[ { "id": 207514, "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": 282, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "274\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nand I doubted very seriously whether any prisoners would get out of Hong Kong. Having reached this conclusion it seems strange that one just carried on. I do not recall discussing the situation as I saw it with any other person in the hospital, for it was my job to try to keep people cheerful rather than inspire feelings of gloom. I suppose the truth of the matter is that with the blessing of work to be done it became possible to shut one's mind to the dark thoughts that crowded in.\n\nIn 1944 the effects of the blockade on the Japanese began to become evident to us, though after April 1945 when the hospital reopened in Kowloon our conditions were improved and my own depression and I believe that of others lifted very considerably.\n\nThe military situation was such that in April 1945 the Japanese expeditionary force in China which had recently been reinforced numbered about one million men, though by this time neither the training of the troops nor their equipment were good and their efficiency was not high. Responsibility for the Canton area was laid upon the Japanese 23rd Army which consisted of six divisions, two independent mixed brigades, two independent infantry brigades and the defence force allocated to Hong Kong. In May 1945 the 23rd Army was reduced from six to three divisions, but its task was still to hold Liuchow Peninsula, the Hong Kong-Canton area and Swatow in order to repel an American invasion.\n\nWhatever plans may have been made or even considered, our Official History contain no suggestion that an American or British attack on Hong Kong was contemplated in 1945. Lieutenant General Wedemeyer, the American Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek and commander of the American forces in China, hoped to have a force of 13 Chinese armies, each of three divisions for operations in the Hong Kong-Canton area. Wedemeyer's plan was to attack the Hong Kong-Canton area in the last quarter of 1945, and the assault on Canton was to be made on 1 November. Sixteen out of Wedemeyer's 39 divisions had American training and were fully equipped. None of the other 23 was either fully equipped or trained. At the time of the Japanese surrender 20,000 troops and civilians laid down their arms in Hong Kong. It would seem therefore that the battle for the relief of Hong Kong would have been fought between Japanese and Chinese troops. All operations of course were halted after the atom bombs were dropped.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207764, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "Tehgchuan \n\n甘肅 \n\nGANSU \n\nPaschi \n\nSHANSI \n\nSlau \n\n= \n\n成都 \n\nSZECHMAN \n\nCheng tu \n\nHUBEI \n\n重度 \n\n演练 \n\nChungKinE \n\nLushien \n\n贵州 \n\nKHEICHOW \n\nPichieh Kweiyang \n\nTali \n\nAnshun \n\nKutsing, \n\nTu yun \n\n下面 \n\n南庄 \n\nUstakuan \n\nPaoshan \n\n昆明 \n\nNactan \n\nKunming \n\n河池 \n\nHochih \n\nTUNNAN \n\n源涟 Yuinling, \n\n長沙 \n\nChangsha \n\n兴遠 Xingyuan \n\n○ 柳州 \n\nLiuchow \n\nKWANGSI \n\n湖南 \n\nHUNAN \n\nFig. 1. Map of China showing FAU Transport Main Routes \n\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46 \n\n137", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208198, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n221 \n\nPo Yan Hospital of the Church Missionary Society at Pakhoi, South China(廣東北海市普仁醫院). From the condition of the original typescript copies it is clear that they were among others sent to interested supporters like the Schofields. \n\nI do not yet know whether other copies have survived in the Archives of the C.M.S., nor whether similar material is repeated in the Hospital's Annual printed reports: but as the contents are of much human interest I am reproducing them here.-Hon. Editor. \n\nLetter from Po Yan Hospital, Pakhoi, South China. \n\nAn annual letter in wartime does not appear as peaceful and balanced as in normal times. If statistics need explanation it is at this time, as much useful work does not appear in them. \n\nFrom the beginning of our work in Pakhoi in March 1938 we considered it one of our most important tasks to collaborate with the Chinese authorities in every way. The civil officers asked our help and advice in general health measures. We vaccinated many thousands of people, prisoners, police cases etc., and performed post mortem, chemical and biological examinations for the court. The army doctors asked our opinion and help for a great number of difficult cases. We tried to ameliorate housing conditions, wells and public cleanliness, treated a great number of soldiers and their relatives in our hospital; this all without charge. We dispensed, for instance, Dysentery and Tetanus serum, of which the single dose costs $20 free of charge. No wonder that the financial part of the work is not looking as prosperous as usual. But we have the conviction that in this time when the Chinese people are faced with sufferings unknown before in history, the Missions are glad to show their real friendship and that we can make in some small measure Our Lord's commandment true in our deeds. \n\nIt was not surprising that in the year 1938 month after month showed a great increase in all departments of our work. It was encouraging for the Mission workers to see how far away our hospital was appreciated. We got patients from very remote places, treated the heads of the civil and military authorities, and people in towns and villages many miles away did not hesitate to make the long and sometimes exhausting journey to Pakhoi. One time we got such a great number of patients with cancer from Limchow that we were inclined to make our diagnosis from the fact that they came", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208203, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "226\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ndeaths that day and at least 70 badly injured. With the exception of one nurse who found the situation too trying and ran away, the hospital staff worked gallantly and well together, and from the doctor down to the coolies we were kept busy till late in the night. We were grateful for the timely help of Archdeacon Mo who found time to come and organise the rather panic-stricken crowd who arrived with their injured friends and relatives. It has been a great comfort to find that in this time of real danger the courage and unity of our Mission Community is increased rather than destroyed.\n\nThe cause of so many casualties may be due to the fact that people had returned from the country that same morning, and instead of staying in their houses during the attack crammed and blocked the streets in their panic-stricken attempt to escape again. We had a lady from our maternity who insisted on getting up and running into the country. She tied her small new-born baby onto her back and left us; later on during the day we heard she got as far as the Magistracy and was killed by a bomb, the baby could not be found anywhere.\n\nSome officials from Limchow came down to inquire into the welfare of the wounded etc. They said they thought that the disaster had occurred 1) because of the approaching thunderstorm which disguised the noise of the approaching planes, 2) that the communication wire between Pakhoi and the lookout station 6 miles away had been cut that morning and that there had been no time to repair the damage.\n\nWe are now preparing for a possible \"worst\", which may never happen but for which we must make some preparation, and in the event of the destruction of the hospital we are making dugouts and shelters under the pine trees which grow so generously and kindly in various parts of our compound.\n\nAugust 26th 1939 - At 6 o'clock on August 25th sounded the first alarm. Shortly afterwards there appeared a large seaplane which circled round the vicinity of Pakhoi. At the same time we heard cannon shots, which we presumed were from gunboats quite near by and sounded at regular intervals of a few minutes. The explosions shook our houses. At about 8 a large gunboat and 2 small motor launches steamed right up the harbour, carefully taking soundings as they came and finally drew alongside the steps at Lung Wong Miu, which is in the centre of the town; this they are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208706, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "136\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nFathers Downs and Madison, with Sister Paul and four of her Sisters, journeyed on by bus to Liuchow, then by train to Kweilin.\n\nAt Kweilin, we met the members of the first group and here left Sister Paul and her Sisters. As it was the time of the Chinese New Year, we had to remain in Kweilin for about a week, then Fathers Downs, Siebert, Gaiero and Madison set out by train and bus on the long hike to Kaying. We reached Kaying on the 19th of February, just one month to the day after stepping aboard the steamer at Hong Kong, and just in time to attend Kaying's First Synod. From Kaying, a few hours by bus brought us to Siaoloc, where the Language School once more resumed its oft-interrupted classes, and here at Siaoloc this chronicle of the wanderings of the Stanley Maryknollers comes to a glorious end! Laus Deo!\n\n(By Father William J. Downs)\n\nPART III: FATHER MEYER ON INTERNMENT: JANUARY 12, 1942 - AUGUST 15, 1945\n\nNearly sixty priests, Brothers and Sisters were interned at Stanley in January, 1942. Within a year, all but three priests and four Sisters had left on exchange repatriation or been released into Hong Kong and gone back to their Missions. In September, 1943, occurred the last repatriation, when Father Murphy, a Canadian missioner who was ill, and the four remaining Sisters left for Canada.\n\nA special cable had come through the Swiss Consul in Tokyo, \"All Maryknollers are to leave occupied areas.\" When Father Hessler and I told Mr. Maejima, the Camp Superintendent, that we chose to stay, he seemed nonplussed. Weren't we ordered by the cable to return? We explained that in the Catholic Church such an order was always contingent on providing for the needs of souls, and that since the Italian Fathers of Hong Kong were not permitted to come into the Camp, we had volunteered already a year ago to remain.\n\nNothing more was said, but our names did not appear on the repatriation lists, and we learned later that Mr. Maejima and his colleagues of the Hong Kong Foreign Affairs Office had been impressed by the Catholic position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212200, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "119\n\nLiuchow where one of Colonel Chennault's schools for training Chinese pilots was at that time established. I arrived just in time to observe the results of a Japanese air-raid on the field, when they succeeded in shooting up two of the latest type of Curtis Hawk fighters, the only two at that time in China, concealed in some trees on the edge of the field. Training under such conditions was not easy and the school soon had to move west again into Yunnan province.\n\nThree hundred kilometres a day is good going on these lightly metalled roads. I reached Kweilin on the evening of the third day after leaving Wuchow, and put up at the government hostel. From time immemorial the idea of travel has filled Chinese with apprehension, induced not only by fear of the ubiquitous bandit, but also by the abomination of the fetid roadside inn. With the advent of the motor car, the need for better hotel accommodation became evident, and the various provincial governments opened official hostelries at key points. While these left much to be desired by western standards, they were a prodigious improvement on the old-style inn.\n\nKwangsi is one of the more progressive provinces, for long controlled by Generals Li Tsung Jen and Pai Chung Hsi, who rank next to the Generalissimo himself. The hostel at Kweilin was better than average. There was a wireless in the lounge, and a small crowd of us sat and listened to the news as it came in. It was the period before Munich. A young German amongst us, flushed with arrogance, gloated over Hitler's successes. My first contact with the aboriginal Nazi spirit left me angry and dismayed.\n\nChinese buildings are flimsy. The rooms are small and dark, and not clean. When you have made allowance for this idiosyncrasy, Kweilin appears a delightful little town. The city wall circumambulates from shrine-crowned hill to hill; the river is full of junks that sail down to Wuchow; the roads are wide and straight, and shop arcades cover the pavements on either side. The little separate hills rise steeply from the plain, in those fantastic shapes seen in Chinese paintings. Their rocky tree-fringed summits staggered drunkenly beneath the sky. The hills are full of natural caves, most convenient for storing war supplies, or to act as shelters in the event of raids. But Kweilin was still far from the war. The Kweilin merchants believed that the Japanese planes would have difficulty in locating their little city snuggling amongst the hills. The excitement was all about the new railway,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212579, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "113\n\nBe born in Soochow; Live in Hangchow; \n\nEat in Kwangchow; \n\nDie in Liuchow, \n\nThe first is noted for beautiful women, the second magnificent scenery, the third tastiest cuisine, and the last durable timber for making coffins.\n\nIn 1988 coffins ranged from about $2,500, for a humble pine ‘box', to $300,000 for one smelling of eucalyptus. The coffin in this study cost $7,200. Coffins, known in slang as 'four half boards' (*), come, basically, in either Chinese or western styles. Timber for western coffins, say teak or rosewood, is often imported from Malaysia. For Chinese coffins, boards can be roughly hewn, up to four or five inches thick, retaining the curved outside of the tree trunk and hollowed out on the inside. Good quality China fir (**) from Luchow, in Kwangsi Province, can last, buried, for up to 100 years as demonstrated by old buildings in Hong Kong with their China Fir, piled, foundations. There are a number of coffin shops, some watched over by Ts'oi Shan the God of Wealth, at the western end of Hollywood Road. Many coffins with their white or yellow cloth linings are imported from China.\n\n23\n\nBy comparison, a British coffin is normally made of English oak (elm was used for cheaper coffins before World War II) with boards one-inch thick.24 This is usually rendered watertight with pitch or mastic and lined with a bed of sawdust, white drapery and a pillow stuffed with fine wood shavings.\n\nBecause of space, in present day Hong Kong it is not practicable for the elderly to have coffins made in advance and stored in an ancestral hall or at home, as was the custom in old China. They were revarnished every year. But if a person is too interested and 'finds the smell of coffins more appealing than the smell of cooked rice' (聞見棺材香過飯) the gods may come after him. (Similar words are occasionally uttered as a curse.) Some believe a small piece of coffin wood, if boiled and the water drunk, will keep away ghosts.\n\nContinuously, from three o'clock the day before to the actual funeral ceremony in this study, relatives and friends visited the hall to give face to the family and the departed. It is a greater offence not to attend a person's funeral than not to attend his wedding. The author recalls", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215826, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "58\n\n1.\n\n1 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: the U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), p.14.\n\n2 Miller, p.21-22, 24.\n\n3 Miller, p.33-36.\n\n(1) Steven T. Ross (ed.), American War Plans, 1919-1941, vol.2 (New York: Garland Publishers, 1992), p.125-126. (2) Miller, p.4-5, 31-32.\n\n• Ernest J. King & Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, A Naval Record (New York: WW Norton & Co., Inc., 1952), p.432. The JCS was the military committee that directed the war on the American side.\n\n6 Charles F. Romanus & Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, 1956 of U.S. Army in World War II: the China-Burma-India Theater, (pt. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1976), p.10.\n\n7 Christopher M. Bell, \"Our Most Exposed Outpost: Hong Kong and British Far Eastern Strategy, 1921-1941,\" The Journal of Military History, 60 (January 1996), p.65.\n\n• Colonel Lindsay T. Ride, \"Memorandum on the Liberation of Prisoners-of-War, Hong Kong,\" 30 Sep 43, p.11-13; Series 2/33, BAAG (British Army Aid Group) Correspondence Concerning Operations, September 1942-November 1943; Personal Papers of Sir Lindsay Tasman Ride (microform); Canberra, ACT: Australian War Memorial, 2001 (hereinafter known as the Ride Papers).\n\n* Unless otherwise noted, information for this section was collected from Weather Information Branch, HQ, USAAF, R&A Report #71087, \"Climate of Hong Kong (China),\" October 1943; Intelligence Reports (\"Regular Series\"), 1941-1945; Research and Analysis Branch Division; Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), RG226; National Archives (NA), Washington, DC.\n\n10 Later, it was reported that an all-weather road ran from Hong Kong to Canton, and the Japanese had improved other roads nearby to the same capacity. See \"G-2 Estimates of the Following Places: Haiphong-Liuchow Peninsula-Hainan Island-Hong Kong-Swatow-Amoy-Foochow-Santuao-Wenchow-Hangchow Bay Region-Laoyao-Chingtao-and the Tip of the Shantung Peninsula to Include Wei Hai Wei,\" 17 Feb 45, p.5; Ch.7-Intelligence, Correspondence, 1945, Folder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]