[ { "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": 207443, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n203\n\nThe 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.\n\nOn 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.\n\nSaito 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", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207466, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "226\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nwas found and confiscated, and I was told that searches would continue if forbidden articles of this kind were found. We repacked the boxes as best we could but we could only rope them and not lock them. I passed to the Japanese lists of possessions known to have been taken by them which I claimed belonged to people protected by the Geneva Convention. Nobody ever saw these goods again.\n\nOn 26 September the transmitting room used to broadcast music to the wards was dismantled and the bunk used for this purpose reverted to use as a nurse's bunk. Many in the hospital I think were relieved to know that our radio receiver was no longer active. I have referred elsewhere in this account to the rumour that the receiver was still being operated elsewhere in the hospital.\n\nIn September 1943 there arrived as our hospital interpreter Mr. Watanabe, Uncle John to many. This remarkable man was the minister of a Christian Church in Japan but I had few dealings with him outside official business at this time. He hated war, but while he did much work carrying messages of comfort between prisoners and between them and their relatives in the Colony and forwarding the good work being done by Selwyn-Clarke and his helpers he never betrayed his country and sought only to temper the harshness to human beings which resulted from her policies. After the war he was the subject of one of the \"This is your life\" programmes presented on television from London, to the preparation of which Selwyn-Clarke contributed greatly. I have had the pleasure of entertaining this truly Christian man myself in London. His whole family was killed in an air raid in Japan.\n\nWhen hostilities began in 1941 a number of private cars had been parked in the hospital grounds and most of these were damaged, my own very severely by masonry falling from the building which was damaged by bombing and shell fire. One car had been stripped and used by us for study purposes but all cars along with a lorry and an ambulance car had to be pushed by us up the steep hill to the Japanese officers' living quarters and were thus lost to us.\n\nMy diary records that on 9 November we sent a couple of glass eyes to Sham Shui Po for use by our men there so that they obviously continued to pay attention to their appearance. There was a very cold spell of ten days in November during which we needed all our blankets and all our blue hospital uniforms to keep patients warm. A full course of inoculations against typhoid, cho-", "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": 207487, "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": 255, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n247\n\nrun by as entirely separate institution. After the Canadians moved from North Point we drew our patients only from Kowloon and I suppose that the prestige of adhering to the Geneva Convention outweighed in Japanese minds the administrative drawbacks of our site in Bowen Road.\n\nAs time went on the need to supply and guard a unit widely separated from the main body of prisoners must have become more onerous. Increasing shortages and difficulty in supplying electricity and water to Bowen Road were probably instrumental in finally bringing about our transfer to Kowloon.\n\n24 MARCH -- 9 SEPTEMBER 1945\n\nWe now moved into the last few months of our captivity. At first, staff and patients were accommodated in Sham Shui Po camp and from there working parties of our staff went out daily to prepare the hospital. It was on that day that I got my only view of the Heep Yunn School and I did not like what I saw, but the same day I learned that we were to have the Central British School for use. This looked and proved to be a suitable building and we began to move our gear there. A little later Saito told me that the staff would be reduced to 40 all ranks though previously he had said that there would be 40 other ranks. On 9 April 6 officers and 34 other ranks moved in to the Central British School. Besides myself there were Major G.F. Harrison, Major J.W. Anderson, Captain A. Coombs, Lieutenant (Q.M.) F.J. Campbell and the Rev. James Squires our padre. There were five Royal Engineers, M.S.M. Sims, Q.M.S. Tyas, and sappers Samways, Carvell and Climo, and there were 29 other ranks R.A.M.C. and R.A.D.C. headed by Sergeant-majors Muxlow and Bartley. On 10 April 62 patients of whom 58 had been in Bowen Road and four were newly arrived in the hospital. There were at first no non-medical workers though these had been promised. On 12 April a further 62 patients arrived, 31 of these being crippled but in fair general condition and a further 31 being what we then called old men (i.e., unfit for service by reason of age). Two army officers and some American and British merchant navy officers were included, but we had no special accommodation for officers. The Japanese ordered that all patients were to have white beds, another example of window dressing. The hospital provided for 34 beds for patients on the ground floor and 81 on the first floor which also housed the operating theatre, X-ray room and laboratory.\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "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": 213637, "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-1995", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "208\n\nAn attempt by the prisoners to break out of No.3 Hold was repulsed by rifle fire from a guard party on the Bridge. Later, all the Japanese troops and crew members were taken off by several Japanese naval vessels, including a destroyer. No attempt was made to take off the P.O.W.s who were left to their fate. The vessel was under tow until the crew abandoned ship. Eventually, the vessel's stern touched bottom off the Chinese coast. The vessel took a violent lurch, and a renewed attempt enabled many P.O.W.s to break free and scramble over the side to swim ashore. Even then, they came under fire from nearby vessels. Most of those who made it to the shore were later rounded up by the Japanese, although one did manage to make his way to freedom via Chung King.\n\nLt. Wada had not survived the war, so the accused stood to face the music alone. A number of P.O.W.s gave evidence, but perhaps the most significant testimony came from the Second Mate Araki Kaname who elected to give evidence for the prosecution. He branded the order from Lt. Wada to batten down the prisoners in the holds as plainly illegal. The consequences were obvious if the order was carried out, and it was contrary to an Imperial Rescript which directed that prisoners should be treated no worse than their own troops, except so far as was necessary to keep guard over them. The witness was asked what would have happened if the Master had refused to comply with the order. “Lt. Wada would have been court-martialled if he had used force to oblige the Master to obey. The Master was responsible for the lives and safety of all on board\".\n\n846 prisoners died in the events that followed the battening down - either through suffocation, drowning or shooting.\n\nThe accused was defended by a very competent Japanese lawyer, probably chosen by his professional association, and he was permitted to call a number of witnesses from Japan, including a Lieutenant-General from the Army Marine Transport Bureau, who stated that a civilian master of a troop-carrying vessel was bound to obey orders given to him by the senior military officer on board. Japan had not ratified the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war, although he was aware of an Imperial Rescript to the effect that the convention should be observed so far as practicable. The main defence was that the accused had to obey orders even though the officer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216422, "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-2003", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "131\n\nan alliance. The Chinese Government prevaricated; as it turned out, this was fortunate as Japan took up the cudgel and confronted the Russians.\n\nDespite the Qing dynasty's innate sense of superiority, China was impotent on the world stage. She lacked the capacity to prevent the war from taking place on her territory and when she declared her neutrality she appealed to the belligerents not to usurp Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria. Japan agreed and disclaimed any post-war territorial ambitions. Russia on the other hand refused to regard Manchuria as neutral territory, leading to Chinese public opinion becoming resentful of Russian arrogance, as well as being critical of the timid Qing attitude.\n\nTo the Japanese the war was a matter of life or death; whereas to the Russians it was a matter of face. At official level the pluck of Japan in facing Russia electrified China from the start. However, during the first months of the war the Chinese were not at all sure that the Japanese, with their smaller forces, would be able to hold out to finish the war with a clear victory. As the months passed the Chinese were still divided; some were certain the Russians must win eventually and trimmed accordingly - others were believers in Japan and among them there developed an ominous feature as they began to express the opinion that the next step would be for Japan to rid China of every foreigner.\n\nChinese foreign relations\n\nChina, still suffering from the imperial myopic views of her own ascendancy, despite fighting going on in her territory, now realised the need to secure the advantages of civilised treatment and sought to attend the Geneva Convention. Questions also arose over a number of matters involving China's relations with foreign powers. These included China's foreign debts, neutrality, contraband, etc.\n\nChina declared its neutrality and quietly got on with aiding the Japanese in whatever way they could without incurring any Russian reaction. The Chinese peasants had their local loyalties and therefore most were not particularly interested in the whys and wherefores of neither the war nor who might win, so long as they and their families remained unscathed. Educated Chinese, however, watched the progress", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]