[
    {
        "id": 207409,
        "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": 177,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n169\n\nrelease. His nerve was not shaken by his experience, and it was a privilege to have him on the staff.\n\nMajor Charles Boxer had studied the Japanese language in Japan and when hostilities broke out was a staff officer in China Command. Towards the end of the battle on the Island he went out to help the defence in the field and was very seriously wounded. He was taken first to the Queen Mary Hospital and thence to Bowen Road in early January 1942. The Japanese of course knew that he was in Hong Kong and sought him out after our surrender. After the immediate danger of his wound had passed his services as an interpreter were much in demand both by Shackleton and by the Japanese. The surgical problems of our wounded were being brought under better control when on 7 August 1942 Boxer gave me a message from the Japanese that on the following day Simson the A.D.M.S., Shackleton the commanding officer, a named number of officers and other ranks of the staff and 40 patients were to leave Bowen Road and that all women staff were to be transferred away from the hospital 48 hours later. At the time we considered that only twelve patients were fit to go to P.O.W. camp. All except two of the women staff were to be transferred to the Civil Internment Camp on the Stanley Peninsula. The two exceptions, as noted earlier, were released, in Hong Kong. I was promised 30 “first aiders” to replace our nurses but it was much later before 10 Canadian volunteers arrived to help us. The Japanese instruction to me was to take charge of the hospital with Major Gerald Harrison as my deputy. My own position was secure enough for I was much senior to my medical colleagues in the hospital, but Harrison was not the next in seniority in the British army. Before his departure Colonel Simson was good enough to give me a letter in which he “promoted” me to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and to take charge of the hospital. As an interpolation this development did not forward my career in any way and it was not till 16 January 1946 that I was promoted to the substantive rank of Lieutenant Colonel. My pay in this rank began only upon this date though my seniority was slightly ante-dated. By 1946 I had nearly 28 years service, so my forebodings of 1939 and 1940 about my career were justified. This little story shows that it is always unwise to be captured in war; the effect on the career of a regular soldier can be calamitous. It also illustrates the slow rate of promotion thirty years ago. I was however grateful for Colonel Simson’s",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207455,
        "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": 223,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n215\n\nmuch space as possible. The raiding plane on 26 October had therefore been seen by many of our population in the hospital. The sequel came on 3 November when, in the middle of afternoon, all up-patients and all staff were ordered to parade on the tennis court. Sentries had been posted overlooking the court and Lieutenant Saito and Mr. Hasegawa, an interpreter from Japanese Headquarters, were present. Two days earlier Sgt. Seino had told Major Charles Boxer that the Japanese navy had reported to the Japanese army that our men had been seen on the hospital verandahs during air raids. The intense rivalry between the two services was well known, and after Boxer's warning I saw to it that all staff and patients were ordered to keep off verandahs during air raids. The precaution came too late, however, and at the tennis court parade Saito made a speech interpreted by Hasegawa to the effect that many people in the hospital had laughed at and criticised the Japanese Military Authorities during and after the air raid. All on parade who had not laughed or criticised were ordered to hold up their hands and all did so. Hasegawa then said he did not believe this and I was called further forward from the head of the parade and asked if I knew who had laughed or criticised. On replying that I did not know I was dealt a buffet on each side of the face by Saito. His fist was not clenched but he was quite a powerful man and my cap was knocked askew and the inside of my cheek was cut though I suffered no real injury. Boxer was then called forward and asked why he had not signed an undertaking not to escape about which I shall have something to say later. Boxer replied that a Japanese officer would not have signed such a document and he then received two blows on the face from Saito. The parade was then dismissed and Saito went to No. 3 ward at the top of the building where up-patients were paraded on the verandah. These were mainly men recovering from diphtheria and any who had been on verandahs during raids were ordered to stand forward. When none did all were slapped. A new interpreter to the hospital, Takeyama, had just taken over and the latter told me formally that any further complaints of this nature would be followed by the closing of the hospital. We therefore arranged that verandahs on the harbour side would be policed by us during raids and that no one would even go on the verandah on the harbour side to get to lower floors where shelter was better. Shortly afterwards, on Japanese orders all beds were removed from verandahs on the harbour side of the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215929,
        "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": 228,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "162\n\nquite early on to professional military strategists. War, when it came to Hong Kong, would have to be waged by means other than conventional warfare. Realistically, occupation would be a foregone conclusion: the challenge was to struggle on by covert means and to develop some resistance mechanism. In short, a new concept of waging war, based on intelligence and action behind enemy lines.\n\nMilitary intelligence\n\nThree years after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, [Hon. Ed. - I find it difficult to see how Japan's unprovoked occupation of large parts of China and the atrocities committed by its army can be termed a 'war.'] the British Army, Navy and Air Force created a 'Far East Combined Bureau.' It operated openly, employed no agents and depended on information volunteered by customs officials, commercial travellers and the like. Its offices, based within the Naval Dockyard compound, discouraged visits from casual informants, and much of its work involved monitoring personal reports from China sent by courier, rather than proactive intelligence gathering. Naval Intelligence provided support and maintained a signals station on Stonecutters Island for transmitting information to Singapore. GE Grimsdale, later to become Major General, joined the FECB in its early days. One of his earliest recommendations on curbing Japanese espionage in Hong Kong was to suggest that tourists be banned from using cameras! Later he was to acknowledge that espionage was harmless in a place like Hong Kong where defences were open and unsophisticated - one snatched photo of a ship leaving the naval dockyard revealed less than its official description in Jane's Fighting Ships.\" In any case, Japanese had been known to go to Kelly and Walsh, the booksellers in Central District, to find maps better than their standard issue 1:20,000 series.\n\nIn January 1937, Capt. Charles Ralph Boxer, of the Lincolnshire Regiment arrived in Hong Kong. Everything about Boxer contrasted strongly with the stereotype of a colonial in the Far East. Although he came from a family of military men, he was an unconventional individualist. Moreover, he was a scholar, who spoke fluent, literary Japanese, studying Japanese history and culture to the extent that he was welcomed in some of the most influential Japanese social circles. After the war, these values would pit him against bigots for whom any sympathy for the Japanese was anathema. But pre-war, he represented",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]