[
    {
        "id": 208013,
        "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": 52,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "36 \n\nG. C. EMERSON \n\ncheques to fellow internees who had extra yen. These cheques were payable after the war and were called ‘duress cheques' as they had been written under duress. After the war the Hong Kong Government announced that people should not feel obligated to honour them. However, as those who signed the cheques had done so willingly and felt that in many cases they had saved them from starvation, almost all the cheques were honoured. As a result, a few of the internee-traders who held many of these cheques became wealthy.\n\nOne man was said to have done this:\n\n1st he traded 8 lbs. of rice for a tin of golden syrup\n\n2nd — he sold the syrup for HK$500\n\n3rd — he sold the HK$500 for ¥3000\n\n4th he sold the ¥3000 at ¥10 to £1 for a £300 cheque.\n\nThus his original 8 lbs. of rice, which before the war was worth about 1 shilling and 4 pence, was eventually turned into 300 pounds sterling!\n\nFood and the Black Market occupied much of Camp \"gossip\", and another topic frequently talked about was repatriation. For the British, repatriation never occurred, partly because in exchange for them, the Japanese asked for a group of Japanese interned in Australia who had been pearl fishermen there and hence knew the coastline very well. Fearing a possible Japanese invasion of Australia, for which these people would have been invaluable, the British government refused to allow their repatriation. The Americans and Canadians in Stanley Camp were, however, repatriated. On 29th June 1942, the first group, mostly Americans and numbering about 300, left on the Asama Maru for Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, where they met the Gripsholm bringing Japanese from America. Changing ships, the Americans reached New York on 25th August 1942. The second repatriation took place in September 1943, when approximately 140 internees, mainly Canadians, returned home.\n\nOne internee, watching the Americans march down to the jetty in Stanley Bay to board small boats which took them out to a ferry for transference to the Asama Maru, wrote:\n\nWe sat on the wall of the cemetery and with deep emotion watched them go. We had dreams of good food for them, of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208703,
        "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": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "142\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nwhatever food for the Club which could not be bought in the market.\n\nFather Meyer in October notes that the money exchange rate for the U.S. dollar was HK$7.50, although the official rate given by the banks was only HK$4.00. He opined that this difference came about because the U.S. dollar had become a sort of \"super currency\" for South China because the Chinese considered it much safer than their own.\n\nDuring the \"post occupation\" days when everyone in Hong Kong was trying to put the pieces together again, the U.S. Navy was a great help to Father Meyer, particularly Father Hargreaves who often stayed at the Maryknoll House in Stanley. Father Don Hessler, who had volunteered to remain in the Internment Camp with Father Meyer in order to care for the people not repatriated on the Gripsholm, was recalled to the U.S. after Father Tennien's arrival in Hong Kong to take over the Stanley House. Father Don had organized a school for the children of Stanley Village, and continued to work for the warders and prisoners in the jail. He and the Carmelite Sisters also took care of the Japanese internees who had been transferred to the barracks on the tip of the Stanley peninsula. They found 12-15 Catholics among them. General Festing, who was in charge of the Japanese internees, was a Catholic and very helpful to the Sisters and to Father Hessler. There were some 8,000 Japanese internees and Father Meyer had been toying with the idea of asking Maryknoll to send Japanese-speaking Maryknollers to take care of them. He himself would have done this but his time was completely taken up with the organization of the Catholic Club in town, and organizing Catholic Action Groups. The Club opened on October 19—Armistice Day. It served 1,722 meals that day. Catholics made up 20 per cent of those who patronized the Club in order to eat something other than barracks' and ships' rations.\n\nFather Tennien arrived to take over Stanley on November 26th. His first report on the House was: \"Not bad considering most of the homes and institutions in Hong Kong, although the flooring had been pulled up. Open fires for cooking in the rooms had blackened all the walls but did not damage them.\" He held off on major repairs due to the almost impossibility of getting materials, and the inflated cost of labor at the moment. Government was selling",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
        "rank": 0
    }
]