lightening of the clouds.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207762, "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-1976", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF A ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942 - 46\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to give an account of the transport work of the Friends Ambulance Unit, China Convoy in West China during the four years 1942-45. This transport operation was only part of the work undertaken from 1941 to 1951 in medical, transport and rehabilitation work in China. The data on which the paper is based has been culled from records at Friends House, London and personal records. There are other (and possibly fuller) records in the archives of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia, but it has not so far been practical to consult these. It is possible that when this is done a more detailed study can be undertaken.\n\nThe record here presented is not only of historical interest. It is intended to show what resources are required and what can be achieved in operating road transport in arduous conditions with little services or spares available from outside the organization and a minimum of imported fuel. This may be of value in planning and comparing transport systems in underdeveloped countries.\n\nBackground\n\nThe Friends Ambulance Unit had its origins in World War 1 when it was set up to provide alternative service to Quakers and others who, for reasons of conscience, refused to bear arms. It was re-established in 1939 for the same purpose and its members served as unpaid volunteers in various capacities in Finland and Norway, Egypt, Greece, with the Free French in Syria, in Ethiopia, India, France, as well as in China. After the war the work in Europe merged into relief and reconstruction and was largely taken over by the Friends Relief Service. A full account of the work is given in Davies. (Ref 1)\n\nThe FAU China Convoy was thus part of a larger organization but had distinguishing characteristics. Much of the financial support...\n\nMr. Reynolds is head of Department, Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Hong Kong,\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207763, "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-1976", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "136\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nport for the work came from American United China Relief (UCR) funds through the American Friends Service Council (AFSC); there were members from Canada, U.S.A., New Zealand, as well as China itself; and the self-sufficiency required was much greater than that of other FAU groups.\n\nThe original plan, worked out in late 1940 and early 1941, was for a group of forty men, equipped with 20 trucks, a mobile operating theatre and mobile workshop, to undertake two tasks. The first was the transport of medical supplies into China from Burma and the second provision of medical teams to work with civilian and military hospitals. The proposals had the support of the British Fund for the Relief of Distress in China under Dr. H. Gordon Thompson, the Foreign Office, the U.C.R. and the AFSC. The trucks and equipment were purchased in the US and shipped to Rangoon where they were assembled and driven up to China. Dr. R. B. McClure, a Canadian medical missionary born in China, was appointed to lead the Unit.\n\nIt will be remembered that in 1941 Japan occupied all the coast of China, transport up the railway to Kunming from Hanoi had ceased and the only land routes into the western provinces still held by the Government of the Republic of China under Marshal Chiang Kai Shek were the Burma Road and the road from the USSR via Sinkiang. When the Sino-Japanese war widened into the Pacific War on December 8, 1941, about half of the FAU group had arrived in Burma and China, the first trucks were being assembled in Rangoon and the rest of the party and equipment were on the high seas. All arrived safely and the Unit undertook a number of interesting tasks during the Burma fighting of 1942.1\n\nMedical Services and Supplies in China\n\nDespite the diversion of manpower and loss of trucks and fuel in Burma the work of transporting medical supplies in China got underway in 1942. In 1941 there were four organizations concerned with military and civilian medical services:—\n\n1) the Army Medical Administration (AMA)\n\n2) the Chinese Red Cross (CRC)\n\n3) National Health Administration (NHA) Weishengshu (衛 生 署) with its civilian hospitals and clinics.\n\n4) Over 100 mission hospitals, responsible to their own Mission Boards.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208021, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "44\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nfacing the Japanese. Consequently it was part of American policy, especially from 1944 onwards, to re-create a united front against Japan and promote agreement on a form of Constitutional Government for China which would include the Communist Party. To this end Chairman Mao Tse Tung was escorted to Chungking in August 1945 by the US Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley. No real agreement was reached in some 41 days of talks and Chairman Mao returned to Yenan in October. Hurley resigned and in November the United States appointed General George Marshall as special negotiator, a truce was signed on January 10, 1946 and all-party Peoples Consultative Conference began*.\n\nHaving set the scene we may consider what this meant on the ground; specifically in terms of medical supplies to the Liberated Areas. These contained between 80-100 million people and perhaps 350,000 men under arms. Apart from supplies purchased and smuggled in from the Japanese occupied areas or captured, no UNRRA, International Red Cross, or other supplies had been allowed through from Chungking since the beginning of 1941, and the medical services were dependent on traditional medicines and drugs derived from available herbs. The situation was therefore very serious.\n\nThe UNRRA charter required that supplies be distributed to those in need regardless of race, religion, and party and UNRRA therefore applied pressure to the Chinese Government, via CNRRA, to allow supplies to go to the Liberated Areas. This pressure finally succeeded in January 1946 at the time of signing the truce and a permit for a total quantity of about eight tons of medical supplies was granted.\n\nDuring the period from the end of 1941 to 1946, the Friends Ambulance Unit, China Convoy, had been responsible for the transport of most of the civilian medical and relief supplies in the\n\n* For those desiring more detail of this period the following give different approaches:\n\nKenneth S. Chern, \"Politics of American China Policy, 1945: Roots of the Cold War in Asia\". Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 4 Winter 1976-7.\n\nJohn S. Service, Lost Chance in China. Random House, 1974. Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941-50. 2 vols, Chicago, 1964.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214871, "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-1999", "page_number": 286, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "255\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nFENGSHUI AND ROAD WORKS AT TONG FUK VILLAGE, SOUTH LANTAU, IN 1958\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nIn my memoir of government service, Friends and Teachers, Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996), one of the opening chapters was devoted to my duties in connection with the Shek Pik Water Scheme on Lantau Island to the west of Hong Kong in the late 1950s. In it, I recounted the periodic confrontations with the villagers of that then remote place over the drillings and soil excavations needed to establish the viability of the proposed design for the dam, along with the similar difficulties experienced later on, during construction work on the reservoir, its access roads and catch waters. Bringing obstruction and delays, the local people's opposition stemmed from their strongly rooted belief in geomancy (fengshui) and in the adverse effects for man and beast certain in their minds to follow any tampering with the landscape, especially when its orange-red coloured soil was exposed to view.\n\nSimilar problems were also being encountered in adjoining old villages during the extension of the only recently completed South Lantau Road to the reservoir site. Five miles of new motor road were required, and the line passed through several settlements. There were difficulties with the villagers at each of these places, particularly at Tong Fuk Village, to which at one point I and my land staff had to make frequent visits because of the villagers' continual interference with the contractor's workmen on site, regardless of promises made and assurances given.\n\nNeedless to say, the appearance of Tong Fuk village today, with its array of smart \"Spanish Villa\" type houses, restaurants and shops bears no resemblance to its former self. In 1958, every house was old and built in the traditional architectural style, occupied by humans or livestock, or used for storage, and all its inhabitants were engaged in agricultural work, mainly in raising the two annual rice crops on which they depended for a subsistence livelihood.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]