[ { "id": 207433, "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": 201, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n193\n\nviously prepared note addressed to her mother which was successfully picked up. Her mother and two of her sisters then got to work on the Kempeitai, the formidable and feared gendarmerie, sometimes called the 'thought police' and somehow secured her release. When Mrs. Selwyn-Clarke was eventually interned in 1943 the work went on and Helen Ho continued to bring supplies to our hospital until our release. We had the privilege of welcoming her in person in the Central British School in August 1945, and expressing our thanks to her for her work whose value it is almost impossible to overestimate. Miss Ho was awarded the O.B.E. and after the war qualified in England as an almoner, the medical social worker of today. My wife and I have maintained friendship with Helen and her family ever since and I have had the privilege of calling on the family in Hong Kong in 1964.\n\nSelwyn-Clarke was arrested by the gendarmerie on 2 May 1943, and his wife was interned in Stanley. A civil medical man had escaped from internment in Hong Kong in 1942 and this may have impaired Selwyn-Clarke's position with the Japanese to some extent. However this may be, conditions became very hard in 1942 for his subordinates who were still working to improve the health conditions generally. When some of these had been reduced to burning their own furniture for fuel and had been forbidden to draw funds from their banks a number sought permission to leave the Colony and seek a life in Chinese mainland villages. Selwyn-Clarke had power to sign recommendations for permission to leave in the case of those who had served directly under him before and during hostilities. He suspected that one man severely wounded during the fighting, in whose case he had very slightly stretched the facts in his certificate because of his deep sympathy with his plight, was detected and stopped by the Japanese on his way to China. He was intensively questioned and eventually broke down and gave the answers his questioners wanted, answers relating to Selwyn-Clarke's alleged spying activities which were quite untrue. Selwyn-Clarke was an upright man who would never break his word even to the Japanese occupiers and he told me subsequently that in the case of the certificate he gave to the man he suspects was immediately responsible for his arrest, this was the only occasion in his life that he had ever compromised on a matter of principle. This I accept. It shows the kind of man he was. Besides this incident which fired the train of events leading to his arrest he had of course", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207451, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n211\n\nnews he had a switch to allow him to broadcast his musical records to patients during the permitted hours. Usually he was careful, but one day when I was visiting a ward I was startled to hear on the ward loud speaker a part of a British bulletin on events on the Russian front. A speeding messenger to his bunk got this stopped and the Japanese showed no awareness of what had happened.\n\nI have often asked myself why I ran this risk. While I was then, and remain now, pretty sure that our own Japanese authorities sought for their own sake if not for ours, to keep all disciplinary problems in the hospital within their own hands and not report any of these to the Kempeitai or gendarmerie they would hardly have dared to suppress evidence of wireless communication between us and the outside world. No explanation by us that this was a simple and harmless gathering of news would have been accepted. Inevitably we would have been accused of operating a transmitter to broadcast to our side information about Japanese military matters. I, as head of the hospital, would have suffered the fate which overtook certain British officer prisoners in Kowloon who had been in communication with mainland China and who were executed after suffering so much that it was reported that they were unable to walk to the place of execution. I knew the risks perfectly well and yet for a long time I did not stir.\n\nI think now that I did not realise that we were getting a broad picture of the way the war was developing from the local paper though the emphasis here of course was on Japanese successes. I suppose I always hoped for some news of special significance to us. Certainly the hospital looked forward to the news and I was unwilling at that time to do anything to interrupt the flow. And so our news bulletins from British sources continued to come in for a very long time.\n\nEventually a decision was forced from me when certain officer patients represented to me that if found out it would not be only me who would suffer. The whole hospital could easily be closed down and certainly the privileges we enjoyed would be withdrawn. This argument was presented to me formally and I recognised the force of it and ordered the dismantling and destruction of the wireless receiving set.\n\nI did not supervise this personally; it was certainly dismantled but it was whispered that it had been reassembled elsewhere in the hospital and that it continued to be operated. If this was so my ignorance of its existence would not have saved me had it been discovered, but the story may well have been one of the rumours on all subjects", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207470, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "230\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nlikely to follow neither I nor any of those present realised the straits to which the Japanese were being reduced by the Allied blockade.\n\nOn 1 April I had to give Saito a certificate in writing that no Japanese school children, soldiers or ordinary spectators had been allowed to come and look at us in the hospital, in fact that we had not been put on display for the curious to gape at. I had no difficulty in complying, for nothing of this kind had ever happened. My explicit clearance certificate was amended and returned by the Japanese and though their version was, I thought, less exculpatory than the original I was still able to sign it without reservation. On 20 June Watanabe told me that we must keep all our worn-out clothing including even the fandoshis and this was yet another indication of the deteriorating situation on the Japanese side.\n\nOn 1 July Saito brought a senior doctor to see our equipment in the operating theatres, the X-ray department, the laboratory, the physiotherapy and the ophthalmic departments, and they also looked at our disinfestor arrangements. A little later photographs of the operating rooms, the X-ray department and the laboratory were taken.\n\nOn 7 August Watanabe took away the remainder of the kit which Colonel Shackleton had left behind with us, seven boxes in all none being locked. On 10 September Saito again made a search and took more plain clothes. On 6 November a Japanese officer searched the operating theatres and X-ray department in the basement, knocking out some bricks in walls in the process. Directly after this search was completed Saito and Seino repeated the whole procedure.\n\nIn our small community I got news very quickly of any unusual happenings and one day late in the year I was told by our own people that two members of the gendarmerie, the Kempeitai, had arrived. I believe that they were identified by the Japanese guards and a notable stillness fell upon the hospital, guards and guarded alike. The former were clearly concerned to keep out of trouble while we knew enough about the reputation of the gendarmerie to keep quiet and avoid provocation. I was not summoned to accompany them nor were any of our local Japanese authorities but I observed two very powerfully built men whom it would have been unwise to provoke. They paid a few perfunctory visits to different parts of the hospital and then left. I never knew if this visit was any", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209674, "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-1982", "page_number": 331, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n309\n\nJean Gittens' medical background equips her well for the task. She takes us through the trials of the internees in equipping the camp, the gradual adaptation of the Peak dwellers to their uncomfortable surroundings, domestic arrangements and the organising of lectures and drama to the eking out of meagre rations and the gradual mental and physical deterioration of inmates despite both the sterling efforts of medical personnel and the notable courage of friends outside the camp. All described in such a matter-of-fact way that their full horror registers only slowly. For Jean, freedom when it came was to bring another blow; her husband, Billy, had not survived.\n\nAndy Leiper and his wife did not arrive in Hong Kong until mid-1939. He trained with the Volunteers, but, as one of the managers of the Chartered Bank, was required by the authorities to stay at his post to keep the bank running for as long as possible. He recounts in remarkable detail how the bank continued to deal with hordes of depositors right up to the final surrender while, at the same time, coping with refugee families and the occasional bombing raid. By day he was a banker; by night he helped out with the Volunteers, anxious all the while for his brave wife, who had refused to leave Hong Kong, preferring to work with other volunteers in the hospital.\n\nTogether with other bankers, Leiper and his wife were lodged initially in a Wanchai brothel, commandeered by the Japanese, and required to work with the occupying forces in the liquidation of the banks. This continued until June 1943 when they were finally transferred to Stanley: \"The fresh air and the sunshine were an indescribable joy and more than compensated for the shorter rations.\" Then, in January 1944, he was arrested along with several other bankers, and thrown into solitary confinement. There he was subject to constant brutality and intermittent torture at the hands of the Kempetai. Small wonder that, on return to Stanley at the end of the war, the mere sight of a hungry Japanese guard in the doorway of his room was sufficient to send him into screaming delirium.\n\nIn dealing with two very personal accounts of such harrowing experiences, comparisons can be invidious, but of the two, I much prefer Leiper's book. For all its wealth of detail, “Stanley:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213635, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "206\n\ntrials, International Military Tribunals were established, and Russia took part in the Tokyo trial although it had been in the war against Japan for only one week before the surrender. In all the other trials, Tribunals of Officers were set up to hear the cases. The range of offences to be tried as war-crimes was never precisely defined, but broadly concerned “offences against humanity” including events causing cruelty, indeed often death, to prisoners and civilians in occupied territories. The notorious Kempetai (military police) had tortured, and indeed, killed, many thousands usually in an effort to extract confessions. Were these trials a \"Victor's Justice\"? It is true that the Japanese surrender had made the trials possible, but the catalogue of criminality left no doubt that those appearing in the dock deserved the punishment they received. There were acquittals mostly as a result of problems of identification, and some because the required standard of proof had not been satisfied. Tribunals did not attach much weight to affidavit evidence since cross-examination was not feasible. Documents which were contemporaneous on the other hand usually told their own story, although bonfires of such documents had been destroying such evidence in the interval between the Emperor's surrender broadcast and the arrival of the Allied forces.\n\nThe first trial was of General Yamashita, the \"Tiger of Malaya\", who became Supreme Commander of Japanese Forces in the Philippines, and this began in Manila on October 29th, 1945. He was sentenced to death. Other trials were conducted by U.S. Tribunals: 90 were sentenced to death. During 1945 and 1946, Nationalist Chinese Tribunals convicted 504 as war criminals. The French convicted 198, the Dutch 969, Australia 644, and in Singapore and Hong Kong, the United Kingdom Tribunals convicted 811.\n\nAccused were permitted legal representation, and given interpreters and the assistance of an Allied officer, and this was strictly adhered to in the British trials. We had the assistance of Army Investigation Units which collected evidence. One problem was that mistreated P.O.W.s wanted to get home to England or Canada as soon as practicable for rehabilitation, and tribute should be paid to the public-spirited few who agreed to return as witnesses.\n\nMy first case in Hong Kong concerned atrocities in Kinkaseki Camp, Formosa, and its \"Hell Mine\", and one of my star witnesses was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215934, "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-2002", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "167\n\nsocieties in the Japanese Army, though in his memoirs he downplayed this role. When Mrs Bush, a Japanese, was later forced to work as a Kempeitai interpreter, she talked to a prisoner who was in American Naval Intelligence about their mutual friend Charles Boxer. Bill Kendall, of whom more below, was told by Boxer that the Japanese were on the move: when he saw the zeros flying overhead, and knew that the attack had finally started.\n\nBeyond military intelligence\n\nFW Kendall was a Canadian from Vancouver who had lived in Hong Kong since childhood, and spoke not only fluent Cantonese but other dialects as well. He had had a mining business in China, but after the Japanese occupied east Guangdong and Chekiang his business was cut off. He then moved back to Hong Kong and worked for the Government organising refugee relief, building and running the main large camp at Kam Tin. Early in 1940 Kendall was approached by Col LA Newnham, in his capacity in charge of Military Intelligence, and asked to set up a small unit of civilians and volunteers. Being non-military personnel, they could undertake training in the use of sabotage and \"ungentlemanly warfare,\" which the official armed services could not legitimately carry out. The unit was given the cover name Z Force. Allocating £1,500 for this 'unit for independent action behind enemy lines' had to be done outside normal accounting channels, GOC Hong Kong told the War Office in September 1941, because of the need for absolute secrecy in a small place like Hong Kong.\n\nThe Special Operations Executive, under the Ministry for Economic Warfare, had been established in Europe for some years to assist resistance. They trained agents for the specific purpose of operating behind enemy lines using espionage, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare. Specialist SOE units created miniature code machines, wireless facilities and concealed weapons, known by the cheerful name of 'toys.' Where strategically useful, SOE created facilities for specialised sabotage. The whole point of SOE was to facilitate war in situations such as in occupied countries where traditional warfare was impractical. Its methods were ideally suited to the situation in China, where the front was so large and diverse that Japanese supply lines were stretched to vulnerability. The populace was strongly motivated for resistance, and the Japanese, whose control was weak beyond urban areas, were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215943, "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-2002", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "176\n\n22nd December, in the midst of some of the most savage fighting on Hong Kong Island, the single largest atrocity involving civilians of the entire battle period occurred. Much has been made of atrocities that affected Europeans, but this incident is worth analysing because it gives us hints on what the Japanese knew about Hong Kong. Ma Tso Yuen recounted how, while his family were having dinner, they heard shots and found that their building, No 42 Blue Pool Road, was surrounded by Japanese. The inhabitants of the building and its neighbour, No 44, were systematically rounded up and herded together. Through a door, Ma saw a neighbour being beaten for resisting. The women were separated, many raped, and then killed. The men were taken down near the nullah and bayoneted, with Japanese stabbing the bodies to make sure all were dead. Ma survived, although he suffered nine separate wounds, because he lay hidden. When the danger was over, he realised he was surrounded by the bodies of 30 men, including that of his own son. **The number of men, women and children killed in other parts of the building is unknown; the buildings were small, low-rise apartments, but crowded: in one flat, some fourteen people were sheltering. Phyllis Harrop, through her KMT contacts, estimated that at least forty persons in her building alone were killed. No other atrocity against civilians was as systematic, organised, or as savage as this. Normal battle mayhem was not the motive. Kempeitai agents travelled with battle units, even though they were not part of the normal military structure. Under cover of fighting, they could settle other opposition. Blue Pool Road was targeted because it was where KMT officials and agents lived with their families. It was no random massacre. Among the dead included men from the Ministry of Communications and the Central Trust, a front organisation for the KMT, whose offices had been searched by the British and whose members had been arrested and sometimes deported. Ma himself had been an employee of the Central Trust.\n\nThe relationship between the KMT, the colonial government, and individuals involved in undercover work might bear further investigation. Phyllis Harrop mentions in her private diary that 'at the request of Chinese members of the Dai Li organisation who had been left behind in the colony, (she) was asked to go to Chongqing with the complete details of the guerrillas' arms and ammunition, which was buried in various homes and gardens in the island, to deliver information and arrange for instruction to be given to the men remaining in Hong Kong to carry on their work. My escape was engineered by the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]