[ { "id": 207504, "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": 272, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "264\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nto go to St. Albert's Hospital. There was sporadic small arms fire near the places that I visited, but none seemed to be directed at us and who was shooting at whom I do not know.\n\nMy diary records, to my considerable surprise now, that I suggested to the senior British officer, Colonel Field that if the Empress of Australia was taking away the rest of the prisoners, perhaps the quartermaster and I should be left for a short time to liaise with the incoming medical services, moving to the Gloucester Hotel for this purpose. I could only have done this with Mr. Campbell's agreement and why on earth we had such a foolish idea I cannot now imagine. I considered another suggestion from Selwyn-Clarke that I should take over and organise the surgical services in the Queen Mary Hospital, but this meant an extra two months in Hong Kong and I declined the offer. Selwyn-Clarke also wanted us to send six doctors to Stanley and four to Victoria, but none stayed for this purpose so far as I know.\n\nIt was about now that I heard a story that in the last stages of hostilities in 1942, Brigade Headquarters in the area had allocated alternative accommodation in Stanley prison for St. Stephen's Hospital which was nearby. The hospital did not move and so was overrun in the fighting there. It was then that the tragedies affecting patients, nurses and medical staff occurred. This story did not give the time at which the move of the hospital was suggested, but the notice was probably short and with the small staff available, the numbers of wounded being cared for and the total involvement of our fighting troops with the enemy and so unable to help, such a move probably seemed to be impracticable to the commanding officer, as it does to me. There was also a story that the Japanese had taken photographs of empty beds fitted with sheets in the upper part of St. Albert's Hospital which were stated to be reserved for British patients while Indians who were wounded were left lying on the floor. It was said that much use of these photographs had been made in the Japanese propaganda directed at Indian troops to induce them to join the Indian National Army which collaborated with the Japanese. I knew the Matron, the nursing and medical staff of St. Albert's Hospital very well and they would never have allowed separation of patients on grounds of race. I have no doubt at all that just as we did in Bowen Road, the staff in St. Albert's would nurse side by side all patients irrespective of race.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208695, "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-1979", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n125\n\nThis literally took the wind out of our sails and we were in the doldrums. Bishop Valtorta also interviewed Mr. Oda on our behalf but received the same categorical answer. However, Sister Paul made application about this time for Sisters Marie Regis and Dorothy, the former having been released from the Camp on a third national status, but the latter with us. As a result, Sister Regis was allowed to board the boat but Sister Dorothy was turned back. So we returned to Bethany, sadder but wiser.\n\nOur status in Hong Kong now being determined for us, we began to think about resuming Language Classes, and looked around for some teachers. We found one for the Mandarin and one for the Cantonese, but could not easily get a suitable one for the Hakka-ites.\n\nFrom the 11th to the 15th of October we went on Retreat, it being conducted by Father McCarthy, S.J., from Wah Yan College. About this time, Father Knotek's electrical ability having been discovered, his services were much in demand, both at Carmel and at St. Paul's Hospital, Causeway Bay.\n\nIt may be of interest here to describe briefly Hong Kong, as we saw it, some eight or nine months after its capitulation. The downtown section, at least along Queens Road Central, was fairly normal, and business seemed to be going on as usual, that is, on the surface, but actually business was pretty poor. All the stores had long since reopened; the larger foreign stores, of course, being taken over by the Japanese, and prices were on the military yen basis. The Chinese department stores were likewise open, but their stock seemed to be depleted, and not only were prices high, but it was difficult and even impossible to purchase many articles, especially of clothing. In many cases, about all that was left were extra large sizes of things. Along the streets in many places, and just outside of the department stores, sat vendors of various small articles. On the streets, the crowds seemed to mill about almost as in normal times, but little money changed hands. There were only the strictly necessary purchases made. Even for the Chinese populace, rice, oil, and firewood were rationed and on certain days, the purchasers had to line up and wait their turn at depots in various parts of the city. The Gloucester Hotel is now the Matsubara Hotel, and is open for business, but of course, mostly Japanese business. The Japanese Army and Navy have taken over almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212194, "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-1990", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "113\n\nthe walla-walla men are\n\nwould be an argument about the fare surely descended from the original Hongkong pirates and, that settled, a slow journey across the harbour, followed by a walk home. Such conditions are discouraging to social intercourse. They tend to break the community up into cliques; into the circle who live on the Peak, the crowd down in Victoria, and the mob over in Kowloon.\n\nHow deep-seated was the snobbery amongst the few could be seen at a later date, when the remnants of the British community were interned by the Japanese. Many of the women still thought themselves too superior to keep company with their sisters in misfortune, and continued to carry their noses in the air, while living under the most dismal conditions, crowded cheek by jowl seven and eight to a small room.\n\nTo avoid overheating during the Hongkong summer called for a special technique. The idea was never to move rapidly in any direction; a slow steady advance got you there. If the advance took you past the stately building erected by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, so much the better. It was air-conditioned. You could look in on your friends, who had the good fortune to rent offices there, and while passing the time of day your body refreshed itself in the cool dry atmosphere.\n\nOwing to the discomfort of movement and the geographic complexities, on leaving office at noon most people did not return home to lunch. They either went to the Club, where the cuisine, it is unreliably claimed, compared with that of the Shanghai Club, or to the Hongkong or Gloucester Hotels. These rival but contiguous establishments were a local institution. What Shepherd's Hotel was in Cairo fifty years ago, the Hongkong Hotel was in the late 1930s; a place where wanderers met. You seldom entered the hotel lobby without running into someone you had not seen for years. It might be an official of Imperial Airways who had just flown in from India, via Rangoon and Bangkok, or an American news reporter leaving by Pan-American clipper for Manila. Both hotels provided excellent fare. Some favoured the one, some the other. At the Gloucester the dining room was eight floors up on the roof, with a view over the harbour; in the Hongkong Hotel it was at ground level with a view of the \"Grips\", the arena where the cosmopolitan crowd foxtrotted to the music of a Filipino orchestra.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212196, "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-1990", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "115\n\npromotion and increases of pay. Brilliance and initiative are not requisite. In fact, unless well controlled they are a definite handicap. It is fatal to the career of the young official if events prove he was right where his senior was wrong. He will soon be stowed away on some remote shelf. All that is required of him is that he shall answer \"Yes\" at proper intervals; and not advance new ideas, or disturb the even tenor of the way of his superiors.\n\nAnother unhappy manifestation of colonial administration was seen in 1940, when the Japanese menace caused the authorities to issue an order to British women to leave the colony. You would have thought that the wives of colonial officials would have been proud to set an example. But not at all. The majority of the female relatives of Hongkong administrators used their influence to have themselves declared indispensable in order that they might stay in the colony. They wangled jobs as nurses, secretaries, and so on, while the less fortunate — as it then appeared — wives of the commercial community, who were not in a position to pull strings, were shipped out to Australia and other places. It naturally produced a lot of ill-feeling, but not, so far as I am aware, any Colonial Office enquiry.\n\nThe police force in Hongkong consisted of 14 British officers, 255 British other ranks, and 803 Sikh and 1022 Chinese constables. Despite its heterogeneous composition the force was quite efficient. The wealth of Hongkong attracts evil-doers from China, which has its full share of the criminal element. After decades of civil war they are usually well enough armed; but in Hongkong the statistics of serious crime, and particularly of malefactors brought to book, compare quite favourably with, for instance, those for Kentucky.\n\nChinese of the lower classes generally wear a short jacket, while Chinese of the gentle class wear a long gown buttoning up the side and reaching down to the ankles. Chinese gun-men also invariably wear long gowns, I suppose, the easier to hide their weapons. They are often of sleek appearance, but there seems to be a look about them which makes them easy to recognise. When I was staying at the Gloucester Hotel I noticed there were usually one or two long-gowned Chinese in the hallway outside my room. I asked my Chinese boy who these men were and he told me that in the bedroom on one side of me I had Mr. Tu Yuen Seng, and on the other side Mr. Wang Shao Lai. They were the chiefs of the Green and Red \"Tongs\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212223, "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-1990", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "142 \n\nnumber of bicycles, and despite having to dismount frequently to cross ditches, alleged to be anti-tank but too narrow to be effective for the purpose, made forty miles in a day along the footpaths amongst the hills. \n\nTens of thousands of coolies were carrying loads over the track from Mirs Bay to the East River: it shewed what a large flow of supplies still entered China from Hongkong despite the Japanese blockade. I even saw the parts of wholly dismantled lorries being carried along, four coolies to each pole on the heavier loads, such as the frame. Unfortunately a cholera epidemic was raging, and the Chinese government appeared to have made no effort to provide medical and sanitary supervision, on what was one of the few remaining routes of entry into China. A plague of flies hovered over the human excreta which defiled the edges of the road along its whole length. Coolies were dying by the dozen. They would collapse by the side of the road and crawl off to expire in the scrub. In places the stench was so strong as to make you retch. On arrival next day at Mirs Bay we were offered tea at the little Chinese customs house, while waiting for the launch. As the bay was entirely inside Hongkong territorial waters, Japanese ships could not enter, and the launches ran twice a day with impunity. \n\nI stepped ashore at Taipo, a village in the New Territory, in time to catch the evening train from Fanling, but I was now feeling ill myself and half wondering whether I too had not caught cholera. I was unable to join the golfing fraternity in the saloon car to listen to the highlights of the day's sport, or to partake of refreshment, and on arrival at the Gloucester I retired to my bed. \n\nThe luxury, however, of a modern hotel soon put me on my legs, and I was further fortified by the comfort of a passage to Shanghai in one of the Canadian-Pacific Company's liners. \n\nIt was November. Many of the younger men had left to join up, either in Malaya or in India, where it was thought their services might prove more useful than in England. Nevertheless with the addition of the people who had been brought in from the outports, there was no shortage of staff in the offices; and the Clubs, if anything, appeared rather crowded. Owing to the stagnation in trade, people had not much to do. Yet managers seemed reluctant to release their young men, too many of whom, as it appeared to me, seemed quite content to stay; while, surprisingly, older middle-aged men were being allowed \n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212601, "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-1991", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Maymyo 1941 \n\nGUERILLA TRAINING* \n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE \n\n135 \n\nThe shortage of British shipping along the China coast became more marked during 1940 and 1941. The vessels built for this traffic, generally between three and four thousand tons in measurement, with comparatively shallow draft, were particularly suitable for use in the Persian Gulf and along the shores of North Africa. Many had been taken to serve as transports in those seas. Moreover, the Admiralty, sensitive to the dangers threatening the peace of the Far East, had directed such larger ocean-going vessels as still were available not to proceed west of Singapore. Consequently there was pressure on the remaining cabin space, and I was fortunate to obtain a berth in a small coaster, which took seven days to reach Hongkong from Shanghai, as against the usual four.\n\nHongkong was very quiet, a state of affairs not to be attributed to an entire absence of females. It was remarkable how many had succeeded in avoiding the order to leave the Colony. I had to wait a whole week for a passage to Singapore, where formerly berths on a dozen different ships would have been offered in the time. This gave me an opportunity to look around. Friends took me out to Deep Water Bay, where we sunbathed on the beach, and drank our tea on the club verandah, looking out over the little golf course. High up on the hill towards Wong Nei Chong Gap I could see the green tiled roof of the house where my wife and I, only three years previously, had been caught in the rain. I wondered whether the lady of the mansion was one of those who had contrived to remain behind. In the evening we drove round to the next bay and bathed from the Lido, a steel and concrete building of pleasing design housing a restaurant, and bathing booths. The hot weather had set in, but here a cool breeze blew down a gully on the hillside into the windows. I had always liked the place because of its informality. You could eat your dinner, and dance and talk, in shorts, and so keep cool, as compared with the stricter etiquette of the Gloucester and Hongkong Hotels, or the Repulse Bay Hotel, or even the Peninsular Hotel across the harbour, where several nights a week you were required to don “black ties”.\n\n*This is the third part of the Memoirs of Col. P H. Munro-Faure. See Editor's Note, p 61, vol. 29, and Plate I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215192, "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-2000", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "PHOTOGRAPH OF HONG KONG HARBOUR AND WATERFRONT TAKEN IN 1954\n\nJACK LAO MOU CHI\n\n251\n\nThe photograph is actually five photographs joined together, approximately 30 inches by 6 inches.\n\nStarting at the Central District Vehicular Ferry to Jordan Road, it can be seen that, moving to the right, Connaught Road at the time formed the Praya or Waterfront. Near the right-hand end of the photograph both Blake Pier and Star Ferry Pier can be seen. The Star Ferry moved to its present piers, on reclaimed land, in late 1957 when a number of people complained about the extra distance to walk!\n\nBehind the two piers can be seen the Queen's Building (where the Mandarin Hotel stands today), the old Hong Kong Club building and Mercury House (Cable and Wireless). Behind is the Royal Naval Dockyard, which was where Admiralty is situated today. Beyond, of course, is Wan Chai, where Gloucester Road at that time formed the Waterfront, and still further on is North Point.\n\nOn the other side of the Harbour the skyline is formed by the Kowloon Foothills and one can pick out such landmarks as Kowloon Peak (Fei Ngo Shan), Lion Rock and Beacon Hill. Passes along the Foothills, from west to east include Kowloon Pass, Sha Tin Pass, Grasscutters' Pass, Customs Pass and Tate's Pass. Further to the north are Heather Pass and Buffalo Pass.\n\nRight over to the west of the photograph is Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's highest mountain.\n\nIn those days there was a clear view of the Harbour from Government House and Governors were said to use the number of ships in the Harbour as a barometer of the economy. In this photograph there does not appear to be a great deal of activity.\n\n(Question from Dan Waters, who borrowed the photograph and copied it: 'During the 1956 Riots I served as a Special Constable based at the Waterfront Police Station. I was under the impression that this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]